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"Bless those who curse
you"
Loving Our Enemies
How
is this possible?
Christ
does not ask us to bless those who curse us, or to love our enemies.
In
strikingly clear terms, he commands us to:
"Love
your enemies, do good to them that hate you.
Bless them that curse
you, and pray for them that calumniate you"
(St. Luke 6.28)
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This is
not an option for a Christian, it is the Lord's expressed will and
desire that we should do so. But how ...?
There are, of course, people that we do not feel drawn to --- people, in fact,
whom we do not like at all, and some whom we even dislike intensely.
It is even the case that there are people whom we absolutely abhor
(not hate ... which is quite different, and which has, with
no equivocation whatever, no place in the heart of a Christian).
Some people simply are, in fact, inexcusably intolerable. And yes
... some people are even virtually consumed with evil ... but Christ bids us no less to love them
no less!
"What", you ask, "is this madness? How can I love whom I do not even like,
and may even abhor?"
That,
really, is the question at hand. How is it possible for us to love
not only those we do not like, but even those who curse us,
vitriolically hate us and wish us ... and if they could, would do us
... great evil?
How
profoundly we misunderstand love ... Indeed, many never come to
understand the true nature of love at all. How many marriages end in
divorce because "the flame of love" has apparently been
extinguished? How many "beautiful romances" have ended in
disillusionment, ennui? When tragedy mars our beauty or encroaching
age robs us of our youth, how often the "love" that had once
accompanied it, simply ceases?
This
terrible misunderstanding takes a toll on us that few of us
recognize. We have invested our entire concept of love in
merely one aspect of love alone: the immediate and the
sensory. Love is reduced to, and then totally invested in, our
emotions. Period. If the "feeling" is gone, then the "love" has gone
with it. If our senses, our emotional experiences, are no longer
stimulated by the other, we speak of the love "withering". We can no
longer "feel" it. It no longer "excites" us. We then reason that the
love has ceased. And in a sense, it has. It has ceased to be
sensuous. One facet of that multifaceted gem has been occluded.
The
problem, however, is that it is precisely this facet of the jewel,
and this facet alone, into which we have peered, and the
surface light that dazzled us --- and in which we found our own
reflection --- is no longer refracted off the stone. We have looked
at the stone ... but not into it! We
have seen, as it were been blinded by, fixated upon, the surface
light ... without ever pressing the lens of our own love to the
other facets that reveal another and entirely different world
within, a world of extraordinary complexity and breath-taking
beauty! It is, in short, the difference between holding a diamond at
arm's length and admiring its beauty... and placing ones eye to the
diamond, where in crystalline light we stand in awe of the deep
beauty within that surpasses in every measure, the superficial
beauty we see from afar. It is the difference between peering
at the beauty of another, and peering into into
the beauty of another.
What is
more, the bringing of the diamond to the eye is an act of the will
... not an instinctive response to some emotion. We approach it with
purpose, rather than colliding with it serendipitously. It is a
conscious attempt to penetrate, rather than to reflect upon, the
deep mystery sequestered within; to go beyond the appearances,
however magnificent, to deeper and vastly more expansive realities
... that touch upon the very image of God.
This is
the most apposite metaphor for the true nature of love.
What is
Love ... after all?
Love
is not a feeling ...
but an act of the will.
Simply put, to love is to have the other person's total welfare at heart: to
will
them good in all things, and evil in none.
Pause
for a moment and think of someone you genuinely love. There is
affection in that love, yes? But how does your love for that person
express itself, manifest itself, apart from the
affection that is uniquely experienced toward that individual? When
we think upon it, we soon find that affective expressions of
love, expressions involving our emotions, are only one part
of our expression of our love for them. If our love is
our affection only ... if it is solely a matter of feelings
and emotions ... then we can be said to love another even as we
mistreat them, abuse them, curse them, and wish every manner of evil
upon them. We can be rude, discourteous, selfish, inconsiderate,
manipulative and even physically violent toward them --- and at the
same time, because we feel an emotion within us that is
inexplicably contrary to virtually everything we say or do to that
person --- can we still be understood to love them? Not only is
there no correspondence between this emotion and our
expressions of it, but complete contradiction! If such exists
--- and sadly, I believe that behavior of this sort, still
construing itself as love, does exist --- it can only be understood
in terms of a pathology. It is not what we understand when we
entertain the notion of love.
The
point is that Christ does not command us to have an emotion
or a feeling toward a person. He cannot. Love of this sort
cannot be commanded. It is simply the case, and for too many reasons
to enumerate, that we dislike some individuals and even find some
intolerable. If we look at it carefully, we find that while we can
constrain our emotions, we cannot compel them. We can
constrain our anger, but we cannot spontaneously invoke it. We can
no sooner be commanded to anger than to affective love. However,
everything else apart from what is affective, that is to say,
apart from what pertains to feelings or emotions, can in fact be
commanded ... and is ... by Christ Himself!
Once we remove the
affective element of love that is an emotional bond
unique between two individuals, everything else that pertains to
loving another person is, in fact, subject to our will! We can
will to do good to others, even while we cannot will
to experience affection for them. It is within our
power to say and to do everything which the expression of genuine
love entails, everything by which we coherently understand one
person as loving another ... even if we have an emotional investment
in that person! And even if we do not!
Yes, we
can love those who vex us terribly and who would even bring us to
injury. Yes, we can love whom we dislike! The love of which Christ
speaks, the love He commands, has nothing whatever to do with
sensory gratification or emotional fulfillment. This unique
dimension of love spontaneously arises between two people
in addition to their obligation to love one another in
ways not affective --- which is to say, in all the ways not pertaining to,
or expressive of, emotional
attraction.
Understood in these terms, it is not the case of one being a lesser
love than another. Affective love possess a spontaneous
dimension of love beyond the same obligations of love
incumbent upon all. It fulfils the precepts within this one
individual, and then, by the grace of God, exceeds them in a
multifaceted and deeply intimate way. We are not called, still less
compelled, to intimacy with others at large. Much of the touching
and feeling that occurs with disturbing frequency at Mass is very
likely the result of a confusion between love and intimacy. We tend
to equate the one with the other, and when, with good reason, we
feel uncomfortable with the intimate gestures of others with whom we
are not on intimate terms, more often than not we wrongly reproach
ourselves, rather than this mistaken conflation of love and intimacy
being forced upon us. It is essentially the difference between love
as charity and love as intimacy. God does not command us to be
intimate with our neighbors. No?
To bless others, genuinely asking God to show them favor,
mercy, and goodness, is one of the
most beautiful gifts that we can offer another human being. What is
more, in blessing our enemies: those who hate us, do us harm, and
wish us evil, we bring upon ourselves an unspeakable
blessing:
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"Love your
enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for
them that persecute and calumniate you: That you
may be the children of your Father Who is in Heaven."
St. Matthew
5.44 |
Bless friend and enemy alike; it is no more than
our duty. For the very One Who commanded us to love our enemies bids
us in so doing to know ourselves --- which to know, is to arrive at
humility:
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"When you shall have done all these things that are commanded you,
say: We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which we ought
to do."
St. Luke 17.10 |
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