Tuesday 19th June, 2012
St Romuald. 1 Kings 21:17-29. Be merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned—Ps 50(51):3-6, 11, 16. Matthew 5:43-48.

  
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‘Love your enemies.’

Perhaps nothing so closes us to the love of God or so constricts the flow of our love towards God as a spirit of unforgivingness towards someone who has, or we fancy has, wronged us—for this makes us most unlike God. When Jesus makes the love of him and the love of others—even our enemies—inseparable, he is not uttering a threat, nor offering a bribe to induce us to love our neighbour. He is simply stating a fact.

We have only one mind and heart with which to love whoever or whatever our love reaches out to. If, then, a bitterness, a hardness or a lack of sympathy lodges in our mind and heart, it affects all the loves that flow from them. Brackish pools cannot give rise to streams of fresh water.