February 26, 2025 at 11:23 a.m.
A challenging kind of love
The Gospel from St. Luke’s 6:27-38 contains some of the most challenging teachings of the Lord: “Love your enemies … do good to those who mistreat you … bless those who curse you …” These teachings strain our common sense and ask us to achieve what may, at first, appear to be the impossible.
As we all know, “love” is one of the most misused words in our world today. The love we hear about most often concerns human relationships — family, friends and romantic partners. Seldom in our age is the word used in reference to love of God. “Love, love,” we hear, from every side, almost continuously. But how much real love is there in the world?
Most of us use the word to equate it with feelings, emotions. This kind of love is important to all of us. Who doesn’t want to feel the warmth and support of family, friends, coworkers and spouses? However, to restrict love to our emotions alone is to remain on a natural plane, forgetting the higher power of will and goodness itself. Feelings accompany everything we do but feelings must not be allowed to be the determining factor in our relationships with others. It is the nature and quality of our choices and actions which really matter and can open up a way to love even those we find hard to tolerate.
St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us that human feelings are variable — they can often be irrational and need to be controlled by reason. Genuine love may be accompanied by strong positive feelings but not necessarily. “We could be all aflame with positive feelings for another but those feelings might be fueled by the crudest kind of egotistic selfishness. Conversely, we all know that we can genuinely love a person and yet, at any given time, not feel particularly good about that person,” writes philosophy professor D.Q. McInerny. He continues: “The eminent mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell decided almost on the spur of the moment to divorce his wife because it dawned on him that he no longer felt toward her as he once did. Feelings became the deciding factor. All Russell’s brilliant logic was of no avail.”
This is what we should keep in mind when we consider loving our enemies: we can still will to love them, and wish them well, even without feeling love for them. Real love means praying for, and hoping for, the good of another. We can still pray for their good, both in this world and the next, in spite of what they’ve done to us, in spite of what their own demons may have inflicted on us and on the world.
When hurt or disappointed, ask yourself: Because the irrational has been inflicted on me, do I need to respond irrationally in return? Does my reaction, based on understandably hurt feelings, determine how I should now act? Can I glimpse beyond my hurt and see a deeper reality — perhaps an injured, destructive, fearful or lost soul? Even though I may need to protect myself from further injury, do I want this injury to capture the orbit of my own inner soul? If we take an emotional pause and de-escalate, we will find space and a place to construct a proper response.
The late Father Benedict Groeschel often counseled hurting counselees: “Picture yourself standing with your enemy under the Cross. Then, pause. Ask what you should do. Maybe you’ll be told to do nothing but pray, but I promise you, you’ll find a wise answer there.”
Admittedly, these considerations will not address all the complexities in our broken and strained relationships with others on this earth. But with God’s help — and the help of others — and trying to fulfill the Lord’s command to love beyond our feelings — we will find some inner peace along our often bumpy pilgrimage here and now.
Father Morrette is pastor at The Catholic Community of Our Lady of Victory in Troy, Our Lady of the Snow Mission in Grafton and Christ Sun of Justice Parish in Troy.
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