July 2, 2025

By Father William Muench
NCC columnist

Today, I offered the morning Mass. The Gospel reading was from the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount. Jesus was teaching that his followers should learn “to love their enemies.” Today, I would like to take some time again to consider this command of Jesus. I think that this can be a unique challenge of us, all Catholics.

Jesus said this: “You have heard that it as said, you should love your neighbor and hate your enemies. 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 the sun rise on the bad and the good.”

I believe that Jesus wants us, his followers, to realize that holiness demands forgiveness. There are times when we disagree with someone. We know what they think, and we are upset that they disagree with us. It can happen that we then think of them as enemies. We can never find peace or closeness with them. In fact, like many others, we give into anger, even hatred, toward them.

Each time we face these questions of disagreement and division, the example for us is Our Lord, Jesus. When he was crucified, he prayed to the Father: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Many dedicated saints who faced martyrdom as followers of Jesus offered forgiveness for those who wanted to persecute them. You, probably, know, as I do, some families – like those who lost a loved one in one of those mass killings – who have made it known that they were willing to forgive the killers.

So, do any of us have enemies? Seems like a curious question. Maybe we might think of a foreign force that would attack our country as enemies to us individually. In this case, I am thinking that some might call others enemies because they disagree with them. And in such situations, they get angry with them, even hate them. They even might treat them with contempt. Many of us may get into such a situation. In such times, Jesus may be talking to us, saying “love your enemies.” Will we ever start talking with those we disagree with? May we ever make things better? There is always room for a possible meeting of the minds. Recently I read this: “It will always be wrong and dangerously radical to feel that some deserve contempt because they do not agree with me.”

We have a Church and a world that is so divided and messed up, often because too many of us find that there are too many at odd with us. Disagree with me, and I simply have to be angry and will not take the simple step of talking with them, of finding a common ground to make things so much better. And, of course, even loving them so that things would be better. Love, says St. Thomas Aquinas, means wishing good things for the other. This could become a better, more loving world because I took the trouble of reaching out to them.

Father Ed Hayes has written a wonderful Book of Prayers. I want to share a part of his Prayer to the Lord Our God, Who Heals Us with Forgiveness:
We are grateful for those persons in our lives who have allowed us to be reconciled after we have become separated from them through selfishness and thoughtlessness; Jesus, by His life, gave us an example of how we are to love those who harm us and forgive those who injure us when He asked you, His Father to forgive those who had led Him to suffer and die on a cross.