Jesus is still on the Galilean hillside, and he has arrived at the sharpest edge of his ethics. The Torah said “love your neighbor” (Lev 19:18); popular interpretation added the implied corollary, “and hate your enemy.” Jesus reverses the implied half. His audience included people whose enemies were Roman soldiers who could commandeer their donkey, neighbors who had cheated them in court, and family members who had cut them off. This is not abstract ethics. It is a command aimed at specific people in that crowd who could name the face they were supposed to love.

From the writers we read together

Mother Teresa

Missionaries of Charity, founder (1910-1997), Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Mother Teresa worked in the streets of Calcutta for nearly fifty years. She found the dying in gutters, the abandoned in doorways, the discarded in the middle of a city that had run out of space for them. She did not ask which of her patients were enemies or friends of the faith; she asked which one was in front of her. Her theology of the enemy was surgical: every person she encountered, regardless of religion, caste, or conduct toward her, was Christ in disguise. She did not have to feel warmth to serve them. She had to see the face she had been told to look for.

The command to love enemies is nearly impossible on any accounting that begins with feelings. Teresa would say it begins with the will and moves to the face — specifically, the practice of looking until you see. Her biographers record that she often prayed before entering a ward: “Let me see you in him.” That prayer is the engine of teleios love. Not moral heroism but a practice of perception — looking until you find what Jesus promised you would find, even in the enemy.