Fr. John-Mary: Father, one of the most strikingly original statements of Jesus in all the Gospels is "love your enemies." It sometimes seems to us almost impossible to live. Could you talk about that?

Fr. M.D. Philippe: It is a fact that this is one of the truly original elements of Christian ethics, one which reveals the unique profundity of divine love. God alone can love his enemies, those who oppose him with all their might. Out of love He created spiritual beings capable of loving, free beings and by that very fact capable of opposing him, of turning their back to him. Scripture and theology show us the fall of the angels, the sin of Adam and Eve, as well as that of Cain. One might well enumerate all the sins listed in Scripture down to that of Judas, who betrayed his friend, Jesus. God allowed him to do evil. This reveals the greatness of the mystery of evil, which we will never fully understand, for it is a mystery. But we can at least understand that divine love is the first of all loves, that of the Creator who, despite our opposition to him, continues to love us and carry us in his love. God did not annihilate Lucifer because of his opposition. We need to keep that in mind in trying to understand Jesus' command: "Love your enemies." If we want to enter fully into this mystery, we need to understand and live the primordial command to which Jesus returns in the Gospel: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself" (Luke 10:27). There is where all the Law, all the Prophets come together in unity. Here Jesus brought two great commandments together which were separated in the Old Testament: loving God with all one's heart, soul and strength, and loving one's neighbor as oneself. He united them in order to show us that our love for him, for our Father cannot stop with him but must become fraternal charity as well. As St. John says, the new commandment, "love one another as I have loved you", creatively returns to the old. We must love our brothers and sisters as the crucified Jesus loved us all. This is why St. John in his first Letter does not hesitate to say that we should be ready to give our lives for our brothers and sisters if we really love them.
What is the love of fraternal charity? What are the implications of that divine love that God, that Jesus places in our hearts and that enables us to love our brothers and sisters as he loves them? By that love we become for them the living envoys of Christ. We are for them what Jesus would be for them. We must convince them that we love them as Jesus loves them, with the same perspective and similar intensity. In other words, Jesus is the source of love for us. His love for his Father and His love for us are one and the same love: he loved Mary as he loved his Beloved Father with the same love. These are therefore two different ways of exercising substantially the same love. That is the great mystery of divine love fully communicated to the heart of Jesus and then fully communicated to the heart of Mary. This enables us to understand how Jesus could have said to Mary from the Cross: "Woman, this is your son." Her love for Jesus must extend to John in one love: this is why she looks on John as her beloved son. It is substantially but not identically the same love. She continues to love Jesus as her first love, an almost infinite love through which and in which she loves us. She loves us because Jesus loves us, and since she loves Jesus so much, she cannot help but love those that Jesus loves, cannot separate them in her heart. She therefore loves us through that love of the heart of Jesus.

Fr. John-Mary: Some have thought that our love for God can decrease our love of neighbor.

Fr. M.D. Philippe: No, it can't, for it is the source of our love of neighbor. The closer one is to a source, the more abundantly one receives from it, whether it is a source of water, of light or of heat. The closer one gets to it, the more one is warmed, cooled or enlightened, and therefore able to communicate to others what came from that source. The closer one gets to the heart of Christ, the more one will be able to love others. No doubt that happens successively. My relationship to Jesus is unique: He is my Savior and my God whom I love because He gives me everything and attracts me to him. But through him and in him I love my brother and sister. In that way I love them more than I would love them in a direct love of friendship. But loving them through the heart of Jesus is not at all an indirect love, or in other words what psychologists call a triangular situation, which is never easy or simple. From a purely human point of view, when I have a friend, I like to see him or her alone. And even if he or she brought me one of their friends, I would say, "Listen my dear, I hardly know your friend and I would prefer seeing you alone; there are things that I can say only to you and want to say only to you." Can I say the same thing to Jesus? Can I say to him, "Listen, please leave me alone with my brother, because I want to love him alone and make him understand that I really love him for himself." I don't think I can say that to Jesus. Why not? Because the love of Christ is a divine love of such purity and such force that it is one with the love of others. On the contrary, it allows me to love those that are close to me with a very unique intensity that is proper to that divine love. In the heart of Jesus I love my brother and love him more than if he were alone with me, that is certainly a mystery, one which I cannot explain psychologically. I could find certain analogies and resemblances, of course; people often say "the friends of our friends are our friends," but we know that it is not always true. From time to time when I love someone greatly and he brings his friend that he dearly loves to me, we can become friends much more quickly than usual, but it is nevertheless always a different friendship. In divine love on the other hand, there is this that is unique: in the heart of Christ and through the heart of Christ I love all those that he places in my path, that Providence brings close to me and that I choose as neighbor. The parable of the Good Samaritan is meaningful here: my neighbor is the one I meet, the one in whom I am interested, the one providentially close to me, the one not so much humanly chosen as divinely chosen by the heart of Jesus teaching me that this is the one for me to love. We see this for Mary in the mystery of the Visitation. Mary could have remained alone in the secret mystery which she carried within herself, but responding to the story of the angel Gabriel, responding to the love of God for Elizabeth, Mary also loved her and immediately began the long voyage to be with her. In this marvelous example of love of others, God indicated and Mary took the initiative. God did not say to Mary "you must go to see her," but merely gave her a sign. That is why I say that in loving others we are sources and must take initiatives rather than waiting for God to command us to act. The general commandment given to us is to love all those that Jesus loves, love all those that Providence places in your path, love them all through the heart of Christ, and, like Jesus, be willing to give your life for them. I think it is very important to realize that divine love, agape, gives us a heart with the dimensions of the heart of Christ rather than one terribly limited by our egocentrism. Our hearts become enlarged and magnanimous, constantly capable of surpassing its human limitations. We love others in the light of Christ and in the fervor of Christ's love, and we want to love them with all the warmth and fire of his heart. "I have come to bring fire on the earth and I want that fire to be enkindled." That fire is Jesus who loves us, we who love Jesus, and it is also what Jesus wants us to be: true sources of love for those close to us, with all the spontaneity that involves.

Jesus wants us to realize and frequently reread the striking message in the First Letter of St. John:

"This has taught us love, that he gave up his life for us; and we, too, ought to give up our lives for our brothers. If a man who was rich enough in this world's goods saw that one of his brothers was in need, but closed his heart to him, how could the love of God be living in him? My children, our love is not to be just words or mere talk, but something real and active; only by this can we be certain that we are children of the truth and be able to quiet our conscience in his presence, whatever accusations it may raise against us, because God is greater than our conscience and he knows everything" (1 John 3: 16-20).

These words should be engraved on our hearts because they teach us the origin or source of fraternal charity. We are authentic in the eyes of God only when, through the love which unites us to Jesus, we can open our hearts to all those close to us with a love which is not only affectionate, tender, joyful and prayerful but which is also a sacrificial gift of ourselves to them. I think of Mother Theresa and of Maximilian Kolbe; they gave themselves entirely to the practical truths of fraternal charity so as to become true, authentic witnesses of the love of Christ. Jesus truly showed his love for us in offering his life for us and in taking the place of sinners, taking on himself all the weight of the sins of the world. He is the Lamb of God who bears the iniquity of the world. By doing that, he shows us that he really loves us not just in words, but with all the tenderness and gentleness of the Good Shepherd who carries the lost, tired sheep on his shoulders. We must be able to do the same; we must be able to forgive others just as the father of the Prodigal Son did. Fraternal charity makes us aware of our responsibility towards others. Each time we receive greater graces of light and love, we become more fatherly, more like the Good Shepherd, able to carry the weak on our shoulders with both tenderness and strength, effectively helping them in their need. Here I think of that magnificent hymn in St. Paul's Letter to the Corinthians: "Love is always patient and kind; it is never jealous; love is never boastful or conceited; it is never rude or selfish; it does not take offense, and is not resentful". (1 Cor. 13:4-5).

Charity does not judge and does not condemn: Jesus did not come to condemn, nor are we here to condemn. We must constantly understand that fraternal charity makes us the friend of others, constantly predisposing us to be, like Christ, friendly towards them. That is the way we should understand Jesus' statement that we must love our enemies.

Fr. John-Mary: You cited Mother Theresa and Maximilian Kolbe as practical examples of fraternal charity. You also often preach to contemplatives who have left the world in order to live for God in prayer and silence. Is there a danger that people will flee from the demands of fraternal charity and cut themselves off from the world, from others and their needs?

Fr. M.D. Philippe: I believe that fraternal charity is exercised first of all at the Cross, where Jesus' hands and feet were nailed to the wood, and where, dead, the heart of Christ was transpierced. I believe that this teaches us that love reaches beyond all activities and all gestures of mercy. Love is fraternal charity above all, an abyss making us capable of carrying others. Love of others is carrying them in our hearts, carrying their miseries, their difficulties, their struggles.

The contemplative life of both men and women is never a refuge, an escape from anything. It is on the contrary a willing acceptance of life on the front lines, of being with Jesus crucified, of being on the front lines in battle in order to carry the struggles of others.

Fr. John-Mary: What do you mean by being "on the front lines in battle?"

Fr. M.D. Philippe: By that I mean being willing to accept and bear the temptations and struggles of others as Jesus bore them on the front line of battle on the Cross. He did not save the world by healing the sick. He saved the world and showed us the fundamental demands of fraternal charity when he was nailed on the Cross. There is where we understand the most radical needs of fraternal charity; there is where we understand St. John's warning not to love in words only. On the Cross Jesus loved not only in words but gave his life, radically, to the end, to the last drop of blood that his heart could give, to the last tear that he could shed. Our prayer must be expressible in acts and in presence. Like Mother Theresa, St. Maximilian Kolbe and St. Vincent de Paul, we must be close to the poor, to orphans, to all those who suffer, to the elderly in their solitude and despair, to the young in their anguish and despair. Fraternal charity means being willing to "waste" our time with them, being willing to live close to them. We must even love the enemy who has hurt us. Following Jesus' command to love our enemies does not mean that we should love the evil they do us. That would be false, a kind of sado-masochism. Fraternal charity is ascetic but not at all sadistic or masochistic; it calls us to love profoundly the soul, the person of our neighbor as Jesus did from the Cross. Jesus shed all his blood for others, loving them because each human soul, each human person is infinitely precious in his eyes. We need to love them like that also even when, out of pride, vanity or concupiscence, they act like scoundrels, hurt us, put our lives in danger or calumniate us and destroy our good name. We do not love those who hurt us insofar as they hurt us, but insofar as they are loved and saved by Jesus. Evil as such is always hateful, never lovable, or in other words, evil is evil. But, once again, we must see beyond evil, we must see how the mystery of the wisdom of the Cross transcends death, transcends suffering, transcends struggle, transcends sin, absorbing and transforming them all in a great victory of love. I believe that victory is forgiving those who hurt us, forgiving them indefinitely, loving our enemies who say to us "I hate you and will always hate you." The reply to those who say that to us is "I love you" not only in words but also in deed, helping them without their knowing it so that it can be more divine and stronger. We thus pursue with love the person who pursues us with hatred. We know that divine love is victorious over hatred. I believe that one should exercise fraternal charity with great gentleness and firmness.

We should always remember the affirmations of Scripture about the Holy Spirit: he leads us with might and gentleness; he has the power of separating good from evil, and he has the power and gentleness needed to carry a human person that is weak and fragile. There one sees how Maximilian Kolbe, how Mary show us, incarnate for us this gentleness and strength of the Holy Spirit. She is the woman standing strong at the foot of the Cross. She has astonishing strength and she is given to us. She has the gentleness of a mother. Like a mother, she does not look first of all at the weakness of her son, but simply looks at the son that she loves and continues to love through it all. Mary teaches us practical, concrete discernment in our lives - how to love those who may be hurting us, who are always for us the children of Jesus carried to the Cross, children of he Virgin Mary who are always very close to us, close to the heart of Christ and the heart of Mary.