NOTES for Mat 5:33-48
Christ's words about love for enemies provoke perhaps more debate and more attempts at interpretation than anything else. Some reject them, defending their right to revenge and hatred of the enemy, while others, on the contrary, respond with the ideology of pacifism and nonresistance. But it seems that in both cases the driving force is the desire to secure oneself, to establish one's own invulnerability before the enemy - either by force or by indifference. The Gospel offers precisely a behavior built not on the pursuit of one's own safety, not on withdrawal into oneself, but on an active response to the offender: "bless, do good, pray..." And the point, it seems, is not pacifism and not the ability to endure pain and bear insults, but a far more difficult art - the ability to love.