Humbly submit your will to God (Thy Will be done) and consecrate yourself to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through Mary and Joseph.
Jesus said to his disciples:
“You have heard that it was said,
You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I say to you, love your enemies,
and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your heavenly Father,
for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,
and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have?
Do not the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet your brothers and sisters only,
what is unusual about that?
Do not the pagans do the same?
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” MT 5:43-48
Jesus gives us a hard teaching today, but one we must strive for to enter into His glory with Him. Remember our relationship with God is one where we recognize we can do nothing apart from Him. God’s grace is trying to pull us up to Him, our fallen human nature is pulling us down. We are called to come to His grace and give ourselves up.
First, there is a big difference between perfect (holy) and perfectionism. Perfectionism leads us to anxiety, worry, and misery or stems from anxiety and worry. We love to try and control everything especially when we are anxious. This does not mean we should not have earthly goals and attain them with the talents and gifts God has blessed us with and give Him the glory. To be perfect (holy) in God’s eyes is one who imitates Jesus and does the will of the Father.
How do we imitate Jesus and live the will of the Father? He came to save not condemn. Time and time again He looks at us with mercy. He sat with tax collectors and sinners, prostitutes, and healed the deformed, deaf, and blind. Many of us run the other way when we see a homeless person, someone different in our class, the drug addict or prostitute and we judge. I judge my family and friends, those closest to me even more. I need to love not judge. This is difficult and requires God’s grace. We are all sinners in God’s eyes. Not once has He not forgiven you or the murderer if he/she has truly reconciled themselves with God. Many of our greatest Old Testament figures like David (in the lineage of Jesus Christ Himself) murdered and cheated on His wife.
This is difficult when we look with a perspective from our head and not our heart (where God dwells). This is not to say that sinners are not judged rightly by God. God deals with our sin with mercy and judgment. Pope Francis has asked us to come to Jesus and be washed clean, get a new start, and allow ourselves to be loved by Christ. It is His greatest desire. We are His “the one”. He is constantly thinking about us, thirsting for us, to open ourselves up to Him so we can be other Christ’s for the world. When we do this with a clean heart and desire nothing but Him, we begin to really start loving. Nothing else matters except to live for Christ.
What makes this difficult is it requires change. I hate change. It’s hard and requires work and sacrifice. Relationships are built on trust, faithfulness, and forgiveness. These are characteristics that require work and sacrifice. Once we have made a decision to love and be holy like Christ and allow Him into our innermost being, we want to fight sin harder, receive the Sacraments more faithfully, drink from the Bible more deeply to get to know Him better, spend time talking to Him in prayer every day, offer our sufferings up with His to be purified no matter how much pain and suffering we are going through.
Why? When we come to Jesus, He never fails you. He is the only One who cannot fail you. It is against His nature not to love, forgive, and have mercy on us. Love and mercy are His very Being. This is why He teaches to love our enemies. His love is the most radical. Don’t you want to live with the most radical love? Who wants a hollow, weak, unstable love? We look for love in all the wrong places. Give God a chance.
Finally, we desire holiness with our whole heart, mind, body and soul when we get to know Jesus personally. ”So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” MT 5:48 With God’s grace in the Catholic ER (Eucharist and Reconciliation), we can stay in the state of grace. With a conversion of heart, we begin to repent, grow closer to Jesus and love our neighbor as ourselves. Love is at the center of conversion. Look at the crucifix and begin your journey to love back. The blood of Jesus is enough. Allow yourself to be forgiven in His blood.
Today’s challenge: Get to know Jesus personally, it will be the most important decision you make in your life. It is the only decision to make if you want to be with Father in heaven for all eternity!
Be a servant, become a saint!
#Christian YOLO
When the scripture said “ But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you,” I thought that no matter what some one does to you you must forgive him. Just as God would forgive you no matter what you do or how bad. He does this because he loves you and wants to have a relationship with you.
Today in the gospel, Jesus tells us the important message of loving your enemies and praying for them even though it is hard to do, and may not be what you want to do. He says this so we may be children of the heavenly Father, so we do the Father’s will. This can be a very hard thing to do, especially when our human nature encourages us to do the opposite, but Jesus asks us what recompense will we have? Jesus never said that our lives will be easy, he said just about the opposite. That’s why he came to help us. So, when He says to be perfect, he wants us to understand that He means to do the Father’s will. “Perfect” means a whole different meaning when you look at it in a different way, a better way. Jesus sat with tax collectors and sinners and He’s God. Why can’t we do the same.
We are all brothers and sisters whether we like it or not. We are all a family and are supposed to love one another the way we love God. Because we are all made in the image of God.
There is no scientifically perfect person, but we should be as close to perfect as we can in the sense of trying to get to heaven and our prayer lives. Our ultimate goal should be to get to heaven and we need to pray and have a strong faith in order to get there.
The Gospel says today that we need to love our neighbors as your self and hate your enemies. Jesus says that we need love everyone and ourselves even if they are enemies. Also pray for them sinus they have persecuted us. Then they you will become a child of God if you have went away from his love.
God is saying that we need to love each other because the person and creation that God i made is in His name. God made it to where we have to live our neighbor because He made them.
Nobody is perfect and God knows that, but it’s not an excuse to not try to live your life as best you can. Just because you can’t do everything perfectly doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to avoid sin. Everyone will sin at some point but you have to go to confession and just keep trying to do your best at not sinning.
I think today’s scripture passage is trying to tell us that even if we don’t like somebody, we should still treat them with kindness. If somebody does not treat us kindly, we need to forgive them and treat them as if they were one of our friends. We need to treat other people how we would want them to treat us.
what I think this is saying is that we shall love and be kind to those who do not love us and who are not kind to us. God wants us to love everyone just as he loves everyone. We shall still love those who we are close to, but we shall also love those who we dont like and who dont like us even more than those we do love.
“You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you,” Jesus gives us a teaching that goes against societies norms. He acknowledges the contrast, and tells us to love everyone despite what they have done. This goes hand-in-hand with the message ‘do unto others what you would have done unto yourself’.
“So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” We’re human, so we obviously can’t be perfect, but we can try. Just like how God treats us, we should treat everyone with kindness. Even if they’re our enemy, we should love them, following God in his footsteps.
In today’s Scripture Jesus is the people to love their enemy as they love their friends. This is the first time people are hearing this because before it was taught that “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” So I think it was probably weird for the people to hear Him say that because in our minds people who hurt us don’t deserve our love, but Jesus is telling us to love everyone the same.
I think this scripture is telling us that we have to forgive our enemies and still be nice to them, because people change and we might see them in Heaven. Also God was nice to everybody and forgave everyone no matter what they did to him.
Today’s scripture is how we must learn from Jesus and love our neighbors. That means we must love our closest friends and our worst enemies. When really nobody should be our enemies. We must be just and treat everyone as Jesus treats us. We must love one another and pray to our heavenly Father.
Jesus says to do to others as you would want someone to do to you. Jesus wants us to follow him and for us to become children of God.
Today’s scripture reflection gave me many different meanings. The main meaning I got from this scripture reflection today is that we should treat everyone the same, and we should treat them the same way we would want to be treated. We sometimes can get wrapped around thinking we are too cool for everyone, but we need to love everyone because they want to feel loved as much as we do. Another meaning I got from this is that we should love our enemies even if they did us wrong. We do Jesus wrong so many times each day but he always forgives us and loves us. We need to remember that no one is perfect, and we are going to make mistakes.
I think that this reading is telling us that God loves everyone equally and that we should too. When Jesus says that “For he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” He is saying that God blesses the good and the bad but bad things can still happen to everyone. This tells us how we should be equally nice to everyone. If you are only loving to the people that love you back, then you are not actually loving because God tells us that everyone is made in his image and likeness, so we need to treat people that way.
Jesus says that we should love our enemies. That can be really tough sometimes, even though we know it’s the right thing to do. Thinking before acting can be really important when someone is making us angry. God made us to love Him, and He deserves all of our love. Our enemies are only our enemies if we want it that way. Forgiveness is necessary, no matter what. We all make mistakes, no doubt, but we need to apologize for those mistakes. In the Our Father that Jesus taught us, it says, “And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”. According to that prayer, and the basics of being a Christian, we need to apologize for our wrongs and forgive others’ wrongs. It is the only way to have a good relationship with God and others.
In today’s gospel, Jesus tells us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. This is hard for us because it is so easy to be nice to our friends and dislike people who don’t like us, but Jesus tells us to love everyone. If we hate our enemies, what good is that? We need to be more loving to others and not judge people.
Jesus sets an example for us today and teaches us very important lesson. Do you love your bothers and sisters? Your friends? How about your enemies? If you love the people who love you, what good is that? Does that not benefit you also? That’s what everyone does. Loving your enemies is important because everyone is your brother. If you don’t love your enemies, but hate them, and love your sisters, does that make you holy? Is it right? Be perfect as God is perfect. You won’t be “perfect.” You’ll just be more holy and God will know. You’ll get your reward in heaven by loving and caring for your enemies because they are also created by God.
Jesus tells us that we need to treat others with kindness and love even when they don’t. It is never right to be mean to other people. We should all strive to follow the golden rule and to fight temptations.
. Even if people hate you, love them. Everyone has sin in them, but everyone also has Jesus in them. No matter what, always treat your enemies with respect and love
I think this scripture reflection is telling us that God made us for a reason and we are all perfect the way God made us. We are amazing in our own brilliant ways.
We need to learn to forgive others. Even if they are your worst enemy you should forgive them.
What the scripture is telling me is that we should be an example of Christ and be like him. We should love our enemies like Christ did and do what he asks us to do.
Today Jesus is telling us that you can’t just do what is easy, you can’t just do what everyone else is doing. It’s so easy to love those who love you, and loan to those who you expect back from, but that is what everyone does, we must reach out and do what is difficult, and go against the flow of what is natural sometimes. other people might find it weird that you would love someone who hates you, or that you are kind to those who are full of hatred, but that is what Jesus gives us, we can be full of hate and anger at God, yet he still loves us, he is asking us to do the same for our brothers and sisters on Earth.
I think scripture is saying that you should be nice to your enemies even though they were mean to you because in the future you might work with them, or just need them for something and if you were nice to them they would help you out. And you might see them again in Heaven.
We would not judge or gossip behind the backs of our best friends. That is because we are good friends with them and we wouldn’t want to hurt them. We should act the same for people we don’t know. If you think someone is weird or you know something embarrassing about them don’t go spreading the word. Instead treat that person like you would treat your best friend. Just stay silent if you have nothing nice to say about someone.
I think that the Scripture is telling us to love our enemies and neighbors. For every one person that we hate, the more time you spend in purgatory.
This gospel is about when you be perfect to someone God will be perfect to you.
Jesus tells us to thrive to be like God. He doesn’t expect us to get it right on the first try, he just wants us to…try. When we keep trying and never give up on Him we’ll get closer and closer to what God wants us to be.
There is no perfect person anyone will need Jesus for support and truth. Even if someone wants to think the rules of God don’t apply to them they are wrong.
We should try to be as close to perfect as we can. It may be hard but we can still try to do good all around us.
I think the scripture is saying to be kind to everyone in the likeness of God. Even if you aren’t close with someone or don’t necessarily like someone, we should always be kind to them.
Forgive everyone you can. Even if they are your enemy or friend always forgive. You won’t get anywhere with being stuck with that hate you have towards them.
Today, Jesus is telling us to do the hardest thing known to man, love our enemies. How crazy is that, loving the people we are supposed to hate, loving the ones who have done us wrong. Well we have to do it, because if we don’t then we cannot enter the kingdom of Heaven
Even though we could never be anywhere near perfect, God has given us the best example to follow in Jesus Christ. If we start paying closer attention to the way Jesus lived His life, we will have a better idea of how we can get ourselves to Heaven. Something that stuck out to me was, “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you,” because I always tend to think it’s okay for me to hate anybody who’s done me wrong. I have to pray harder that I get this out of my head. This keeps leading me to sin because I’m not treating people the way I want to be treated, I’m not treating people the way God treats me, and I’m not treating people the way I know I should be.
There is no such thing more perfect than Jesus. we should act like more like Him. God loved his enemies no matter what and he is saying that we should do the same thing as Him, to be more like Him.
He is telling us in this scripture that we shall love one another as we love him and pray for our enemies and even our friends
Jesus is telling us that we need to treat others with the respect that we want to be treated with.
I think to the scripture is telling us to stay close to God. If we feel we are falling we should try to be closer to God.
This Gospel is telling me that I shall “Love my enemies and pray to those who persecute you.” God loves everyone, even us the SINNERS that keep sinning. Since God loves us even in hard times so should we love others who we dislike.
It tells us that some people may look perfect around you doesn’t mean you have to be like them.
In thus scripture reading the line: “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” stuck out to me. I think it stuck out to me because how am I supposed to be perfect just like God and it doesn’t make since but when you really think about it you should be trying to live up to God every day because that is that is the end goal and the saints know that.
I think the scripture is trying to tell us that we need to be kind to one another. We are all made in God’s image so if we are hurting one another it’d like we are hurting God.
In this gospel Jesus talks about how you can’t only love those who love you have to love every one even if they don’t love you . You need to be kind to them and maybe they will be kind to you.
I think the scripture is telling us that we need to be kind to one another. Since we are all made in God’s image so if we are hurting each other it’s like we are hurting God.
You need to strive to be better everyday. Even if you are down on yourself, you need to try and be better. Strive for perfection.
This scripture is telling me to love everybody no matter what. We must be like Jesus and love everybody. Jesus loved everybody that persecuted him. We must do the same and love everybody that persecutes us.
Live like God would, live every moment of your life like God is right next to you and always right by your side, because he really is even though we cannot see him. When God says to live perfect like him, he knows we will still make mistakes and sin because that is how we are made but we can strive to be better than that and to strive to be perfect.
In this Gospel, Jesus tells us to love our enemies. This is hard for us because we don’t want to be nice to them because they are our enemy. But Jesus is saying we need to get over that temptation to be mean to them and follow Him and be nice to your enemy.
In this scripture, we need to love our neighbors as ourselves. Are we not all the same human beings God has made us to be? Though some have done bad, what makes us have the right to hold grudges against them. We need to learn how to forgive and and love our enemies as God has always forgiven us.
what this scripture passage is trying to teach us is that God doesnt expect us to be perfect he expects us to love your neighbor as yourself.
I think that this scripture is telling us to be kind to every person no matter if you never have liked them or you were best friends with them. To ALLWAYS use the golden rule and to treat your neighbor as you would want to be treated.
” love your enemies” this saying is probably the most difficult line in the Bible to follow. Love your enemies? All of us would say hate your enemies but that is why God is telling us to love them. We need to love everyone no matter who they are.
What this scripture reflection says to me is that we all need to be more like Jesus. Jesus was perfect in every way and did all that he could for us. He was the perfect role model that we all should try to be like.
What I think I am being told from this Gospel is that we are all family. We should love one another as we love God. He doesn’t really think that we would be perfect, but He thinks that we are capable of spreading the same love we give to God to our own neighbors.
I think the scripture is telling us to love everyone, even people we hate. I mean it literally says that in the passage, so do I really need to go into depth with this scripture reflection? It’s spelled out FOR us.
If you only care about your friends and family but don’t care about the people you don’t like, you aren’t acting like God. He loved those who hated Him.
Jesus tells us to love our enemies, well as our friends. “You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you,” Pray for those who you don’t have a connection with, those who have wronged you. He knows that it is hard, that we hold grudges, but He wants to help us through it and to help us be perfect, like Him.
Jesus tells us to love our enemies, well as our friends. “You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you,” Pray for those who you don’t have a connection with, those who have wronged you. He knows that it is hard, that we hold grudges, but He wants to help us through it and to help us be perfect, like God.
What I think this is saying is that you don’t have to be perfect but you could be by worshiping God and not sinning. That is a perfect life and only two people have lived it. Jesus and Mary are the only ones that lived without sin.
In todays Scripture Jesus tells us to forgive are enemies and to love them. So we can care for them even if they don’t forgive us.
This scripture is talking about how we should forgive everyone no matter what they done to someone or to ourselves because there is always a little good in each and every person.
I think that this is telling me kind of what yesterday’s was telling me and that is to follow in God’s footsteps. God is the best example to follow, that we should follow.
Today’s Scripture passage is saying that we should love our enemies just as much as we love our family and friends. We should try to be more like Jesus and treat everyone with kindness and mercy. Only be God’s grace will we be empowered to love everyone and not judge them.
We all think we are perfect and we are stubborn about it so it is saying if we think we are perfect we should do what God has done.
What the gospel is telling me is that love your neighbor for that they are your brother and sister. Forgive them from the past and always been kind whether you like it or not. Even though you may have fought with a brother or sister you still have to love them as God would love us.
In this scripture passage it is reminding us that we need to forgive. We need to forgive our enemies so God can forgive.
I think it is saying that we need to believe and fully believe in order for us to get to Heaven. If we can follow Him and believe we should be saved.
We need to follow God’s footsteps and his commandments. If we have full faith in Him on top of those, we will inherit the kingdom of God.
To me this means God is actually not saying to us that we need to be perfect or bad things will happen. To me this actually means that we need to act perfect around each other and not to be angry or hurtful against each other.
I think this scripture is saying that we must try our best not to sin and be rude but that we must always believe in god.
This passage clearly states that revenge only brings you more suffering and sadness, than if we would just love each other like we would love Jesus. We are all brothers and sisters in Christ. Why, then, do we start wars and hate and bully eachother? Are we not siblings and one person in the Body of Christ?
In todays scripture Jesus says “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I say to you, love your enemies,” You should always love the ones that you hate. Love all, because that is what Jesus did. He loved all.
God wants us to be kind and loving for others because he made us in the image of himself and he doesn’t want hate or anything negative. That’s why we give our lives to God so we can learn to love and be kind.
I think this scripture is trying to tell us that now is the best time to start forming our relationship with Jesus. In our young earthly age, we still have plenty of time to begin our road to heaven, that road starts with forming our relationship with God. If we are able to do that, God will help be our guide to avoiding sin and temptations as we get closer and closer to heaven.
In today’s Scripture Jesus is the people to love their enemy as they love their friends. “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. we need to love each other like we would love Jesus.
In today’s Scripture Jesus is the people to love their enemy as they love their friends. “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy”. we need to love each other like we would love Jesus.