So, Are There Any Enemies?
Simone Riva - "Love of one's enemy is at the heart of the 'Christian revolution,' a revolution not based on strategies of economic, political, or media power. The revolution of love, a love that does not ultimately rest on human resources, but is a gift from God that is obtained by trusting solely and unreservedly in His merciful goodness.
Here is the novelty of the Gospel, which changes the world without making noise. Here is the heroism of the 'little ones,' who believe in the love of God and spread it even at the cost of their lives."
Benedict XVI commented on today’s very harsh Gospel passage, in which we find phrases such as these: "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. To those who strike you on one cheek, offer the other one as well; to those who take your cloak, do not refuse even your tunic. Give to everyone who asks of you, and from him who takes away your things, do not ask them back" (Luke 6:27-30).
Jesus seems to accept the idea that there can be "enemies" among men. Each of us has in mind, after all, people who don’t really like us. We are often forced to deal with the malicious, the false, the envious... other times we become like that ourselves. Christ Himself, however, who said "love your enemies," never called or considered anyone an "enemy." There are two episodes in the Gospel that confirm this. The first is when He commands us to love one another: "This is my commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you.
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business; I call you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit and that your fruit might abide, that whatever you ask the Father in my name, He may give you.
This I command you: to love one another" (John 15:12-17). Jesus addresses His followers as "friends," using this term as opposed to that which indicates servitude, understood as extraneous to the master’s heart. It is as if He were saying: "What is most important to me is your freedom; do not renounce this gift, remain in my friendship. Everything you needed to live this way, I have made known to you." We know very well, in fact, that the temptation to live as a servant is always just around the corner. It presents itself as the simplest and most immediate choice.
It makes us enlist in the army of the powerful of the moment, willing to do anything to have a place in the sun. Jesus even commands love as an antidote to the poison of servitude. Only love, in fact, opens wide the doors of freedom because it introduces the audacity of the total gift of self. There is another passage in which Christ uses the term "friend," even though the opposite would have been more appropriate. We are in the last days of His life. One of His friends has just sold Him to the leaders for thirty pieces of silver.
Then the following happens: "While He was still speaking, Judas, one of the Twelve, arrived; and with him a large crowd with swords and clubs, sent by the chief priests and the elders of the people. The betrayer had given them this signal: ‘The one I kiss is the man; arrest him!’ And immediately he approached Jesus and said, ‘Hail, Rabbi!’ And he kissed Him. And Jesus said to him, ‘Friend, for this reason you have come!’ Then they came and laid hands on Jesus and arrested Him" (Matthew 26:47-50).
It’s impossible to imagine Judas’ heart feeling called "friend" at that moment. His betrayal is the height of the perversion of love that Christ had commanded, so much so that he uses the kiss as a signal for arrest. Loving our enemies is the right provocation to ask ourselves if we really have love for our enemies, if there is someone we could identify as such, or if it is, ultimately, "simply" a question of learning to love.
The author has not revised the text and its translations.
