Along with Adolph Hitler, Josef Stalin is probably the most hated person of the twentieth century. Under his command over fifty million of his fellow countrymen were murdered. Is it possible to love such a person as this?
In reading his biography, I learned that in growing up Stalin was physically abused not only by his father but by his mother as well. As a young boy who needed parental love, he received nothing but hate. Therefore, this is all he had to send out into the world. Had we watched this young boy being beat up by his parents, we would probably have great compassion for him, without justifying, of course, the atrocities he committed later in life.
With this in mind, we read one of the most puzzling and impossible of Jesus’ commands (Matthew 5:43-48).
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.”
It is difficult to love someone who inflicts hurt on us and even tries to keep us from reaching our life’s goal. Our natural instincts would have us destroy those who are treating us this way, so they no longer stand in the way of the good we are trying to do. Yet Jesus would not give us a command that we can’t carry out, would he? What enables us to love our enemies is that we are “children of the heavenly Father.” Because we have reborn of water and the Holy Spirit, we have the power to view the world as God does and treat others as He does. We have the heart and mind of God. All God can do is love. He does not limit his love to the so-called good people; he extends it to the “bad people” as well. Just as the sun shines on the sinner’s backyard as well as the righteous person’s backyard, so God’s love pours out on everyone. As St. Paul wrote, God desires that all be saved. His healing love is so powerful that it can break through the shell of hatred that has been built around the most hardened hearts.
If we spend enough time with God, we begin to see things as he sees them. We are given the eyes to see beyond a hateful exterior into the wounded child that continues to lash out at an unjust world.
We continue to be amazed that Jesus as he hung on the cross was able to pray sincerely that his torturers be forgiven. Even in his battered condition he was able to see through the hardened exterior of the soldiers and realized they were only “doing their jobs” perhaps to support their families. It seems that, as a result of his prayer, was given the grace to realize that Jesus was indeed the Son of God, not a criminal.
Each of us has a group of “enemies” in our lives, ranging from those who just “get on our nerves” to those who oppose what we stand for, to those who, as tools of The Enemy, want to destroy our lives. In the ideal Christian community as Jesus intended it, we receive an abundance of love to counteract the influence of our “enemies.” Even when this is not the case, we have available to us the power of prayer and the sacraments which open us to the pouring out of God’s love into our hearts, to the extent that it overflows even upon our enemies. We can sincerely pray that they too one day will come to know Jesus as their Savior, God as their loving Father, and heaven as their lasting home.
Today we pray for the extraordinary grace to be able to see our worst enemies as God sees them and to pray that one day we will share heaven with them.
