Tuesday, 11^th week in ordinary time – 16^th June 2026 – Matthew 5:43-48

The last of the hyper theses really tests the endurance of a disciple, for the challenge it poses is felt in our everyday life. “Love your enemies” seems like a winning statement for the Nobel Peace prize and yet those who have advocated it have been assassinated and put to death; Christ, Martin Luther and Gandhi to name a few.

Yet, it is interesting to note that world leaders winning the Nobel Peace prize call for peace, never for love! Peace without love is a truce ready to crumble. If peace is the canvas, then love is the paint. Without the color of affection, the picture is just a blank, grey slate.

The message advocated by Jesus to Christians is not some hopeless idealism. Remember that the hyper theses taught by Jesus, were a way to challenge the disciple towards being more and giving more as well as a strategy for overcoming the persecutor. Forgiveness doesn’t excuse their behavior; it prevents their poison from changing your character.

In presenting the last of these six hyper theses, Jesus is also contesting the false and twisted teaching of the Pharisees and Scribes. It is for this reason that He begins by saying, “you have heard it was said.”   The Pharisees and Scribes had conveniently twisted the law of God. Leviticus 19:18 says, “you shall love your neighbour as yourself,” it never said you shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy. This was clearly a misrepresentation of the teachings of Moses. Clearly the blasphemers were the ‘teachers’ of the law themselves.

Jesus corrects this teaching when He asks us to ‘love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.’  For the Jews at the time of Jesus, the concept of a neighbour was another Jewish brother or sister. To love a Jew who was your brother or your sister was considered mandatory. Teaching one to hate everyone else was tantamount to nothing short of religious sponsored racial and ethnic discrimination; one that even chose to exterminate the other physically.

It is for this reason that when Jesus was asked by the young man, “who is my neighbour?” He launches into what was to become a parable told across faiths. The parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’ is more than a ‘feel- good story.’ The Samaritan was viewed by the Jews as an outsider and an enemy. Strangely, it is he who proves to be a neighbour and friend to a Jew, who perhaps, with his sanctioned religious hate, may not have been as kind should the roles be reversed.

Jesus also realises the frailty of human nature when it comes to loving our enemy and that’s why his next word after “forgive” is, “pray.”  It is human folly, if not arrogance, to believe that we have the power to forgive if that grace does not come through prayer. Praying for your persecutors changes the atmosphere around the conflict, starting with your own heart.

It is prayer that warms the heart and cools the sting. No wonder then, that the prayer given to us by Our Lord Jesus, as a pattern for all prayer has in it the words, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Loving those who love you is just an echo. Loving your enemy is a brand-new conversation.

These words spoken on the ‘Mount of Beatitudes’ are lived by Jesus on the ‘Mount of Calvary’, when nailed to a cross; Jesus utters the prayer, “Father forgive them”. Jesus is not merely offering forgiveness in words he is offering it in prayer to the Father.  Forgiveness must be accompanied by prayer, then progress is made, then ‘perfection is experienced’.

The truth is that Jesus did not see those who put him to death as ‘enemies’. He never stopped loving them and because he loved them, he saw and considered them friends who were misguided. “Father,” he said, “forgive them for they know not what they do.” Don’t let the bitterness of your enemies dictate the boundaries of your heart. Remember, we reach spiritual completeness not when we stop making mistakes, but when we stop withholding grace

If you want to get someone off your hit list, then place them in your prayer list.