The reading for today challenges us to love our enemies. Loving those who persecute us is our sacrifice that we can offer to God. We can only love our enemies if we learn to forgive them and literally forget all their trespasses in us.
I admit that this is a very hard to accomplish task from God to us. But the mere fact that I embraced this religious vocation, it always reminds me that I already surrendered my will to the will of God. And the will of God for me is to forgive and to love those who wronged me.
I know that everyone of us is a wounded person. With this woundedness, we tend to look for something in this life that would complete us a person; and we all expect that, somehow, we could find some consolation to our longings from one another. But, most of the time, we try to reject one another and we became persecutors of one another. I, maybe, sometimes became so insensitive to your needs because I also feel that I am neglected. And sadly, this becomes a culture of being not generous to one another. In a way, it is transformed into a culture of revenge.
But the Gospel is calling us to love unselflessly. Jesus is calling us to set-aside our biases to one another. Jesus is calling us to be reconciled with one another. Jesus is calling us to transcend… to love not only those who can love us, but also, to extend this love to those whom we cannot love.
As I go back again and again with my vocation story, it is Jesus who first loved me. Despite of my imperfections, Jesus loves me no matter what. And from this experience, there’s no reason for me to deny that love that I can offer even to those whom I found so unlovable. To do this, I cannot do it alone, it is always a journey of learning how to love, of learning how to give and to share that love, and how to forgive and embrace totally the imperfections of other. The work of God in our community would lead us to appreciate one another where from our differences we would all be united by different expressions of love. This will happen only if we open ourselves. Reconciliation is not a work of one person alone; it is the work of the entire community.
Let us always pray to God to heal our wounded hearts. Let us always ask His guidance so that we would not offend others. Let us offer every moment of our entire life to do His will in our life. Let us open our heart to the Spirit of God to reside in us… for the Spirit of God in us would lead us to see the Spirit of God residing also in the hearts of others. And this Spirit of God would lead us to be humble, to say sorry, to forgive and to love.
Den Mar
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