161. How to love enemies
161. HOW TO LOVE ENEMIES
We are commanded to love our enemies. What does this mean? What kind of love is this?
Love of one’s enemies may be understood in three ways. First, as though we were to love our enemies as such; this is perverse and contrary to charity, since it implies love of that which is evil in another.
Secondly, love of one’s enemies may mean that we love them as to their (human) nature. . . . [I]n general; and in this sense charity requires that we should love our enemies, namely that in loving God and our neighbor we should not exclude our enemies from the love given to our neighbor in general.
Thirdly, love of one’s enemies may be considered as specially directed to them . . . charity does require this, namely that we should be prepared in mind . . . that we should be ready to love our enemies individually if the necessity were to occur. That man should actually do so without it being necessary for him to do so, belongs to the perfection of charity (II-II,25,8).
Our true enemies are tempting demons, our own sins, and the foolishness that mistakes enemies for friends and friends for enemies (e.g., thinking that yielding to these temptations will at least give us happiness, or thinking that the prophets who make us feel guilty for our sins are our enemies because they make us feel bad).
So if we know our true enemies, i.e., that which really works for our harm, it is impossible to love them, for it is impossible to love what we know to be unlovable.
And if we know other people’s sins, we know these sins harm them, so if we love them we cannot love their sins, any more than a doctor who loves his patient can love the patient’s disease.
So we can’t love our enemies (or the enemies of others we love) “as such”, qua whatever evil in them makes them our enemies. We cannot love evil. That is St. Thomas’ first point.
Second, we can and should love sinners even while hating sins, because God created all persons and their common human nature, and declared it (ontologically) good. We are to love all men, and since some men are our enemies (in at least some real ways: they work us real harm, physical or spiritual), therefore we are to love our enemies—qua men, qua human, qua creatures of God, not qua enemies. This “qua human” means that we love their universal human nature, not their concrete individual persons insofar as they are working us real harm. Even if we have to disarm a murderous aggressor with lethal force, we should pray for his salvation.
Third, we can and should go beyond this and love our concrete individual enemies because we are Christians and conduits of the charity of Christ, Who did (and continues to do) exactly that, on the Cross and in the Church. Jesus loved Judas, who committed the greatest crime in history, even in the very act of committing that crime: as Judas was targeting Christ for execution in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus called him “Friend” (Mt 26:50).
This is not necessary injustice. Christian charity is not less than justice but goes far beyond justice. That is what makes it so Godlike.
“Love” here means, of course, not warm feelings of personal affection but the genuine will to the true good of this enemy. We do not wish him harm. Sometimes this good will necessarily includes the wish that he suffer pain—not out of vengeance but for instruction, that he may see his evil and repent. That is why we put people in prison. (That should be our motive, at least, if we are Christians.)
It is also not an evil, hateful, or vengeful motive to want justice to be done out of love of justice. Love of justice is a good thing. Love of mercy is another good thing, and even better.