Saturday of the First Week of Lent – The unbending and supreme law for Christians: The love of all.
One of the greatest joys in one’s life is to be able to love the people you used to consider as your enemies. It makes one feel like living anew. Spending one’s life in hatred is dying slowly. Jesus says: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’” (Mt 5:43) Our first reaction might be to think that Jesus was talking to the people of his time because the Jewish law allowed them to hate their enemies. However, we sometimes experience validations of hatred. Every time we are told that our differences are more important than our similarities, that our true identities are those that confront other people’s identities, we are being asked to hate others.
Jesus told his disciples: ‘If you love those who love you what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?’ Mt 5: 46-47. As they say in French: “Il ne faut pas chercher midi à quatorze-heure (Litt. One should not look for noon at 2pm)”. It means; things are clear! And there are Christian values that we cannot compromise: the love of all is our supreme commandment. There is no other duty greater for a Christian than this.
But here is the most difficult thing: Jesus is asking us to love those we do not like or (let us blame them!) those who do not like us. How can that happen? Our enemy by definition is someone we do not like. What is the magical formula to come to loving him or her? The first step towards that is to recognise the commandment as being the greatest. It is to avoid bringing exceptions that result in pilling up and completely replace the commandment of love by the one of hatred, exclusion, prejudice and contempt. The second step is to grab all the occasions we get in life to enter into dialogue with those we believe (or were told) are our enemies.
And when one starts to love those people we believe that they are our enemies, when we break those barriers that were assigned by our societies for chimerical securities, we experience deliverance! When one starts to love those he/she used to hate, one can no longer stop: because that is our true nature, to love.
