7th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Love Your Enemies1
A Commentary by Walter Hilton

When love acts in the soul it does so wisely and gently, for it has great power
to kill anger and envy, and all the passions of wrath and melancholy, and it brings
into the soul the virtues of patience, gentleness, peaceableness, and friendliness to
one’s neighbor. People guided only by their own reason find it very hard to be
patient, peaceful, sweet-tempered and charitable to their neighbors when they treat
them badly and wrong them. But true lovers of Jesus have no great difficulty in
enduring all this, because love fights for them and kills such movements of wrath
and melancholy with amazing ease. Through the spiritual sight of Jesus it makes
the souls of such people so much at ease and so peaceful, so ready to endure and so
conformed to God, that if they are despised and disregarded by others, or suffer
injustice or injury, shame or ill-treatment, they pay no attention. They are not
greatly disturbed by these things and will not allow themselves to be, for then they
would lose the comfort they feel in their souls, and that they are unwilling to do.
They can more easily forget all the wrong that is done them than others can forgive
it even when asked for forgiveness. They would rather forget than forgive, for that
seems easier to them.

And it is love that does all this, for love opens the eye of the soul to the sight
of Jesus, and confirms it in the pleasure and contentment of the love that comes
from that sight. It comforts the soul so much that it is quite indifferent to what
others do against it. The greatest harm that could befall such people would be to
lose the spiritual sight of Jesus, and they would therefore suffer all other injuries
than that one alone.

When true lovers of Jesus suffer harm from their neighbors, they are so
strengthened by the grace of the Holy Spirit and are made so truly humble, so
patient, and so peaceable, that they retain their humility no matter what harm or
injury is inflicted on them. They do not despise their neighbors or judge them, but
they pray for them in their hearts, and feel more pity and compassion for them than
for others who never harmed them, and in fact they love them better, and more
fervently desire their salvation, because they see that they will have so much
spiritual profit from their neighbors’ deeds, though this was never their intention.
But this love and this humility, which are beyond human nature, come only from
the Holy Spirit to those whom he makes true lovers of Jesus.

1 Journey with the Fathers: Commentaries on the Sunday Gospels – Year A. Ed. Edith Barnecut, O.S.B. New
York: New City Press, 1992. 90-91