The Challenge of Unconditional Love

March 04, Saturday of the First Week of Lent
Deuteronomy 26: 16-19; Matthew 5:43-48

What is the end point or goal of the life of conversion? It is to live out the commandment of love to its fullest dimension.

In today’s Gospel Jesus proclaims the highest limit of this love: "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.”

And why should we aspire for this? Jesus also reveals the ultimate motive: “So 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.”

How do we rise to this challenge of unconditional love?

In my lived reality of convent life, I realize that even if I literally don’t have enemies inside the convent, as a normal person, there are and will always be persons who rub me up the wrong way and vice-versa. In these instances how do I respond then to the call to love?

I awaken myself to the consciousness that in every human interaction I am given the opportunity to behold the image of God, the divine essence, both in me and in the person before me. This is my best card in responding to the challenge to ‘love all,’ unconditionally and indiscriminately.

Let us, therefore, invite and invoke the Spirit of love to assist us in this life-long endeavor. The Spirit’s very language is Love and it is not a ‘foreign’ language at all. St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 ‘translates’ for us the meaning of love in daily life and interaction: “Love is patient, love is kind… love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (See 1 Cor 13:4-7)