Homily: February 20, 7th Sunday in the Ordinary time

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 “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.”

“For if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?”

“And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?”

Today’s gospel text is very straightforward, the teaching from Jesus can be easily understood, but it is not easy to follow.

Who is your enemy?

I see two perspectives. One perspective, an enemy is someone who hates me, who hurts and harms me, who tries to destroy me. The one who opposes me.

The other perspective sees an enemy as someone whom I hate, whose existence stirs up anger in me, whose efforts I wish to destroy. The one whom I oppose.

So, do you have an enemy?

One priest, after delivering a powerful homily about forgiving enemies, asked his congregation, “Now, how many of you have decided to forgive your enemies?” The entire congregation held up their hands except one elderly lady. “Mrs. Davis,” the priest asked, “aren’t you willing to forgive your enemies at all?”

Looking quite pleased, she replied, “I don’t have any.”

The priest was keen, “Mrs. Davis is ninety-three years old; she must have wisdom we can learn from,” so he asked, “Oh, that is so wonderful, please tell us how you do it, not having any enemy at all?” 

The elderly sweet lady stood up gingerly and shouted out, “It’s easy, I just outlived all those rascals!”

If we live as long as she, we might have a chance to lose all our enemies too. But honestly, no one can please or agree with everyone in the world, so we all have enemies. Jesus Himself had many enemies, they opposed him, tried to kill him, betrayed him and some simply left him when he was in trouble. Because He came not to live long in this temporal world, but to show us the way to His forever world.

Jesus does not tell us how to remove or destroy or live without enemies. He is teaching us how to live with them in our lives.

Our focus should not be on others, but on ourselves, our attitudes and actions.

So how should we live with our enemies?

The Lord tells us, “Love your neighbour”, and we are still struggling to love our family, friends and community. Now He tells us, “Love your enemies”, is that even possible?

God is love. True love has no exceptions. He loves everyone. And He wants us to do the same. 

When I was a child, I had an enemy. I hated her so much, I created lots of troubles for her, hurt her often and bullied her terribly. She is my younger sister. She was born just one year after me and I did not like her at all. I was always so mean to her. Teasing her and putting her down was my joy at that time. When I left home and joined the seminary, she was the happiest because her worst enemy was no longer around to mess up her life.

It was during those years in the seminary that I realized I was not at all proud of my cruelty to her. I felt remorse and the torture of sin. I decided to reconcile with her and love her. Now my hate is transformed into love, cruelty into kindness, but I still tease her and her children, in a fun way. Now there is so much happiness and fulfilment in our relationship.

I realized that being an enemy is hard work, it wears out our mind and weakens our spirit. It disturbs our peace and eats into our joy.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”

Yes, now I have one less enemy, I have made her my wonderful friend. I am no longer her cruel bully but am now her loving brother.

If you want to have more friends, recycle your enemies.

Being a real friend and good neighbor is not just for the good of the other person, it is really good for our own soul. It is becoming who God wants us to be, to become more like Him, to fulfil our destiny to become the creation in His image and likeness.

In case you are wondering if accepting our enemies as friends, would that mean giving up our beliefs and giving in to values which we oppose?

No, no. Note that our Lord says, ‘Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you…”, He did not say, “Agree with your enemies, do as they do…”

In fact, this teaching to love our enemies is itself controversial to the teachings of the world. Following Jesus makes us enemies of the world, His way of love is dying to self, giving life to others. This is in opposition to the world’s way of hate which is to kill others to keep our life.

We cannot agree with our enemies, but we must love them and pray for them, the way Jesus did.


Fr. Nivin Scaria

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