Basic Education Their Future At Stake
The front cover picture was certainly not taken during Covid times. We do not know its exact location, but it could be from any particular school in rural South Africa. What indeed the image of these children reflects is their eagerness for learning and doing it together. Their minds are surely full of dreams; their desires for a bright future cannot be frustrated. The task of offering them an inclusive and integral quality education can look gigantic, but each one’s contribution can make the miracle happen.
THE LAST WORD
Love Your Enemies (Lk 6: 27–31)
BY Fr Silvano Fausti SJ | Biblist and writer
Jesus reveals to us the face of a loving God. He is good to me, even if I am far from Him. He blesses me, while I ignore Him. He intercedes for me, while I forget Him. As long as I am saved, He is willing to sacrifice anything for me. He even gives me what I do not dare to ask from Him and does not ask back what I have failed to return to Him. Truly, His love for me has made Him travel much more than two extra miles: an endless road! He is all condescendence towards my abyss.
Secondly, in His love, He reveals to me who I am for Him: infinitely loved, even if I am full of shortcomings and wrongdoings. He pours out on me His love and grace, together with His mercy in every moment of my life. To know God in the Spirit is to experience and know God’s love for me, a sinner. This is salvation.
Thirdly, these words reveal to me who I must be to others: a brother or sister, like Jesus. What he has done for me, becomes an imperative toward others; to become for them what essentially I am: the face of Christ, my true face. From homo homini lupus (man, a wolf to man), to become homo homini Deus (man, a God to man), like Him. This is my vocation as a child of God, to which His love calls me and empowers me. To the extent that I know His face, I am transformed into His image, from glory to glory, according to the working of his Spirit (2 Cor 3: 18).
In these words, then, I see the story of God in Jesus, His love for me, my own story and everyone else’s who, healed from the hostility towards God, is called to be healed from animosity towards everyone.
The love for enemies is proper for those who have come to know God in the Spirit of Jesus
The discourse is addressed to the disciples. It is a catechesis on the core of the Christian life: the merciful love, the only possible love in a world of evil, the only force capable of overcoming it. The love for enemies is proper for those who have come to know God in the Spirit of Jesus. This love extends to all men and women, and reveals the essence of God.
The passage is articulated into a verse of four commands: ‘love’, ‘do well’, ‘bless’ and ‘pray’ for enemies (vv. 27, 28), followed by four amplifications that tell us how to overcome evil with good (vv. 29, 30), concluding with the general principle of love: “as you would like others to do to you, do likewise to them” (v. 31). These believing listeners have already understood and accepted the Kingdom. This is the central point in the teaching, the touchstone of their faith: called to the gift of a new life, purified and capable of walking it (cf. 5: 1–11; 5: 12–16; 5: 17–26), diners of Jesus, enabled to live from God and to act like Him (cf. 5: 27–32; 5: 33–6: 5; 6: 6–11). They accept His action as the foundation and source of their own lives. It is the new life in Christ, life in the Spirit, which the believer lives in relation to the world and to those who still do not know that they are his brothers and sisters and consider them as enemies. This love of the enemy is the weapon with which the believer overcomes evil in the world, and is the main means of spreading Christianity, much more effective than any crusades, which have the opposite effect.
| Dates To Remember |
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February 1 – Blessed Benedict Daswa 2 – World Day of Prayer for Consecrated Life 4 – International Day of Human Fraternity 6 – International Day of Zero Tolerance of Female Genital Mutilation 8 – International Day of Prayer and Awareness against Human Trafficking 11 – International Day of Women and Girls in Science 11 – World Day of the Sick 13 – World Radio Day 20 – World Day of Social Justice 21 – International Mother Language Day March 1 – Zero Discrimination Day 2 – Ash Wednesday 3 – World Wildlife Day 8 – International Women’s Day 15 – St Daniel Comboni’s Birthday 20 – International Day of Happiness 21 – International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination 21 – SA Human Rights Day 22 – World Water Day 24 – World Tuberculosis Day 24 – International Day for the Right to the Truth concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims 25 – International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade |