The antitheses that Jesus proposes in the fifth chapter of Matthew – “you understood that it was said … but I tell you” – all concern our relationship with our neighbor, until we reach this summit: “love your enemies”. Jesus invites us to set our gaze on others, to renew the relationships we live with them according to the evangelical logics of love, and not according to the opposite logics of the imposition of themselves and of domination. Yet this horizontal gaze, on which the fifth chapter insists, has its root in a vertical gaze, which rises upwards, to fix itself on the way of being and acting of the Father. The perfection to which Jesus calls the disciple, so that his justice can be “superior” and reach a full fulfillment, is the perfection of love, which makes us children of the Father, who “makes his sun rise over the bad guys and on the good, and it rains on the just and the unjust ». The great invitation of Leviticus – “Be holy, because I, the Lord, your God, am holy” – now translates into the implicit invitation in the words of Jesus: “love as the Father knows how to love, as the Father loves you”. It is possible to do it because – announces Paul to the Corinthians – we are the temple of God and the Spirit of God lives in us. The Spirit is the breath of God that transforms our life by giving it to dwell in God and his love.

Commentary by Comunità di Dumenza

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves, Prinknash Abbey