Love your enemies

Fr Richard considers both the challenge and power of Jesus’ command to love our enemies, which can help to break the cycle of violence in our world. A reflection on the daily mass readings.

Readings for Saturday of the first week of Lent can be found here.

On 8 November 1987 in the town of Enniskillen in Northern Ireland, the IRA detonated a bomb during the Remembrance Sunday ceremony at the town’s war memorial. In one of the worst atrocities of the Troubles, 12 people were killed and 63 were injured. One of those who lost their lives was 20-year-old nurse Marie Wilson. Her father Gordon, who was there that day but survived, later impressed many with these words: “I bear no ill will. I bear no grudge. I shall pray for those people [the bombers] tonight and every night”. 

Gordon Wilson’s attitude to his daughter’s terrible murder is surely a living embodiment of Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”, Jesus says. Once again, he is urging his followers to go beyond the scope of the Old Testament law “love your neighbour”. The Old Testament never actually paired that with “hate your enemy”, as Jesus implies, but that was often the outcome. “Love your neighbour” was taken to be the limit. For Jesus, Christian love should have no limit – it should embrace everyone, even those who have wronged us or who we might have good reason to hate. 

Of course, this is not easy. It is an almost instinctive human reaction to want to retaliate towards those who have done us harm, to get our own back. This is why Gordon Wilson’s words in 1987 made such an impact. But retaliation only breeds more hatred and more violence, as the people of Northern Ireland and many other trouble spots know only too well. It took the attitude of “love your enemies”, of reaching out to the other side, to break the cycle of violence in Northern Ireland and allow the peace process to get under way. Gordon Wilson, who died in 1995, two years before the Good Friday Agreement, was an inspiration for that process. Let us pray that his attitude, the attitude of Jesus, the attitude of reconciliation not revenge, may take root in our lives, in our society, and in our world.

Mass today is in St Mary’s at 11.30am (Stations of the Cross at 11am).

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