By seeing that he is a child of God whom you love as a brother. What separates you is not who he is but a faulty belief to which you, he or both of you ascribe.
If God has delivered ‘your enemy’ into your grasp this day, call to mind that it is the inconsistency of the systems, the ideologies, to which you ascribe that separates you; as for him: look into his face and no matter what he does, see God’s image there, and acknowledge that you love him.
David’s encounter with the sleeping King Saul was during a time when David was “on the run” because Saul and his men were looking for David in order to kill him.
In those days, Saul went down to the desert of Ziph
with three thousand picked men of Israel,
to search for David.
There David and Abishai went among Saul’s soldiers by night
and found Saul lying asleep within the barricade,
with his spear thrust into the ground at his head
and Abner and his men sleeping around him.
Abishai whispered to David:
“God has delivered your enemy into your grasp this day.
Let me nail him to the ground with one thrust of the spear;
I will not need a second thrust!”
But David said to Abishai, “Do not harm him,
for who can lay hands on the LORD’s anointed and remain unpunished?”
So David took the spear and the water jug from their place at Saul’s head,
and they got away without anyone’s seeing or knowing or awakening.
All remained asleep,
because the LORD had put them into a deep slumber.
Going across to an opposite slope,
David stood on a remote hilltop
at a great distance from Abner, son of Ner, and the troops.
He said: “Here is the king’s spear.
Let an attendant come over to get it.
The LORD will reward each man for his justice and faithfulness.
Today, though the LORD delivered you into my grasp,
I would not harm the LORD’s anointed.” (Excerpt from 1 Samuael 26:2-23)
Even sinners love those who love them.
And if you do good to those who do good to you,
what credit is that to you?
Even sinners do the same.
If you lend money to those from whom you expect repayment,
what credit is that to you?
Even sinners lend to sinners,
and get back the same amount.
But rather, love your enemies and do good to them. (Excerpt from Luke 6:27-38)
Pope Francis uses as the cornerstone of this Love Endures All Things section of Amoris Laetitia a long but worthy of our attention quotation from a sermon of Martin Luther King, Jr.:
“The person who hates you most has some good in him;
even the nation that hates you most has some good in it;
even the race that hates you most has some good in it.
And when you come to the point
that you look in the face of every man
and see deep down within him
what religion calls ‘the image of God,’
you begin to love him in spite of.
No matter what he does,
you see God’s image there.
There is an element of goodness
that he can never sluff off.
Another way that you love your enemy is this:
When the opportunity presents itself
for you to defeat your enemy – that is the time which you must not do it.
.… When you rise to the level of love,
of its great beauty and power,
you seek only to defeat evil systems.
Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system,
you love,
but you seek to defeat the system.
…. Hate for hate only intensifies
the existence of hate and evil in the universe.
If I hit you
and you hit me
and I hit you back
and you hit me back
and so on,
that goes on ad infinitum.
It just never ends.
Somewhere
somebody must have a little sense,
and that’s the strong person.
The strong person
is the person
who can cut off the chain of hate,
the chain of evil.
.… Somebody must have religion enough
and morality enough
to cut it off
and inject within the very structure of the universe
that strong and powerful element of love.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Sermon delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama, November 17, 1957.
