June 14, 2016 Tuesday
11th Week in Ordinary Time
1st Reading: 1 Kgs 21: 17-29 Gospel: Mt 5:43–48
Jesus said to his disciples, “You have heard that it was said: Love your neighbor and do not do good to your enemy. But this I tell you: Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in Heaven. For he makes his sun rise on both the wicked and the good, and he gives rain to both the just and the unjust.“If you love those who love you, what is special about that? Do not even tax collectors do as much? And if you are friendly only to your friends, what is so exceptional about that? Do not even the pagans do as much? For your part you shall be righteous and perfect in the way your heavenly Father is righteous and perfect.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
If the heart is capable of hating and loving, then the love commandment is not contrary to human nature. The fact that hating is a basic human experience cannot justify your refusal to “love your enemies and pray for your persecutors”. The verse from an OPM, “Sapagka’t ako ay tao lamang” is more a justification of one’s unwillingness to forgive rather than a valid proclamation of the heart’s incapacity for it. We can make better use of this verse by shifting the accent of “lamang” to its last syllable. This shift in accent changes the meaning of the phrase from “for I am only human” to “because I am human I am better off (compared to other creatures)”.
If the heart is capable of both loving and hating, why not minimize the hating and maximize the loving? By the principle of accumulation, our frequent little acts of love can snowball into a great boulder formidable enough to crash our structures of hatred. Frequent loving means loving all people all the time in all circumstances. This strategy is in keeping with today’s Gospel mandate. The old law was to love the neighbor and hate the enemy. But the call is to outgrow this selective loving because God “makes the sun rise on both the bad and the good”. By loving more people and by loving more frequently, we minimize our chances of hating.
Hating appears to be the easier exercise for the heart. Yet it is more damaging. The moral anguish that hatred imposes gives our enemy more power over us than he already has. Hatred is like a screw that digs deeper into our being, strengthening the clout of the enemy over us. By loving the way Jesus does, we do not only spare ourselves from this defeat but also live up to the standard of perfection Jesus has set when he said: “be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect”. – (Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email:[email protected].
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