The duty to love everyone

INDEED, we have such duty! Christ himself told us so in no unclear terms. We have to love everyone, including our enemies! 

 “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.” (Mt 5,43-45) 

 To be sure, being able to love our enemies even as we try our best to resolve with justice and charity our differences, conflicts and other issues is clearly a sign of being Christ-like. It could be the proof that one’s Christianity is real, genuine and consistent, and not fake and inconsistent. 

 We have to be ready to develop and assume this attitude, always asking first of all for the grace of God and trying to have the very mind and heart of Christ. We also need to discipline our reactions and to train our emotions to conform to this basic Christian standard. 

 Yes, this ideal can only be possible and doable with God’s grace and the constant effort to assume the very mind and heart of Christ. We should never take this requirement for granted. 

 In the first place, we have to remember that our true identity is when we become another Christ knowingly and willingly. This presumes a constant effort on our part, since this cannot be considered as an automatic thing to happen in our life. This is not falling into some kind of pious presumption. This is what we are supposed to be. And God, for his part, is all ready to give us all that we need to attain this goal. 

 To be sure, if we follow this commandment of loving everyone, including our enemies, we would be loving God and others the way Christ himself has loved his Father and all of us. 

It’s a love that is totally inclusive on the part of the lover, though it may be rejected by the beloved. It’s a love that would convert and transform us into another Christ, if not Christ himself (alter Christus, ipse Christus), for love, the real love that comes from God, has that power of making the lover united and identified with the beloved. 

 That is why God became man, and Jesus Christ emptied himself completely to assume our human nature in its best and worst conditions. This love shown to us by Christ is the standard of our love. Therefore, loving others the way Christ loves us is loving Christ in others, no matter how distorted that image of Christ is in others, and thus transforms us to Christ. 

 To be concrete about all this, we can practice and develop this love simply by being demanding on ourselves while being very understanding, forgiving, lenient on others, always trying to find excuses for them, eager to carry their burden. In fact, if we have this kind of love, we would be willing to suffer and even to die for the others. 

 Especially now in the contention-prone areas of politics and social media, where all kinds of ideas and comments come, including the most reckless, thoughtless, mannerless ones, we have wonderful opportunities to live and develop this true love.

Magnanimity amid all kinds of evil

“YOU have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other one to him as well.” (Mt 5,38-39) 

Words of Christ that clearly tell us to be magnanimous amid unavoidable evils in this world. We just have to learn how to bear with everyone. Thus, we have to broaden our mind and heart to be able to accommodate everyone in our heart, including those who are different from us in some respects, and those who are precisely giving us trouble. 

 We have to learn to be magnanimous, knowing how to suffer since suffering is an unavoidable consequence of evil. In all this, we should never lose our peace and concern for everyone. In fact, those who have strayed, we have to seek out, just like what the shepherd did in the parable of the lost sheep (cfr. Mt 18,12-14) 

 Magnanimity is part of the charity as described by Christ. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” he said. (Mt 5,44) “If any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also…” 

 The political exercises we had a few weeks ago are just some kind of sports. We play to win, we do our best, yet in spite of all, we should not be surprised if we lose. And we just have to move on. Of course, if we win, then we should also be ready for the usual bad elements that go with the winning. 

 Now is the time for magnanimity, deleting the heady, intoxicating surge of victory or the depressing load of defeat. This is not the end of the world yet. And while we are still on the road, we just have to try our best to learn precious lessons along the way. 

 We need to enlarge our heart, to make it more universal to accommodate everyone and any situation and condition properly. We should evade being caught by the grip of our strong views, and even our positions that we think are so essential that they are not anymore subject to opinion. 

 This is our usual pitfall that we should try to be wary about always. We have the strong tendency to dominate others especially in a game or exercise for which we give an all-out interest and spend so much money and effort. 

 We have to see to it that our thoughts, desires and intentions, our words and deeds are always animated by charity. There should no negative elements in them, even if we notice the defects, mistakes and sins of the others, and even if they have wronged us. 

 We have to have a good grip on our emotions, able to dominate and properly orient our biases, preferences and other idiosyncrasies that constitute our differences and even conflicts with others. We have to learn to focus more on what we have in common rather than what divides us. We have to learn how to dialogue with everyone. 

 We can always do all these things because of our spiritual nature and also because of God’s grace, in the first place. By living by this Christian teaching when faced with evil and wrongdoings others may do on us, we become more and more like Christ. And that in the end is what truly matters in our life!

The pursuit for truth

WE have to realize that the pursuit for truth is a very tricky one. To be sure, truth is not just a matter of citing facts and data. Though these are important and even indispensable, they are useless unless they are animated by the true spirit of truth. 

 We need to be familiar with the Spirit of Truth. He is the one who will show us the whole truth and not just some aspects of it. If we really want to be in the truth and not confused and lost in the many appearances of truth, we need to get in touch with the Spirit of Truth. 

 Christ himself said: “When he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own. He will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.” (Jn 16,13) 

 We have to take note that this business of getting to the whole truth involves a process. It’s not a one-shot deal. It involves some kind of journey. No one can ever say he has the whole truth until he reaches where the Spirit of truth would finally lead him, and that is when God becomes “all in all.” (cfr. 1 Cor 15,28) 

 We have to remember that everything that exists has something of the truth, since by merely existing, that something is already true. But as to whether it has the whole truth, it would depend whether it has the Spirit of truth or not. 

 The most important thing is to see if something that we consider to be true is in conformity with the Spirit of truth. Otherwise, we will be deceived and trapped by the many appearances of truth that do not bring us to the real thing which, in the end, can only be God. 

 Thus, we can say that even the devil, who is a liar and is the father of lies (cfr. Jn 8,44), has some truth in him. That he exists is already an indication that he is true and real. And everything that he says to tempt us certainly contains a lot of truth, otherwise we would not be tempted. 

 We really need to know what truth is. That was the question Pilate asked Christ. (cfr Jn 18,38) But Christ already answered that question before it was asked. “Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice,” he said. 

 There we have a clear answer as to what truth is. It’s when we hear the voice of Christ, this time in the Holy Spirit. It’s a voice that is full of charity, understanding and compassion on others, patience and mercy. It’s also a voice that knows how to be strong and implement the requirements of justice. 

 Truth therefore is not just cold facts that we observe, nor some objective data that we derive from our studies and researches. Much less is it simply a matter of political opinion or some ideological bias or things of that sort. While giving us some aspects of truth, these do not have the last word. And as such, they are incomplete and can easily be manipulated. 

 That is why right now with everyone trying to say the truth without God, we are practically sinking in an ocean of fake news, hoaxes, disinformation, urban legends, propaganda, inane trivias, superstitions, biased opinions that seek to absolutize the relative and relativize the absolute, etc. As a consequence, we generate a very toxic atmosphere where conflicts, anger and hatred dominate.