Thursday, 23rd Week OT - Fr Alberic Maisog

Lk 6:27–38

-In today’s Gospel, Our Lord sets before us an ideal so high that it seems almost to disappear beyond the horizon of human possibility: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who treat you badly.” There is something both glorious and terrifying in such a command. It draws us upward toward the very height of divine love, while at the same time bringing us down into the dust with the painful realization of how little we possess of that love ourselves.

-For these are not easy words for flesh and blood. They run against the instincts of fallen human nature. We know how readily the heart closes itself against the one who has wounded it, how naturally we desire to answer coldness with coldness, injury with injury, and rejection with withdrawal. Yet Our Lord is not asking us to pretend that these wounds do not exist, nor is He asking us to produce feelings that are not within our power to command.

-Christian love goes deeper than feeling. We need not find everyone agreeable, pleasant, or worthy of our affection. To love another is to will his/her good before God—to regard him/her as one whom God Himself has created, redeemed, and called to the fullness of life. Even when affection is absent, charity can remain. Even when the heart recoils, the will can still kneel before the mystery of another soul and say: This person belongs to God.

-Here we begin to discover our poverty. If Christ asks me to love those who do not love me, to bless those who curse me, and to pray for those who injure me, then I must confess that such love is not naturally mine. I cannot draw it from the shallow well of my own heart. I must go elsewhere.

-The soul that has stood beneath the Cross and has allowed itself to be washed in the Blood of Christ begins to understand this mystery. What have I received from Him? Mercy when I deserved judgment. Patience when I deserved rejection. Love when I had nothing with which to purchase it. If I have been loved with such a love, then I am being invited to become an instrument of that same love.

-And so the prayer of the Christian becomes very simple: “Lord, if I am to love You as You love me, and if I am to love my enemies as You love them, then I must borrow Your love. The love with which You command me to love is not yet fully mine. Give me Your Heart, for without Your Heart I cannot love as You ask.”

-Then the command of Christ ceases to be merely a burden placed upon the shoulders. It becomes a doorway. Through it we are led from natural love into supernatural charity, from self-reliance into dependence upon God, from the poverty of the human heart into the riches of the Heart of Christ.

-And perhaps Our Lord does not expect that we shall travel this road in a single step. He knows the weakness of our nature and the slowness of our progress. He sees the smallest movement of the heart toward charity. He sees when, instead of answering an injury, we remain silent; when instead of judging, we pray; when instead of nursing resentment, we place the offender into the hands of God.

-These may seem like very small things, but in the hidden life of the soul they are steps toward conformity with Christ. The Lord who sets the goal so high is also the Lord who walks with us toward it. He is patient with our weakness, provided that the deepest desire of our hearts is turned toward Him.

-And perhaps this is the beginning of that perfect love to which Christ calls us: not that we should imagine ourselves capable of loving as He does, but that, knowing our poverty, we should allow Him to love in us.