The only remedy able to heal the hatred is love. We must renounce hatred, because it takes us away from God and neighbor and let us physically and spiritually sick!
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5, 44).
For the ancient [before the coming of Jesus], the Word of God had another intonation: you could love your neighbor and hate your enemy. When Christ tells us to love our neighbor and even more to pray for those who persecute us, he teaches us that hatred is not part of the hearts of those who are fully united to God’s heart.
First, because hatred is something evil, terrible, wicked, cruel and inhuman. No one has the right to hate anyone, because hate only produces more hatred and it only destroys us from within. Let me speak clearly to your heart: hatred is the most terrible cancer to human nature. Not only cancer in the psychological or spiritual sense, hatred even causes physical cancer when it is fed and fertilized within us.
The Lord does not want us suffering from this evil, because hatred takes away our joy of living. It weakens us from within and attracts many negative things to us. It is not that our Lord wants to defend those who deserve our hatred, but He wants to take care of our heart so that it is not taken in by this terrible feeling of the soul.
And once we renounce hatred and it can not be part of our life the only remedy able to heal the hate is love. There is a strong need to invest in it, even loving our enemies!
Let me say, when the Word of God tells us to love our enemies it is not that we should live with them or we should ignore the evil they did to us. It is the opposite of this: to recognize that they have wronged us and do not deserve our coexistence. However, we deserve health should not be further hampered by some evil they have committed against us. Because of this we love them with agape love, with love, compassion, it is not that walk of love hand in hand as if nothing had happened, as this is pretense and pretense is bad.
Whoever loves also respects and whoever knows also understands, even without fully understanding, but it is Christian love, love love, which should be guided by the following thought: “If you ever need me, you can be sure I will stretch my hand ! And I will not look away from you or pull my hand as sign of revenge. I’ll give you love, attention, care and can make sure that I do not want to grow any resentment against you so that God’s love is more fully in my life. ”
For those who can not love sufficiently, because our heart has its limits, we should pray a lot for them to be blessed, cared for and directed by divine love!
God bless you!
Father Roger Araujo
Priest of the New Song Community, journalist and contributor to the Portal New Song.