Saturday of the First week in Lent
Matthew 5:43-48
“Love your enemies.”
ex Wikimedia Commons
You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor, and you shall have hatred for your enemy.’ But I say to you: Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. And pray for those who persecute and slander you.
In this way, you shall be sons of your Father, who is in heaven.
He causes his sun to rise upon the good and the bad, and he causes it to rain upon the just and the unjust.
For if you love those who love you, what reward will you have? Do not even tax collectors behave this way?
And if you greet only your brothers, what more have you done? Do not even the pagans behave this way?
Therefore, be perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
What do the Fathers say?
School of Laon. The Lord has taught that we must not resist one who offers any injury, but must be ready even to suffer more; He now further requires us to show to them that do us wrong both love and its effects.
But it should be known, that in the whole body of the Law it is no where written, Thou shalt hate thy enemy. But it is to be referred to the tradition of the Scribes, who thought good to add this to the Law, because the Lord bade the children of Israel pursue their enemies, and destroy Amalek from under heaven.
They who stand against the Church oppose her in three ways; with hate, with words, and with bodily tortures. The Church on the other hand loves them, does good to them, and prays for them.
St AUGUSTINE. That by the command, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, all mankind were intended. This the Lord showed in the parable of the man who was left half dead. This teaches us that our neighbour is every one who may happen at any time to stand in need of our offices of mercy.
Pope St GREGORY the Great. Love to an enemy is when we are not sorrowful at his success, or rejoice in his fall. We hate him whom we wish not to be bettered, and pursue with ill-wishes the prosperity of the man in whose fall we rejoice.
St JEROME. Many measuring the commandments of God by their own weakness, not by the strength of the saints, hold these commands for impossible, and say that it is virtue enough not to hate our enemies; but to love them is a command beyond human nature to obey. But it must be understood that Christ enjoins not impossibilities but perfection.
St John CHRYSOSTOM. Note through what steps we have now ascended, and how He has set us on the very pinnacle of virtue.
The first step is, not to begin to do wrong to any;
the second, that in avenging a wrong done to us we be content with retaliating in equal measure;
the third, to return nothing of what we have suffered;
the fourth, to offer one’s self to the endurance of evil;
the fifth, to be ready to suffer even more evil than the oppressor desires to inflict; the sixth, not to hate him of whom we suffer such things;
the seventh, to love him;
the eighth, to do him good;
the ninth, to pray for him.
And because the command is great, the reward proposed is also great, namely, to be made like unto God.
PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. For as our sons after the flesh resemble their fathers in some part of their bodily shape, so do spiritual sons resemble their father God, in holiness.