Last week, as you’ll recall, we heard our Lord’s instruction to us: “Love your enemies.” This is not the “natural” response that we, in our fallen state, would ordinarily make to those who hate us, and wish us evil. This is why it is important for us to remember, on the one hand, the commandment to love our enemies, and to do good to those who hate us, and bless those who curse us; and, on the other hand, to also remember the great love that God has for each of us, even though we are sinners. Love invites love; hatred invites hatred. By the way: the opposite of love is not hate; the fathers tell us that the opposite of love is indifference. Hatred is love gone bad, love pulled inside out, love that has been twisted around into something no longer recognizable as love.
Why is it so difficult to love our enemies? Could it be that we hate our enemies because we fear them? Fear can take love and distort it into hatred. Of course, we fear our enemies because we perceive them to be a threat to us: they threaten what we think and believe; they threaten our way of life; and, above all, they threaten us with death.
Here again, we are called to remember the God we serve, the Lord in Whom we put our trust and hope. In today’s Gospel reading, our Lord Jesus enters the town of Nain; and, as He does so, He encounters a woman whose life has been touched by death. Her husband is dead – she is a widow – and now she is on her way to the cemetery to bury her only son. Her world has collapsed; she has lost those who loved her the most to death; and now she is alone. Our Lord, seeing her, has compassion upon her. He tells her, “Weep not”; and then He commands her son to arise. Our Lord shows here, as with Jairus’ daughter, and with Lazarus, that He is the Lord, with power of life and death – a power He will reveal most fully by His own resurrection from the dead.
Why, then, do we fear death? Our Lord Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. Think of the troparion for today: “He hath trampled down death by death; the first-born of the dead hath He become. From the belly of hades hath He delivered us, and hath granted to the world great mercy.” Because He lives, so, too, shall we live a life without death, a life without end. Death no longer is the end of existence, or the entry into the place of shadows. We are not to fear death, which has no dominion over us; rather, we are to fear the great and terrible Day of the Lord, when we shall stand before the throne of God, and give an account of our lives, and be judged for our actions, and enter into either blessedness or condemnation for eternity. But death? It is only the doorway from this life into the world to come. As Orthodox Christians, we should not fear death.
And if we do not fear death, what power does an enemy hold over us? They may, indeed, kill the body – but so what? Death will one day come for us all; unless the Lord returns before we depart this life, we shall all fall asleep to this life, to awaken in the Kingdom of heaven. Does the means of that departure make any difference – especially if we are living as Orthodox Christians, aware of the reality of the end of this life, preparing by confession and repentance for that moment when we stand before the heavenly King to be judged? So: If our enemy cannot do any more than accomplish our transition from this world into the world to come, is there any reason to fear death? And if we do not fear death, is there any reason to fear our enemy? And if we do not fear them, is there any reason why we cannot love them, and so fulfill the command of God?
Brothers and sisters: Let us put our hope and trust in the Lord Who raised the widow’s son from the dead. Let us follow the example of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who did not fear death, but accepted death on our behalf, that we who are joined to Him by faith and grace may show Him forth in our lives as well, by loving those who hate us, by doing good to those who are our enemies. Let us seek to be filled with love for God, and the love of God for each other, and for all the world; so that, no matter what may happen to us in the days to come, we may be faithful servants of God, loving as He loves, without reservation, without hesitation – to the glory of His Name, and the salvation of our souls.
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