Love for our Enemies
by the Reverend Noel E. Bordador
Readings: Luke 4:14-3o & 1 Corinthians 13
I am reading a spiritual biography of a Christian orthodox monk and mystic, Silhouan so called the Athonite (as he lived on holy Mount Athos). I came across something that was hard for me to take. He said that if you want to know if you have advanced in your spiritual life, the sure sign is having love not only for those who you like or who like or love you, but also having the love for those who dislike you, or those who hurt you or wish you ill. The basis of his teaching is Christ’s command: Love your enemies. Christ’s saving action on the cross includes loving his enemies even as they crucified him. Love is the only thing that can save the world.
In the Gospel today, we read that Jesus was preaching in his hometown of Nazareth and there was something that the audience didn’t like in what they heard. Their response was to reject and discredit him and because they were so enraged at him they dragged him out of town, taking him to a mountaintop and tried to kill him by throwing him down the cliff. What was it that he said? It is probably what he didn’t say that got him in trouble. When he preached, he referred to himself as the anointed Messiah in the words of the prophet Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He sent me to bind up the brokenhearted to proclaim freedom for the captives, and release for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” So far so good. But he cut short the quote from Isaiah, and eliminated the phrase “to bring about the Lord’s vengeance” upon the enemies of Israel. Now, Israel at that time was under foreign (Roman) domination, and the many Israelites wanted to overthrow the Romans. They were expecting in hope that God would send a Savior who would bring about a violent vengeance from God. But by leaving out that quote, Jesus rejected the people’s desire for vengeance and violence. Jesus tells them that the ways of God is not violence. So the people who were looking for victory over their enemies through hate and violence were disappointed in Jesus and so they rejected him, and tried to kill him.
It is understandable that when you are hurt, you want to hurt back those who caused you suffering. It is understandable that when pain has been inflicted on you, you want to inflict pain on the guilty. That is a natural response. But the Christian response is not natural, but supernatural. We are asked to transcend the natural in us- the hate, prejudice and evil, transcending these by supernatural goodness.
Now don’t get me wrong here. Treating your so called “enemies” with love doesn’t mean that you submit to their abuse, to be hurt over and over again. Love here means simply that you will not meet their emotional or spiritual or physical abuse with the same (or more) violence.
Love of enemies is a commitment to stop the cycle of abuse or violence even if you think or feel or believe you are rightly justified to retaliate. You refuse to be the hate you see in others; instead, you choose to be love and compassion because you have been created by God in the image of Christ to be love and compassion.
That is the point of the second reading today from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians concerning love. We are made for love. We are built for love. Our mission as church is about the proclamation of love. In this our Annual Meeting, it would do us well to remember that we exist for the mission of love. In our life together, it is normal that we would meet people we dislike, sometimes intensely dislike. We may from time to time want to put each other down, gossip about each other, criticize and worse, ignore or not speak to people we don’t like. In that circumstance, the Christian call love would not feel nice. Love does not feel good when we are faced to love a person we would rather avoid.
Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement, used to say that Christian love is a dreadful and harsh love because it demands that we struggle against seeds of prejudice and hate we find in ourselves. Love in action is harsh and dreadful than love in dreams.” But this type of love is something that we work on for our entire lives. This heroic love is something that is not accomplished immediately but we acquire it by degrees, in steps, and only by the grace of God. There is no need for us to despair then if we love imperfectly; as long as we ask, it shall be given us.
©2025 Noel E. Bordador
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