I understand if you feel that today’s readings seem to present a paradox to us. How do we reconcile Jesus’ command “to hate” (which is the accurate translation of Jesus’s words as opposed to “love more” or “prefer”) recorded in the Gospel with St. Paul’s call to “owe nothing to anyone except to love one another,” presented in the first reading? How can we hate someone and still love them? What exactly do these readings mean by hate and love?
To be sure, there are countless commentaries out there that can offer you thorough exegetical analyses of these readings and explain the possible meaning of Jesus’s words and the extension of St. Paul’s exhortation. However, I can say that the Lord gave me the grace to live, in my own flesh, this gospel, when he called me to follow my vocation to the Priesthood. I understood that to really love God and others, I needed to be willing to hate, in the sense of this gospel, anything or anyone that may stand between me and God’s will.
Divine Call
When I was 20 years old, I went on a pilgrimage to Loreto, Italy, on the occasion of the World Youth Day. During this pilgrimage, I had a profound experience of God’s love. I felt a strong call to serve the Lord as a missionary priest, willing to be sent anywhere in the world. After the pilgrimage, I entered a period of discernment. Less than a year later, I was invited to a gathering of aspiring seminarians who would be sent to a seminary to begin their priestly formation.
I received this invitation with great joy and with a great sense of freedom. Immediately, I began making all the necessary arrangements to start a new life, wherever God would send me. There was a moment, however, when I realized that going to the seminary meant leaving everything and everyone, probably forever. I was going to leave my widowed mother, my sister, who had asked me to walk her down the aisle the day of her wedding, since my father was gone, and my brothers, who were just in their teens and probably needed the support of their older brother as they grew up. My country, my friends, my culture and especially, all the plans I had built for my life would be no longer. I was really affected by this realization. I seriously considered not going to the seminary again.
Discernment
I spoke with a priest who had helped me a lot during the time I was discerning my vocation. He listened to me, and he invited me to pray and to read the passage of today’s gospel. He said to me: “Go and ask the Lord to help you in your decision through the words of Christ in this gospel.” I went to the Blessed Sacrament with my Bible, and I read this passage over and over.
I asked the Lord to give me the grace to apply it to my life, because I was very confused. It was there, in this intimate moment with the Lord that I received the grace to understand that, in order to really love my mother, my sister and brothers, and all the things I was afraid to leave behind, I had to hate them, obviously not in the sense of the sinful and passionate dislike for them, which it would not be something Christ would invite me to do, but in the sense of hating the slightest possibility that they could become an option for me instead of the Lord and His plans for my life.
I understood that if I chose them over God, I would only be able to love them with a human selfish love, which would have been rooted in me and not in them, and much less in God, the only source of true love and life. This experience helped me make a decision for a lifetime! Strengthened by this special grace, I left my home and embarked on the adventure of my vocation and the mission of my life.
To love as Christ loved
My dear brothers and sisters, the Lord is calling all of us to love in the same dimension in which He has loved. He is calling us to hate, in the sense of this gospel, anything and anyone who may become an obstacle for us to give ourselves totally to God and to His will for us. Let us open ourselves to the power of His grace so that in choosing Him, we may also choose everything and everyone else. God bless you!
