During the month of June we remember the Sacred Heart of Jesus…the heart is a symbol of love. Jesus’ love knew no bounds. His love enveloped all. The sinner, the outcasts, the vulnerable experienced His love in a very tangible way. He went beyond rules when it came to healing those with any affliction. His compassion superseded the law. Even His disciples found it difficult to truly understand His idea of being Lord and Master. Washing their feet and being of service to the extent of giving His life for the other was Jesus’ way of expressing love. The Pharisees and scribes put themselves outside the ambit of Jesus’ reach. They had the attitude of ‘better than you’ which even Jesus couldn’t penetrate. In the end it was they who excluded Him; at no stage did He exclude them.
It was the religious establishment who condemned Jesus for mixing with the riff-raff – publicans, sinners, outcasts – who were shunned by respectable society. He was for anyone who was ostracized, oppressed, marginalized, suffering…Jesus was clearly for the ‘anawim’. Jesus dealt with each individual person who came into His life in such a way that nobody was ever excluded and everybody was loved for their own sake and not for the sake of their ancestry, race, nationality, class, family connections, intelligence, achievements or any other quality. In this concrete, personal sense Jesus loved all people and for this very reason Jesus sided with the poor and the oppressed, with those who had nothing to recommend them except their humanity, with those who were excluded by others. ‘I say to you “Love your enemies”’. Nothing could be more radical and revolutionary than that. Jesus extended one’s neighbor to include one’s enemies and He could not have found a more effective way of shocking His audience.
The world’s only loving to its friends, but Your way of loving never ends:
Loving enemies too and so loving with You is what’s turning the world upside down.
Sr Mary De Souza IBVM
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