Jesus said to his disciples: ‘You have learnt how it was said: You must love your neighbour and hate your enemy. But I say this to you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you; in this way you will be sons of your Father in heaven, for he causes his sun to rise on bad men as well as good, and his rain to fall on honest and dishonest men alike. For if you love those who love you, what right have you to claim any credit? Even the tax collectors do as much, do they not? And if you save your greetings for your brothers, are you doing anything exceptional? Even the pagans do as much, do they not? You must therefore be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect.’
St. Matthew, 5:43-48
Lent is the time to repent of our sins, do penance and reform our lives. One of the most difficult teachings of Christ is to love our enemies. Is there someone that you "hate"? Someone you wish ill upon? Is their hateful rage and unrighteous anger towards this or that person or persons? A family member, a co-worker, a politician, a priest, a bishop, even the Pope? Anyone?
In his 18th Homily on St. Matthew, St. John Chrysostom comments on the above passage:
...He said not, do not hate, but love; He said not, do not injure, but do good....And if any one should examine accurately, he will see that even to these things somewhat is added, much greater than they are. For neither did He simply command to love, but to pray...to entreat God Himself on his behalf.
The saint then tells us why we are not only to love but to pray for our enemies:
For He says, That ye may become like your Father which is in HeavenSt John replies to those who claim they simply cannot bring themselves to love their enemies (which is a rejection of God's grace):
But how, says one, is it possible for this to take place? Having seen God become man, and descend so far, and suffer so much for your sake, do you still inquire and doubt, how it is possible to forgive your fellow-servants their injuriousness?
Do you not hear Him on the cross, saying, Forgive them, for they know not what they do? Do you not hear Paul, when he says, He who is gone up on high, and is sitting on the right hand intercedes for us?
Do you see not that even after the cross, and after He had been received up, He sent the apostles unto the Jews that had slain Him, to bring them His ten thousand blessings, and this, though they were to suffer ten thousand terrors at their hands?
But have you been greatly wronged?
Nay, what have you endured like your Lord, bound, beaten with whips, with rods, spit upon by servants, enduring death, and that death, which is of all deaths the most shameful, after ten thousand favors shown? "
The saint then concludes:
And even if you have been greatly wronged, for this very cause most of all do thou do him good, that you may both make your own crown more glorious, and set your brother free from the worst infirmity.
Those those of us who refuse to love our "enemies", we may not have yet lost the Faith, but we are well on the way to losing it. St. John wrote: "Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him" (1 John 3:15).
During this Lent we need to forgive our enemies. We will find that abandoning the hatred, the rage, the anger, the bitterness will also bring us the peace that we lack.
During this Lent we need to forgive our enemies. We will find that abandoning the hatred, the rage, the anger, the bitterness will also bring us the peace that we lack.
For some of us this will be our last Lent. Let us make good use of the time that God has graced us. Let us give up hate this Lent, and forever give it up!
5 comments:
*Abandoning the hatred, the rage, the anger, the bitterness* is the long hard march for so many. A long march over a barren terrain with no end in sight. Lent is the desert after all.
This is where the mediation of the Church and the Sacraments saves so many souls from despair and spiritual death. We can only forgive because Jesus Christ makes it possible to forgive.
*What we love we shall grow to resemble,* said Bernard of Clairvaux. If we take our eyes off the Lord's love for us on Cavalry we are lost. *Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.*
The wound in so many souls can never be fully healed in this world. Who can fail to be daunted by the crosses people have to carry? How often we fail them on their Via Dolorosa!
I read a letter in a newspaper by a woman whose only child was killed by a drunken driver. The man came out of prison after a fairly short sentence and went to see the mother of the little girl he had killed. The woman recognised the depth of his sorrow and repentance, but said she could not forgive him.
The work of reconciliation and forgiveness in South Africa after apartheid was extraordinary. I remember Bishop Desmond Tutu talking about it on television. So much injustice, so many wrongs, so much suffering. Without the mediation of our Great High Priest in Heaven these things would destroy us all.
Mother Teresa had a long battle with spiritual depression. Satan attacks the saints with special ferocity. She forgave arrogant Christopher Hitchens for his unwarranted attack on her character. As Simone Weil said, false holiness never troubles the world, but real holiness is often hated.
I am rereading a little book by Shelagh Brown, *Drawing Near To The City - Christians Speak About Dying* which was published in 1984.
Francis Schaeffer, interviewed after stage four cancer, said: *I feel that no Christian can face honestly the troubles and the obscenities of this life - the sorrows, the tears, the ugliness, the cruelties - unless they have a very firm belief and comprehension of what the Fall is all about. The liberal theologian does not believe in the Fall. What we have to realise is that we live in an abnormal world.*
The City we are drawing near to this Spring is the heavenly Jerusalem where all tears will be wiped away. Let us reaffirm our baptismal vows, renouncing the Devil, and all his lies and empty promises.
*Our natural destiny is Hell, because left to our natures, which are fallen, there is NO hope. Reach down from Heaven and save me.*
Michael Voris.
See The Vortex - The Damned Never See God.
March 10, 2020. YouTube.
I am reading the Vintage edition of The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, an edition that carries a memorable introduction by Jordan Peterson. The evil we read about in this great book is theological in nature, and cannot be grasped or understood by reason alone.
*God has set a date to judge the world,* a truth that the so-called New Atheists deny in their spiritual and moral blindness. There can be no Godless morality, not in the long term. Without the Gospel the West is damned.
As you say Barona, for many souls this will be their last Lent.
I am in good health, but I am doubtful that I would survive the coronavirus.
*Reach down from Heaven and save us O Lord!*
THank-you John for your reflections. Yes, those who love strife, hate, rage, bitterness, slander, detraction will end up infected with these "loves". They become a walking propaganda sign for not joining the Catholic Church. I wonder at times what happens when someone of good faith is searching for the truth - perhaps a Jew or Moslem - and they happen upon one of the "Catholic" websites that spew hate and rage, and have comboxes filled with as much, or even worse hate and rage? Well, I know what I would do, I would keep searching. Perhaps this jew or Moslem had just read the words of St. Paul regarding the gifts of the Spirit. This searcher would immediately see that the Spirit (certainly of God) was not upon the blog writer or the visitors. Our searcher would be aware that another, malign, sinister spirit was active. He would go on searching. Perhaps he would hit upon a sober, truly Catholic website, or he might even join the Orthodox CHurch. We Catholics have to really start to think what are we doing on the internet to serve Christ. For some Catholics, upon serious examination, and under a spiritual director, it will mean closing their website. Any Catholic who does not have a spiritual director but has a "Catholic" website - well that is the first problem!
A thought, Barona.
If we survive this Lent and celebrate Easter, and if we survive the coronavirus pandemic, let us dedicate the rest of our lives to the restoration of Christianity.
This thought came to me while reading Bruce Ritchie's wonderful biography of a great saint, *Columba - The Faith of an Island Soldier* (Christian Focus Publications 2019).
And five minutes ago I watched a YouTube video, *Europe Leaves Christianity for Paganism.* 4 March 2020. CBN News.
This video opens at Martyrs' Free Church in Edinburgh, now a nightclub called Frankenstein's.
A beautiful church where Scottish Christians worshipped is now a venue for men's stag nights, girl strippers, and heavy alcohol consumption.
The young now dance on the ruins of Christian civilization!
The West is as pagan as the Emperor Nero's Rome.
Pagan rot is now inside the Vatican thanks to decades of modernist theology.
Watch Father William Jenkins on YouTube: *Bp Schneider on heretic pope; Coronavirus threat; the root of the problem.*
What Catholics Believe. 8 March 2020.
The Holy Spirit is calling on us all to be missionaries.
To be like Columba of Iona.
Jesus said men would hate us for his sake. So we must be prepared to be hated, and not loved as the sentimental media love Pope Francis.
To quote a reviewer of *Island Soldier*:
*Dr Ritchie presents us with a robust figure who is something of a contrast to the soft, sentimental, and acquiescent Columba of popular imagination.
As my father used to say to me, *Are you ready to fight the good fight?*
Barona: I have only just read your statement about blogs that spread hate and rage, and thus through bad example, encourage more of the same, in the comboxes.
I have come across responsible Catholic blogs with perceptive comments, often from people with real knowledge of Canon Law and the teaching of Church councils. I have learned much from these lay Catholics, usually men and women with an academic background in theology and Church history.
The bitter remarks usually came from Americans who are in deep shock over the child abuse crisis, for there seems to be no end in sight. Often these comments carry over into savage attacks on the hierarchy and the outrageous way in which the Mass is celebrated with dancing girls and mincing priests.
When I came across Church Militant (still being fairly new to the Internet) I watched a great many of their posts before I reached a conclusion in their favour. They do not pull punches. Reputations are left in tatters.
This meant asking how Church Militant's many critics could be so wrong; and whether the official Catholic media could have been so remiss, in not reporting the hidden corruptions within the American hierarchy.
Siding in favour of Church Militant was all the easier when I found Michael J Matt, Patrick Coffin, John-Henry Weston, Dr Taylor Marshall, as well as sites like Everyday For Life Canada, Defeat Modernism, Return to Tradition, and What Catholics Believe.
At times I wondered whether these traditional Catholics might not be a little simplistic in some of their judgements, and too strong in their condemnations. I would wonder what priests from my past such as the late Father Gerard W Hughes S.J. would think of them, not to mention writers who influenced me in my youth, like Peter Hebblethwaite.
But the behaviour of the modernists always shocked me back into the traditionalist fold. Just look at the fury of the modernists when Pope Benedict allowed the Latin Mass to be celebrated again - they revealed their dark and malicious hatred of everything Catholic.
In my mind I also heard my father's voice saying, *The Church has lost the way and Pope Benedict sees it, but he is limited in what he can say.*
In reading about *queer theology* which has influenced so many teachers in Toronto, I begin to see that modernism, however we define its many meanings, opened the floodgates to heresy. The priests who pursue these avenues of thought would do better to leave the Church and join a gnostic movement of which there are many.
T.S. Eliot said history is full of strange turnings and cunning corridors, so it is a surprise to find that Toronto Catholic Witness and Church Militant make me think I should return to Catholicism.
But what Church would I be returning to? Not the Church of the liberals and modernists, and not the weak world-pleasing bishops who don't even have the manhood to speak out about abortion and homosexual decadence.
The Church of Saint Pope Pius X, whose school I attended, and Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, hated and misunderstood even now, but emblematic of everything that has gone so horribly wrong these last 50 years.
The true Church, the only one worth returning to.
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