“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” What a challenge it is to heed Jesus’ call to love our enemies rather than hating them. Who are the “enemies” in your life right now? Who are the people you struggle to love rather than hate? Who comes to mind? Doesn’t Jesus understand how these people have hurt us? Doesn’t He care about us, or does He only care about these other people?
With the command to love our enemies rather than hate them, Our Lord is concerned about how we treat we other people, but He is even more concerned about us. He cares about what’s going on in our hearts. In an ancient homily on this topic, an early Church Father wrote:
I think that Christ ordered these things not so much for our enemies as for us: not because enemies are fit to be loved by others but because we [Christians] are not fit to hate anyone. … [N]ot only does Christ order us to love our enemies for the sake of cherishing them but also for the sake of driving away from ourselves what is bad for us. The Mosaic law does not speak about physically hurting your enemy but about hating your enemy. [I]f you merely hate him, you have hurt yourself more in the spirit than you have hurt him in the flesh. Perhaps you don’t harm him at all by hating him. But you surely tear yourself apart. If then you are benevolent to an enemy, you have rather spared yourself than him. And if you do him a kindness, you benefit yourself more than him.
Hatred is unbecoming of the Christian. In this Mass today, let us ask the Lord to make our hearts like His. Let us ask Him to give us the grace to love our enemies, for their sake and for our own.
Total Surrender 
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