Re: How do I love my enemy?

[prees70]

We are told by today’s reflections of the readings to love our enemies. How do I love a person whose is clearly acting evil? Who seems to be Satan’s worker? I can pray for someone like this, but how do I love him? Can I love him? Should I love him?

 

[Regina_Love]

Loving some one is being respectful, and truthfull with them. It is wanting what is best for them. Praying for them is a very loving act. You don’t have to feel all mushy, just do the right thing. Also it does not mean you have volunteer to be hurt, or abused again. You can love from afar! Sometimes it’s best.

 

[R_C]

We are told by today’s reflections of the readings to love our enemies. How do I love a person whose is clearly acting evil? Who seems to be Satan’s worker? I can pray for someone like this, but how do I love him? Can I love him? Should I love him?

Yon can and should love them in Christ, who died for them as much as he died for you and for me.

You love them in charity, realizing that “they know not what they are doing”.

You love them like brothers who are lost, like children who are against their father, with the sorrowful desire to bring them back to reason.

You love them with the unconditional, self-giving, divine agape love that brought Christ to come to us and take upon His immaculate shoulders the full burden of our sins, drinking the cup of sorrows until the last drop, shedding every tear and every drop of blood, even unto death.

Only Satan is your enemy. Human enemies are not your enemies. They are children of the most high. We reject and despise sin, and the father of sinfulness which is Satan, but we love the sinner, and we love them more when they are in most need of help, when they are the most lost. Because, brother, if instead of loving my children and praying God for them I abandon them, my children will be lost and die. And God forbid, I do not want my little ones to die.

 

[Nom_the_Wise]

Like this: :hug3: Or this: :hug1: Or maybe this: :console: Or this if there are a “group” of enemies that need loving: :grouphug:

 

[Dorothy]

We are told by today’s reflections of the readings to love our enemies. How do I love a person whose is clearly acting evil? Who seems to be Satan’s worker? I can pray for someone like this, but how do I love him? Can I love him? Should I love him?

As the others have mentioned in different ways, you can love your enemies by an act of your will. You don’t have to have good feelings accompany that love. You desire, by an act of the will, the best for that person. The “best” being their eternal salvation.

 

[Nom_the_Wise]

Hey I actually have a non-joke response to this.

You’ve heard of the five Greek words for love, right? (We must always remember that the New Testament was first written in Greek). This is significant because in English we only have one word for love: Love. In Spanish they have a couple: *queiro *and amo, but *queiro *can mean “like” too.

So in Greek there is *Philos *(brotherly love, from which we get the word “Philosophy”), *Eros *(which is romantic love), *Storge *(family love) and *Agape *(which I’ve heard translated as "love that hopes for no return).

The point of this is that when Jesus says “Love your enemies” he is most likely using either *Philos *or *Agape *(haven’t looked it up, and it’s 5am where I am so I’ll get back to you). Jesus doesn’t want us to “eros” our enemies, because that would be icky.

When you say “How do I love a person whose is clearly acting evil? Who seems to be Satan’s worker?” I assume you don’t mean someone carving pentagrams on hampsters. You are using hyperbole, which is fine. What we must resign ourselves to is that Jesus said it as an imperative: “Love your enemies.” We are commanded to do it. But love in the Bible (in the original Greek) is more specific than our ambiguous cover-all word “love,” hence there will always be some confusion. :hypno:

Hope I didn’t overdo the smiley thing.

 

[Pitcharan]

We are told by today’s reflections of the readings to love our enemies. How do I love a person whose is clearly acting evil? Who seems to be Satan’s worker? I can pray for someone like this, but how do I love him? Can I love him? Should I love him?

Love is a theological virtue which enables humans to detest evil but yet love the doer. The doer may be a puppet under Satan’s power. If God wants to free such a person how can we refuse to join God? Jonah too detested the Ninevites for their evil ways but God thought differently and brought Jonah into obedience. Later God explained to Jonah in His most beautiful way, the plight of Ninevites and their need for Love.

*Jonah’s Anger at the Lord’s Compassion

But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

But the Lord replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?”

Jonah had gone out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. Then the Lord God provided a leafy plant and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the plant. But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the plant so that it withered. When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.”

But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”

“It is,” he said. “And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.”

But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”* (Jonah 4)