When Jesus begins His ministry, He goes up on a mountain to pray and prays all night. When the day dawns, He gathers His disciples and chooses twelve of them to be His Apostles. Now, He begins to teach them what it means to be His disciples, and what it means to be transformed into His likeness. When He teaches them, He teaches us. We learn that following Christ involves reorienting our whole beings. It means being transformed in our soul (in Greek, ἡ ψυχή), mind (in Greek, ὁ νοῦς), and body (in Greek, τὸ σῶμα).
After teaching about what it means to live a blessed life, Jesus warns His disciples about receiving praise from those who oppose the coming of the Kingdom of God. The Lord warns that to live and act like Him will inevitably cause hostility from those who live by the world’s values rather than God’s love. It is in this context that the Lord teaches about love of enemies. In other words, the Lord says that if the world hates us, remember that it hated Him before it hated us (John 15:18). Even more, He says, “love your enemies.” We see that this is precisely what Jesus did.
In our times, the concept of “love” can be distorted to mean very different things.However, the Lord teaches us what genuine love means and how it is expressed concretely. We see the meaning of true love through what God has done and continues to do for us. Jesus Christ is the Eternal Son of God, the Logos Who is, Who was, and Who ever shall be. He has no beginning and no end. He is before all things, and in Him, all things exist.
He created all things for us so that we may share in His love. The act of creation itself is an act of His profound love.
Yet, we, His beloved creation, turned away from Him in the Garden of Eden by desiring to become gods without God, and we do the same today by putting other idols before God such as money, power, and luxury. Nevertheless, He chooses to become Incarnate (taking on human flesh) for our salvation. He took on all of human nature — except for sin. He embraced all the weaknesses of human nature. He hungered, thirsted, sweated blood, was betrayed, beaten, crucified, and buried. He did it all because of His great love for us, to redeem and restore us to our original unity with Him that we once enjoyed in the Garden of Eden. He destroyed death by death and rose from the grave to give us eternal life. This is the transformative power of love and forgiveness.
Christ ascended to Heaven from the Mount of Olives to prepare a place for us on the right hand of the Father. He united our broken humanity to his Divine Person so we could live with Him forever. He did it all because of His unending love for us. He died and resurrected to give us new life in Him. The Resurrection is the center of our Faith, and it is what gives us not only eternal life in Heaven, but new life now. Only in this new life can
we truly love and forgive our enemies and do good to them.
The Lord teaches us this very love by His example. It is an unselfish love that desires the eternal good of our loved ones for their own sake. A concrete love is expressed not only in words but also in acts, as Christ did for us. His love has opened the doors to the Kingdom of Heaven for us and given us the grace of the Holy Spirit to be united with Him. We are transformed by this unity of Divinity and humanity. That is why He teaches
and models what it truly means to love, and He also hopes that we love one another as He has loved us.
To be united to Christ by obeying His commandments and receiving the Holy Sacraments transforms us into His image and likeness. From His grace, we receive the greatest gift: His unconditional love. And we also receive great responsibility: to love others as He loves them. We learn what love means from Him, and He teaches us to love as He does because He gives us the grace to do so. If we receive forgiveness and mercy from God when we may not deserve it, then we have the ability and responsibility to love others — even our enemies. We show love for our enemies through forgiveness. When we forgive those who wrong us, we imitate Christ, Who forgave those who were crucifying
Him. This is the teaching and the motivation that Christ’s love presents to us, to love even
those who may seem unlovable.
Genuine love, therefore, is a love directed at all people — even our enemies. It is a concrete love coming from a compassionate heart. The Lord tells us to love our enemies and do good. There is an emphasis on the whole person expressing love, not only in the heart but in the actions of doing good and even giving one’s possessions without expecting anything in return. It is a selfless love that not only forgives the wrongs done to us but actively seeks to bless those who have injured us.
Saint Porphyrios the Kavsokalyvia says, “When someone injures us in whatever way, whether with slanders or with insults, we should think of him as our brother who has been taken hold of by the enemy. He has fallen victim to the enemy. Accordingly, we need to have compassion for him and entreat God to have mercy both on us and on him, and God will help both.”
God does not want us to be merely nice people. The Gospel does not say: be nice, as God is nice. Rather, God says: “be holy, for I am holy” (Leviticus 11:44). It is much more than just being nice or good — it is about being like God. We are in His image and called to become holy — in His likeness. As Saint Silouan the Athonite says, the measure of our holiness is the measure of our love for our enemies. We begin to acquire this holiness, or love for enemies, by doing to others as we wish they would do to us; that is, by not returning evil for evil.
However, it is only by Divine Power that we return good for evil, which the Lord calls us to do. He calls us to be genuine and authentic Christians. That means we will be ready to forgive, give selflessly, and help whoever is asking for help whenever we are asked, no matter the circumstances. He calls us to offer sacrificial love, which means forgiving even our worst enemies. He gives us the grace to forgive and love selflessly when
we call on Him for help, saying: “Lord, you see that I cannot forgive. You see that I cannot love selflessly. Help me.” And He really does help us.
The Lord knows our weaknesses. Sometimes, we fall short and cannot be as good as we intend. We may even respond with evil for evil. He loves us regardless and helps our weaknesses and needs through His grace. Therefore, let us not lose hope when we fall, because God is full of understanding, mercy, and love. When we remember and experience His grace, we become channels of His love for others — especially our enemies.
Those against us need our love more than anyone because only love can truly transform the world — never hatred. God loves us even though we crucified Him. Likewise, we are called to imitate Him, and do good to those who do evil unto us because evil can only be dispelled by love - nothing else. Let us follow the example of the life and death of Jesus and show love to every person we encounter so we can do our part to help eliminate the evil of the world and fill it instead with Christ’s love.
