Many wonder how to love our enemies. Is this possible? The first part of the answer is that an enemy is the one that antagonized you, while you can’t antagonize anyone. You can be sad but not hold any hatred towards him because he is your brother. You cannot love him as the Lord requested unless you considered him your brother regardless of the evil his heart has. God asks you to fix this person’s heart.
Remember the Good Samaritan that found a wounded Jew on the road and healed and took care of him. The Samaritan was the enemy of the Jew religiously, and that hostility was big back then.
He who antagonized you today is wounded, shocked or has a purpose against you. You might not have harmed him, but if you replied by hatred you’ll increase his evil while your goal is to heal him, to heal a person. The lord made you today a Good Samaritan, a doctor for you enemy, and only you are his doctor since you’re the only one that knows his illness.
In most cases he accepts your forgiveness, but if he didn’t then pray for him to accept it. Mention your enemy in your prayers everyday, and let his name be mentioned on the holy altar so that the Lord’s mercy would be on him.
The reading ends with the Lord saying: “be merciful just as your Father is merciful”. The word merciful linguistically means that the heart of the Lord is big enough for all humans. Since God put all his rational creatures in his arms, you should be like him so that your enemy becomes in his arms too, and this way you meet your enemy at the lord that loves both of you.
We cannot meet a person except in the depths of the divine tenderness. The human passion changes according to the mood, but we –as believers– do not act temperamentally but we do act with a divine passion as if our heart was the Lord’s.
Remember that God is love and his heart does not differentiate between these that love him and those that don’t, because they are all his sons. If you had two children, one was nice and kind while the other was naughty; you provide them with the same love. However, there are two ways for raising them, and both ways intend to help and fix your kids.
God is love and this is the only relation between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Love is the divine oneness; it is the name of God.
God acts as a raiser and uses different methods with people, but he wants one Love for all humans. And Christ’s death is the big proof of his love towards us.
Translated by Mark Najjar
Original Text: “أحبوا أعداءكم” – 3.10.2010-Raiati no40
