Love Your Enemies June 20

Piety

Jesus, help me do what is hard. Help me to love my enemies as you loved those who put you to such a cruel death. Let your Kingdom of Peace come to all creation. Amen.

Study
http://www.usccb.org/nab/062006.shtml

“Love your enemies.” Matthew 5:44

Today, Jesus continues to raise the bar of love for his disciples. It’s easy to follow the easy commands. Honor your mother and father. Love your neighbor.

But, we see throughout this chapter, that Jesus does not always command us to do the easy things. Instead, he extends earlier commands with harder ones. Christians can not be merely content to follow the easy commands but must surpass those standards of behavior.

Jesus also goes on to instruct the disciples, as children of God, to imitate the example of their Father and seek perfection through this enemy-loving command. The only other time in Matthew’s Gospel that Jesus calls for perfection, he is relating an equally difficult command. That story is of the rich young man whom Jesus tells to give everything he owns to the poor and follow Jesus. In the parallel text, Luke demands that disciples be merciful as God is merciful. Matthew calls for perfection – God-like behavior.

Christ died for the sins of his children…children who called for his arrest, trial, and crucifixion. He did not defend himself and he told Peter to put away his sword.

For Christ… died at the appointed time for the ungodly. Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. Romans 5:6-8

Today, his children continue to pay little heed to his message of unconditional love for all. Yet, each day, we remember Jesus’ sacrifice for us in the Mass. But then, do we go out and sow his peace?

Jesus showed us how to love our enemies. Yet, today, the media reports story after story about how we should hate our enemy and his or her ways. Can we try harder to imitate the loving Jesus who dwells within each of us? After all, we echo these ideals every time we pray the prayer that Jesus taught us…”as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Maybe we repeat it so often to be a reminder to ourselves and all those who hear us pray.

Action

How can we help raise the bar of love and support families?

Network, the Catholic Social Justice Lobby, points out that we can support families by helping them earn a fair, living wage. According to the following information that is on their website http://www.networklobby.org/hotnews/index.html#_Issue_2:

It has been ten years since Congress voted to increase the minimum wage (even though they have given themselves an annual raise seven years in a row). A minimum wage employee working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks in a year makes just $10,700 a year – an income that places a family of three thousands of dollars below the poverty line. Nobody working full time should have to live in poverty.

The House Appropriations Committee voted last week to raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour, by passing Rep. Hoyer’s amendment to the Labor-Health and Human Services Appropriations bill. Senator Kennedy is also expected to introduce an amendment to raise the minimum wage to the Senate's Defense Appropriations bill. Now is the time to build some momentum for a vote that is ten years overdue.

Will you tell your representative and senators to protect working families and increase the minimum wage! Send them an e-mail here: http://capwiz.com/networklobby/issues/alert/?alertid=8854721&type=CO