![]() ![]() And we have to be, as it were, on our guard. Now, we can’t love them in exactly the same way, and that’s evident because if someone who doesn’t love us back, we can’t have the same freedom or the breadth of expression. But our Lord’s commandment is that we love everyone, both those who love us and those who don’t love us. So love has to be reciprocated in order for it to be friendship. Self preservation against those who would do evil to us is a form of self love without which you can’t become their friends. Saint Thomas says, “It transcends in a certain sense is more fundamental than love of neighbor.” I know that sounds funny, but you have to love yourself first, before you can love your neighbor as yourself. And so under that aspect, we might positively will some evil for that person, like to defend our lives, we have to harm this other person.Īnd that’s not what you call a friendly act, but it’s not an unloving one either because you have love for yourself. But you can hate your enemy under that aspect, if it’s not an essential one, it’s not a moral one, but rather taken for entertainment. Or in the case of some accidental aspect of someone who’s going to do us evil, we have to protect ourselves from it. And our playing the game together can be in itself a form of love and friendship on another level that you both love the game and share it in common. Well, this is not a grave moral, evil, this is all agreed upon. Now, if that enemy is an enemy on the football field from an opposing team, and they will the evil of your losing or fumbling or whatever. Instead of willing the good for me, they will evil for me. So I can’t have, someone’s an enemy then it means that that person, under some aspect or another does not love me. ![]() So if he’s my friend, that means that he loves me back. That is, it’s a mutual arrangement or a mutual relationship. There are forms of love, which are not friendship precisely because friendship means that the friend is the friend to the other friend. So love is not always friendship, and why not. And consequently, we’re not free to treat our enemies, as you might say, as they deserve.īut that’s a little dangerous even in of itself. So, and we need to understand God’s treatment of enemies in the light of that.Īnd also his commandment regarding how we are to treat enemies because we’re made in the image and likeness of God, and we have been raised to this level of friendship with God, by God’s grace. We become his intimates, those who he’s drawn into his own life. We’re not just good little creatures doing what God tells us to do. So when our Lord says, “I no longer call you servants, but friends.” We realize what a high calling the life of grace is. To know that God wants to draw us into a friendship with him is truly stunning. And this is rather astounding when you consider that friendship means in some sense, an equality between the two. The friendship is the first, you could say category or characterization or precision on what it means to love God, to love one’s neighbor. We are fashioned. I remember last time we found out that that charity, divine love is precisely a form of friendship. What could love of enemies mean? Well, first of all, it’s something that we imitate whereby we imitate that God in his nature, we are fashioned in his image. Well, again, just as with friendship itself, we have to take it back to its divine source. I think Paul gives the same instruction to letter to the Romans, or at least to love those who persecute you. ![]() In Matthew and Luke, we get the instruction from Jesus to love your enemies. No, no, no, Judas would just be an enemy. I don’t believe frenemies are covered in the Bible, but. But now we switch from friends to enemies today, and we’re not even going to cover frenemies. You brought us into a conversation about divine love, and the possibility of participation of humans and divine love. We talked a bit about friendship last time. We have our chaplain with us, Father Hugh Barbour, a Norbertine priest of the Abbey of Saint Michael in Orange County, where they’re building a new and beautiful church. ![]() I am Cy Kellet, your host, and I’m delighted to have you here with us. Hello, and welcome again to Catholic Answers Focus. So what does Jesus mean by this commandment? Are we all obligated to follow it? And if we do follow it, what does it mean to love those we don’t feel any love for? The commandment to love our enemies seems impossible sometimes, especially for those who have been badly hurt. ![]()
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