Luke 6, 27-38:
Sunday, 20th February 2022 (7 OT C)
Last Sunday’s word of God showed us Jesus teaching the crowds, and pointing out as life criteria for his followers to live the beatitudes, even if this seemed to us to be going against the flow in our world. If this seemed difficult to us, what can we say about what Jesus asks of us today: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you”. “Treat others as you would have them treat you”.
There are people we don’t like, even if we don’t know why. Others we reject outright because they are violent or because of their selfish and unscrupulous behaviour. We could say that “instinctively” we cannot love them; it is something that is beyond our capacity. It is something that depends on what we feel, what we carry in our hearts, and we cannot prevent those feelings because they are beyond our will.
But what Jesus is asking us to do is to love with the same love with which God loves us. And God does not love people because of who they are or what they are like, but He loves them because of who He is. He does not love us because we are good, but because He is good. God’s love is a selfless, free, universal love. Love can never be the result of a commandment. And in the followers of Jesus it has to be the consequence of a personal maturing, of an identification of our feelings with the feelings of God, “who makes the sun rise on the good and the bad”. “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect”, Jesus asks of us.
When we come to feel and recognise that God loves us personally, in spite of our many weaknesses, our imperfections, our sins, then we will be closer to understanding what God asks of us in relation to others. “Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate; do not judge and you will not be judged; do not condemn and you will not be condemned; forgive and you will be forgiven”.
Juan Ramón Gómez Pascual, cmf
How do you love others?
