Not an Enemy, But I Really Don’t Like Them

I really don’t think of anyone as my enemy.

Maybe you’re the same way. You may have grievances against him. She may have hurt you. Y’all may be years into a rivalry. There might even be a few people you can’t stand and go out of your way to avoid. But you still don’t consider them your enemies.

And so, you maybe feel a bit impervious to Jesus’s teaching in Matthew 5:

“You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you!… If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that. (5:43-44, 47)

If I don’t have any enemies, then this is one line in the Sermon on the Mount that doesn’t really apply to me. There’s a gap between “friend” and “enemy” that leaves some comfortable wiggle room, where I can keep living my life and treating people I don’t like the same way I always have.

Therese of Lisieux, a saint in the Roman Catholic Church, reflected on this in her autobiography, The Story of a Soul. Therese lived in a convent in northern France, where “of course, one has no enemies.” There were, however, nuns that you liked more and nuns that you liked less. “One feels attracted to a certain sister and one would go out of one’s way to dodge meeting another.” (I’m sure you’ve worked with people, gone to church and school with people, and shared Christmas dinner with people like that.) But, for Therese, Jesus’s words took on new meaning in a place like that: “Jesus tells me that it is this very sister I must love, and I must pray for her, even though her attitude makes me believe she has no love for me.”

Therese had no real enemies, but she refused to inhabit the comfortable wiggle room between “enemy” and “friend.” She was bound and determined that Jesus’s teaching would change her life.

Later on, she tells a story about all of this. There was a sick, elderly nun, called Sister St. Peter, who needed someone to take her from evening prayer to their dining hall every night. Therese did not want this job, because “it was hard or rather impossible to please this poor sick nun.” So, of course, St. Therese offered to help. “It was a great chance for me and I did not want to let it slip,” she said.

So, each evening, at 5:50, under Sister St. Peter’s nitpicking gaze, Therese would pick up and carry the older woman’s stool (and St. Peter was very particular about how this was done). She would then walk slowly across the convent with her sister, holding the woman’s waistband to keep her steady. If Sister St. Peter stumbled, Therese was blamed. If Therese walked too quickly, or too slowly, she was scolded. She then carefully helped her sister into a chair at the dinner table and helped roll her sleeves up. (She was very particular about the sleeves, too.)

Why? Why did the young nun volunteer to do all of that every single day?

Because she concluded “that I should seek the company of those sisters for whom I have no natural liking and be like the good Samaritan to them.”

Because she wanted Jesus’s words to her to be a blessing to others.

And because, sometimes, that’s what “love your enemies” looks like.

If you "don't have any enemies," who is it that you need to stop avoiding and start seeking out to show them the indiscriminate love of Jesus?

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