Deacon Kirk

  7th Sunday of Ordinary Time (En español en la parte de abajo) In our Gospel today, our Lord tells us to love our enemies. This is a startling commandment. How many of us have real enemies? How many of us have someone in our life that we would call an enemy? Is our enemy that guy in the neighborhood who always gives us trouble? Is our enemy a former in-law, the one who stayed in the family just long enough to ruin our brother’s life? Is our enemy anyone who disagrees with us? How about a member of the opposite political party, is that our enemy? When Jesus tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves, someone in the crowd asked him directly, “who is my neighbor?” In his teaching, we come to understand that our neighbor is any person we meet who is in need. In fact, Jesus’ teaching is broader than that, our neighbor is anyone that we happen to encounter, friend or foe.  Back in that time, the people of Israel had been enemies with anyone who was not a believer in the One T...