You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
In the world we hear plenty of voices suggesting that if we don't hate our enemies we are putting ourselves at risk. There is much clamor to take preemptive steps of self-protection and to build up our particular in groups by tearing down any competing out groups in the vicinity. Loving these competitors and enemies may seem unrealistic. But if that seems too unrealistic to us, imagine the idea that Jesus would call his Jewish audience not only to not hate but to love the Roman occupying force that had subjugated them. Unrealistic? Absolutely. Impossible? Humanly speaking, yes. But not so for children of our heavenly Father. The God who loved us while we were his enemies (see Romans 5:10) can give us the grace to love others as he first loved us.
But I say to you, love your enemies,
and pray for those who persecute you
After all, this is the kind of love that Jesus himself demonstrated during his Passion. He told Peter to sheath his sword and did not summon a legion of angels to liberate himself. He prayed for the very ones responsible for his suffering and death, saying "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (see Luke 23:34). Jesus gave us not only an example to imitate but the grace of his own lived experience to empower us to do so. This is proven by the fact that he has again and again reproduced this aspect of his own life in the lives of those saints dedicated to him. We saw such love in, for instance, Saint John Paul the Great forgiving the person who attempted to kill him. Such forgiveness often brings poignant and powerful proof of the love of God that opens the door to the conversion of even the most hardened of sinners.
For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have?
It is easy to love those from whom we stand to gain by doing so. But is this sort of market based give and take really worthy of the name love? Jesus calls us to more, to love those in our little slice of the world whether or not doing so provides us with any sort of reward, emotional, material, or otherwise. Instead of thinking about what we can get or what will feel the most rewarding we can think about the cold and dark places where our sun shining could make a difference. We can look for the dry and arid places where our rain failing might help the seeds of new life to grow. We can ask our heavenly Father how he desires to love those around us through us, no matter who they might be.
And if you greet your brothers and sisters only,
what is unusual about that?
Do not the pagans do the same?
It isn't necessarily the case that we are called immediately to grand works that change the world. It may in fact be necessary to start small, by, for example, greeting those whom we had previously ignored or overlooked. This, no doubt is a necessary step to ensure that we no longer walk past Lazarus on our doorstep without noticing or caring.
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Our lives are meant to be directed toward the love of God as to a goal. This is illuminated by the fact that the word for perfect has the same root as our word for teleological. An acorn is teleologically ordered to becoming a tree. Humans however reach their perfection, not merely as adults, but as vessels of the love of God. The parallel passage in Luke gives additional color and character to this call when we hear Jesus call us to be "merciful, even as your Father is merciful" (see Luke 6:36). The sort of love and mercy can never begin with us. Such perfection is not possible through grit and determination. It is only possible because the light of God is already shining upon us and his Spirit never ceases to fall like rain when we open our hearts to him.
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