Love your enemies.

"Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,  bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you." (Luke 6: 27 - 28).

Thursday of the 23rd week in Ordinary Time is the Optional Memorial of the Most Holy Name of the Blessed Virgin Mary. To those who love Mary, no honor is enough. To those who do not love her, they begrudge her even the Blessedness that Scripture says is her entitlement for being full of grace and the Mother of the Redeemer.

Jesus proclaims: "I am the Way." That Way is the Way of the Cross. Could there be possibly any other way? If there is, the Holy Spirit would have revealed it to the Church. When you love those who hate and injure you, you behave exactly like Jesus. When you bless those who curse you, you bear your cross like Jesus, St Stephen the martyr and the saints.

When the tiny Christian community encountered the imperial power of Rome, they offered no resistance to the inhuman brutalization of imperial power. The Christians remembered  the ancient creed of the Church:

"Faith in God the Father Almighty can be put to the test by the experience of evil and suffering. God can sometimes seem to be absent and incapable of stopping evil. But in the most mysterious way God the Father has revealed his almighty power in the voluntary humiliation and Resurrection of his Son, by which he conquered evil. Christ crucified is thus "the power of God and the wisdom of God." (CCC 272).

In other words as Jesus teaches in our Gospel of today (Luke 6: 27 - 38), evil can only be overcome through the Cross. Wherever this doctrine is applied, the Cross has always been exalted.
"Let the message of Christ, in all its richness, find a home with you." (Colossians 3: 15).

Daily Bible Verse @ SeekFirstcommunity.com