Gospel Reading : Matthew 5:43-48
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’
But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
What do the Fathers say?
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.
St JEROME. For whoso keeps the commandments of God is thereby made the son of God; he then of whom he here speaks is not by nature God’s son, but by his own will.
St AUGUSTINE. We are made sons by the power which we have received; that is, so far as we fulfil those things that we are commanded. So He does not say, Do these things because you are sons; but, do these things so that you may become sons.
He says, He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good. By the sun we may understand not the visible sun , but that one of which it is said, To you who fear the name of the Lord, the Sun of righteousness shall arise; (Mal. 4:2.) and by the rain, we understand the water of the doctrine of truth; for Christ was seen, and was preached to the good as well as the bad.
Sources:
Bible readings from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Second Catholic Edition, copyright © 2006 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA
Quotes of the Fathers from Thomas Aquinas’ Catena Aurea Translated by St John Henry Newman
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