Last week we talked about that fact that God wants more from us than just good behavior.  He wants our hearts.  He wants our hearts and our minds to be converted; he wants us to feel and think in different ways.  He wants us to be ready to do things like “turn the other cheek.”  He wants us to be kind and generous to all people, even those who can’t or won’t repay our kindness.  He even wants us to love our enemies.  Not just tolerate them, or keep a comfortable distance, but actually love them:  desire and work for their good, putting aside all grudges and malice.  These things don’t come naturally to us, and that’s the Lord’s point in today’s gospel.  “If you just love those who love you, so what?”  That’s not really remarkable.  If you’re kind to people you’re already friends with, what’s the big deal about that?  “Do not the pagans do the same?” says Our Lord.  His point is that those kinds of things come naturally to us, to everyone, and that’s all right.  They should.  It’s perfectly reasonable for us to be loving and kind to those who are loving and kind to us.  But the Lord wants us to make sure that we’re really fostering and choosing deep and true love for those in our lives, not just a kind of mutual approval.  In other words, you don’t merely approve of someone for what they do for you; you love them for who they are.  

The Lord says, “Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  This is our call as Christians: this is the way that we’re called to go beyond what our human nature would already give us.  To go beyond approval, to true charitable love.  Love is always unconditional, absolutely free, expecting nothing in return.  Our Father in heaven is the source and model for this real love, and we’re supposed to take our cue from him.  God loves you, no matter what.  It doesn’t matter what sins you may have committed; it doesn’t matter if you’ve neglected your relationship with him; it doesn’t matter if you’ve even doubted or denied his existence.  It does not matter.  His love for you is absolutely without any conditions at all, whatsoever.  You never have to buy his love and attention.  And you never have to worry about hiding anything from him either: nothing about you or your heart or your past will make him love you one iota less.  Nothing.  And since God is love, this is what love really is: this is what we’re called to strive for.  

So when it comes to our enemies: we don’t need to approve of them or their bad behavior, but we do need to love them.  We are called to care about and work for their well-being, even if they don’t care about ours.  Just like God has done with us; whenever we’ve abandoned him (and we all have in one way or the other), he didn’t abandon us.  He didn’t give us an eye for an eye.  And it’s his patient unconditional love which allows us to come back from our sins.  And we’re called to the same love for those who seem to be our enemies.  And our patient love, in the model of the love of God, might just be the seed planted in that person’s heart that starts to bring them conversion and peace.  Might just be.  And then for our friends, our loved ones, our families: we always have to work on and strengthen our love for them too.  We do that in various ways, in words and in actions: letting those people that we care about, know, in whatever ways we can, regularly, that our love comes at no cost, with no conditions, no reservations.  Giving and receiving that kind of love: that’s what fills our hearts with joy.  That’s what makes us dwell in the Love of God.  But it takes grace, because it’s hard.  And it’s okay that it’s hard.  This selflessness, this unconditional-ness of real love, is more than our human nature could muster.  But the Lord is calling us to something greater.  He’s calling us to perfection: he’s calling us to the love which is God’s identity.  We’ll never get there in this life, but we keep working at it.  And it’s worth the work.  We trust that whatever ways we can manifest this kind of love, will bring peace and joy to all those in our lives and to ourselves.  God is that love.  And if we remain close to him, in prayer, in the sacraments, in our actions, then he will teach us how to love more and more, better and better, until that day when we stand blissfully in the presence of Love Himself and our hearts are finally made perfect and pure in the love of God.  Lord, help us to love like you do.  Help us to know your peace.