This teaching is hard, not normally when we must love ourselves (though some people do find themselves very hard to love — pray for them, and love them until they do love themselves), but rather when we must love the unwanted, uncongenial, the unlike other.
By Chris Sparks
[Jesus said to St. Faustina] Do you pray for your enemies? Do you wish well to those who have, in one way or another, caused you sorrow or offended you? Know that whatever good you do to any soul, I accept it as if you had done it to Me (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, 1768).
Have you ever met a person that you simply didn’t like?
How about someone you found annoying, even as others found them enjoyable or amusing?
What about folks whose value you could not deny, those of strengths or talents that were visibly important to you and your community, but whose company you couldn’t stand for more than a few minutes?
What about people who’ve caused you pain and suffering? What about people who have actively tried to do you harm?
Now’s a good moment to say a prayer for them, asking the Holy Spirit to help you see them as God sees them and for the grace to forgive and to love them.
A hard teaching!
One of the hardest teachings of the Church is that the least important thing about anyone is weaknesses, their sins, their failings, their past.
The most important thing is that we are all created to be children of God. Adopted, yes, but still true children of God. We are meant to recover our likeness to God, lost by Adam and Eve, restored through Jesus Christ. We are meant to not just be loved into existence by God, but loved into eternal life by God — if we consent. If we say yes to that love and allow it to ignite and inflame us, to make of us what we were meant to be from the beginning, and more, and better even than that. “[W]here sin increased, grace overflowed all the more” (Rom 5:20).
This is a hard teaching, not when we consider it applying to ourselves, but rather when we consider it applying to people we don’t like, who annoy us, who cause us pain, sorrow, or loss, who add to the world’s grief rather than reduce it. This teaching is hard, not normally when we must love ourselves (though some people do find themselves very hard to love — pray for them, and love them until they do love themselves), but rather when we must love the unwanted, uncongenial, the unlike other.
This is why we are called “practicing” Catholics, and not perfect Catholics.
In the hospital
The Church certainly still has room for us when we have a hard time loving others; Holy Mother Church is a field hospital, as Pope Francis and many others have said, and not a museum for the perfect. When patients in that field hospital get well, they become doctors and nurses for the rest of us. They don’t simply stand still in their perfection and make sure they don’t come in contact with the sicknesses, wounds, or mess of their fellow patients.
This sort of sanctity, of love of God and neighbor isn’t easy. It’s not natural, after all, or at least, not natural to fallen humanity. It’s supernatural. It’s something made possible — even easy and light (see Mt 11:28-30) — by grace, by sharing in the life of God, which is His love (see 1 Jn 4:7-21).
What of serious evil?
“Now hold on,” I imagine some folks saying, “loving the annoying is one thing, but loving the evil people, the truly wicked who do unspeakable things to myself, my family, or the innocents of the world — HOW???”
Jesus shows us the way, of course. “When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals — one on his right, the other on his left. Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing’” (Lk 23:34).
Our fellow Catholics, like Immaculee Ilibagiza and Pastora Mira, show us the indispensable place of prayer and works of mercy, even for those who’ve done us tremendous harm, in welcoming God’s gracious, merciful love into our hearts and lives, and opening us up, enlarging our hearts, to allow us to love and forgive our neighbors — indeed, to love our enemies as ourselves.
But doesn’t that mean excusing evil, or treating evil as less vile than it really is? No, as C.S. Lewis explains:
I might detest something which I have done. Nevertheless, I do not cease to love myself. In other words, that definite distinction that Christians make between hating sin and loving the sinner is one that you have been making in your own case since you were born. You dislike what you have done, but you don't cease to love yourself. You may even think that you ought to be hanged. You may even think that you ought to go to the Police and own up and be hanged. Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained (“Answers to Questions on Christianity,” God in the Dock [Eerdmans: 1970] 48).
And God leaves us no option on forgiveness, not if we want to be forgiven ourselves. “For as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you” (Mt 7:2).
Forgive like Jesus
Forgiveness doesn’t necessarily mean letting someone off from the earthly consequences of their crimes or sins, as Fr. Chris Alar, MIC, has explained:
But it does mean forgiving like Jesus; loving like Jesus; and even praying or doing penance on behalf of those whom we have needed to forgive.
So let us bring those who we need to forgive to God in prayer today, asking His grace to help us to love and forgive these people — maybe not immediately, maybe not today, but over time, before we stand at the foot of the judgment seat. Let us ask God to give us hearts after His own Sacred Heart, and His Mother’s Immaculate Heart, and His Foster Father’s Most Chaste Heart. And let us overcome evil with good (see Rom 12:21), with prayer, reparation for sin, and works of mercy.
Pray for me, that I may practice what I preach. I’ll pray for you.
Chris Sparks is the Senior Writer/Editor for the Association of Marian Helpers.
Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash.
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