Love your enemies (Luke 6:28)? That’s crazy! Some might say that the Gospel for last Sunday, the 7th Sunday of Ordi-nary Time, goes too far. But there it is! Not “be nice to them.” Or “refrain from attacking them,” but actually LOVE them. What was Jesus thinking? What kind of upside-down logic is he using?
Fortunately, in Sunday’s Responsorial Psalm, we are offered a way to understand this enigmatic logic. It says, “The Lord is kind and merciful.” Not in our way but in a way that goes much deeper. In the New Testament, “mercy” (Greek: eleos) refers to a keen desire to do something to relieve the suffering of others, even to the point of being impelled to do it. This kind of merciful love recognizes that all are one since we all participate in the oneness of creation, and it involves an ever-growing embrace of our oneness that continually orients our thinking and doing. So, when Jesus says, “Love your enemies” he means recognizing that you are one with them.
Jesus then adds a follow-up. He says, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” This seems less controversial but the way we usually understand it is not what Jesus meant. We place the focus on ME—what I would like to be done to me. The Gospel goes deeper. It focuses on the needs of the other—their needs and desires. Jesus says, get beyond your narrow viewpoints and perspectives to seek out theirs. It is not a question of who is better off, more advanced, scientific, civilized or mature. Their needs arise from where they are—their history, their environment, their particular circumstances and culture. Their world is good and must be acknowledged. This challenges our idea that what’s good for me is good for them. Thus Jesus’ “merciful love” makes us switch directions. When we attend to our oneness, we are impelled to seek out and understand the ways those who are different from us think and live and act before a loving act is possible.
The SVD prides itself on being a fore-runner in the areas of Interculturality and its near neighbor, Solidarity. But how does one slowly become ever more interculturally competent? For more than a decade, interculturality training has been uppermost in our formation policies and procedures. We offer trainings and workshops, and we insist on their importance. But by all accounts, we are not making progress. This is because, as today’s Gospel tells us, we have the wrong starting point—ourselves. The starting point for the long-belabored theme of Interculturality in the words of Jesus is “Love your enemies.” This means emptying oneself to make room for the other. This is the starting point for entering into the world of the other and at the very heart of we are now calling “intercultural spirituality”.
The Gospel tells us that if we do this our rewards will be great. The reward is not heaven. He is saying that I, my neighbor, my society and theirs will change for the better, will flourish and be happier. He is saying that each will grow beyond the drive for individual self-preservation to the realization that we can only thrive when we thrive together. The temptation is always to turn inward to self. But by picking those we love or not love; we are self-destructive and stunt our growth. By avoiding those we don’t understand or don’t want to understand, we poison ourselves with junk food. But most of all, we miss the opportunity to enter new worlds of different people for new life, mutual growth and sharing.
In short, loving your enemy is enigmatic shorthand for human flourishing! When rooted in God’s type of kindness and mercy, together they are the foundation for Interculturality. They enable us to move beyond the narrow confines of social, national, linguistic, racial and class cohesion to discover new depths of being and flourishing. The requisite of self-emptying is made possible by cooperating with the grace of God’s kind-ness and mercy. This is what enables us to love our enemies as they need to be loved, so that we are re-warded with cosmic expansion and human flourishing.
Interculturality will, therefore, remain a dream if it is not rooted in the spirituality of self-denial and our trust in God’s kindness and mercy. Becoming increasingly more able to enter into, understand and respond appropriately to the needs of others is essentially a spiritual exercise. Our quest for such growth must nev-er be regarded as secondary to our spiritual life for they have the same source and endpoint—God and the oneness of creation.
– Jon P Kirby