Today is Feb. 23, the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time.
We hear at Mass today, “Jesus said to his disciples: ‘To you who hear I say, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you'” (Lk 6:27-28).
If we were to pause for a moment and think about Jesus’ teaching given in Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount, I think it’s likely that we would say that the teaching is all about forgiveness. Turn the other cheek, we read. Stop judging, Jesus tells us. Give without expecting to be repaid.
And all of these things are true and good. And they’re hard. They’re so hard!
But Jesus demands something even more difficult of us. He does not simply ask us to forgive. I could work at that and arrive pretty close. And if I couldn’t actually forgive, I could act as if I had forgiven in polite company.
Msgr. Ronald Knox once preached in a sermon, “You haven’t done his whole will for you when you’ve stopped hating your enemies. He wants you to love them.” No, Jesus asks for something far more than plain and simple forgiveness. He urges us to love.
Where can we begin?
Where do we even start? With so many ills and wrongs in the world, with so many people hurting and in need of being loved, where can we even begin?
And that is how the saints are so different from us. Bl. Carlo Acutis, the Italian teen who will soon be canonized a saint, once said, “Life is a gift, because as long as we are on this planet, we can grow in our ability to love. The more we learn to love, the more we will enjoy eternal blessedness with God.” This work of loving is the work of a lifetime. To grow in love in every moment brings eternity that much closer.
We are to forgive, yes. We must stop judging, yes. We are to give without counting the cost, yes. But most of all, we are to love!
Let us pray,
Grant, we pray, almighty God, that, always pondering spiritual things, we may carry out in both word and deed that which is pleasing to you. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.
