Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
Enmity creates enemies. Two wills combat creating havoc and chaos. Each one is trying to force the other into submission. Enmity, that hatred which develops in the heart, creates bitterness, which causes violence, terrorism, and vengeance. This notion of enmity differs from the biblical notion.
In a fallen world, enmity is a power struggle trying to impose one’s vision upon another. This enmity disregards truth, goodness, justice, and peace. This worldly notion of enmity is purely a power struggle to dominate and dictate. It is tyranny, the offspring of envy.
In the Biblical world, however, enmity hates the injustices of tyranny. It opposes those who attack, out of their envy, the truth, goodness, beauty, and peace of God’s love. As Amos tells us, “Hate evil, and love good” (Amos 5:15). St. Paul too tells the Romans, “Abhor what is evil, cling to what is good” (Rom 12:9). Proverbs declares, “The fear of the LORD is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate” (Pro 8:13).
Scripture is clear. Enmity in the biblical world, hates the injustices caused by dictators and tyrants. Enmity, a healthy hatred for evil, upholds goodness, seeks peace, protects beauty, and demands true justice. The Psalmist encapsulates this thought telling us, “Hate evil, you who love the Lord” (Ps. 97:10 NAB).
Hatred, a frightening term, properly cultivated confronts the injustices, unrighteousness, and evil in our world. A holy hatred in our heart of evil does not oppose God’s love. It protects it from envy, the malicious attacks against God’s love.
Creation ought to honor God because God bestowed his goodness upon us. Yet, enmity entered our world because of the envy of the Evil One (Wis 2:24). Lucifer causes injustice. He opposed God giving goodness to those less than himself. God responded opposing Lucifer and his attack making a clear distinction concerning good and evil.
In the beginning God created, but when Adam and Eve sinned, God said, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed” (Gen 3:15). God ordained enmity, not man. He created enmity not out of spite or malice, but out of love to protect us against the enmity of the Evil One.
Enmity is part of Divine Justice. God’s justice, acting out of sheer love, condemns any act that opposes his goodness, justice, or peace. God’s Justice destroys evil and brings about harmony, the right ordering of creation.
St. John Paul II in his retreat talks, Sign of Contradiction explains why there must be enmity. “The worst situations of all are the ones in which distinction between good and evil is thrown to the winds: chaos then reigns” (Karol Wojtyla, Sign of Contradiction, p. 47). If no distinction exists, then evil and goodness are relative. Morality: what is good for man, rightly ordering him to live in harmony with God and offering true fulfillment, is abolished. No longer does right and wrong exist, righteousness or unrighteousness, justice or injustice. Peace and harmony become war and rivalry. Civil society becomes obscene, indecent, even insolent. Freedom becomes enslaved because no one can define it. No measure, standard, or rule protects our justice. In fact, justice becomes my personal choice even if it offends, or worse, attacks dehumanizing others through senseless violence.
Biblical enmity divorces these evils from goodness, less we become confused and compromise allowing evil to exist. Evil by its very definition destroys goodness. St. Thomas Aquinas defines evil as, “The absence of the good, which is natural and due to a thing” (I. q. 49, a. 1). Evil seeks to our devour goodness leaving us in desolation, void of any dignity. Evil is a negative. Something essential is missing from that which is truly good. As a full symphony, an orchestra has harmony and integrity as all the different musicians play the same music, so one missing note, one wrong cord, or one missing musician depletes the symphony.
Every note played, every choice we make, either completes goodness or depletes it. An evil choice, the wrong note, removes God and his goodness. It creates the chaos that St. John Paul II warned against. This happens choice by choice, slowly devouring our goodness. Evil acts, rejecting, denying, or impeding an intimate relationship with Him. Ultimately it leads to total rejection of God and his goodness, justice, peace, and love.
Ultimately, evil is a perversion of goodness. It infects our body, poisoning our goodness until it contaminates everything. Evil devours our goodness creating cracks breaking us apart until we become shattered and broken. It impedes our communion creating disharmony leading to separation, opposition, and isolation. Evil is never good. It will never be good. Therefore, as God ordained, it must be removed completely, even sterilized. If not, as any infectious disease, it grows back stronger than before, devouring and erasing our goodness.
All evil, even the smallest amount, needs annihilation. Annihilated, goodness grows. Goodness another word for wholeness, makes us holy, that is consecrated to the Lord. Consecration sets us apart, so God’s power infuses us with his holiness. Consecrated, we become holy, holy unto the Lord, that most beautiful Hebrew expression: Kadosh Adonai.
Our consecration protects us from any trace of evil. This protection, as God tells Moses, comes from keeping the covenant. “If you will obey my voice and keep my covenant” (Ex 19:5). “If” is the key word. It is not a threat but reveals the consequences of our choices. If we do not keep the covenant, though God gives us every grace and strength to keep his commandments, his justice will protect his holiness. As Scripture tells us, Nothing impure enters God’s presence (Rev 21:27).
Daniel describes the broken covenant, not just broken, but defiled by every sort of perversity.
O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps covenant and merciful love with those who love him and keep his commandments, we have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and ordinances (Dan 9:4–5).
Despite the wicked, rebellion, God does the unthinkable, “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Ro 5:8). Dying, Jesus restores his covenant with us, so we once again become good and holy, singing: Kadosh Adonai.
To restore us, Jesus comes not as Lord and Master, though He is, but as servant and teacher. He empowers his apostles giving them his divine authority. Empowered, having the full authority of Jesus, the apostles preach as commanded: “‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without pay, give without pay” (Mt 10:7–8). In other words, restore holiness to God’s people.
The apostles enter the fray, the push and pull of evil and goodness, touching, cleansing, and freeing the people from the evils that empty their lives of holiness. They battle, as did Jesus, as did the prophets, displaying God’s power and authority to restore our goodness and holiness. They along with Jesus, offer freedom, excellence, and righteousness. Once again there is an “If”. To belong to the covenant, Jesus preaches: ”Repent and believe in the Gospel” (Mark 1:15).
Repentance is more than declaring ourselves as sinners, though we are. Repentance also means more than being declared righteous by the acceptance of Jesus Christ into our lives. Repentance acknowledges how helpless we are in overcoming evil. (Rom 5:6). Evil is not natural, it is supernatural—demonic—and unless we bond with God through his covenant, we cannot defeat evil. It is too powerful.
The covenant invites us to separate from the evil infecting the world and live in holiness. Holiness accepts our helplessness, making us meek and humble of heart. Meekness and humility divorces us from the pride and envy of evil giving us power—divine power—to confront and overcome any temptation. Enmity, a healthy hatred against pride and envy the root of all evil, protects us.
Today, the enmity between good and evil is compromised. Today, evil appears attractive and seductive. It blends with goodness and holiness causing concessions and rationalizations to act unjustly. Prophetically, Pius XII proclaimed, “Perhaps the greatest sin in the world today is that men have begun to lose the sense of sin” (Pius XII, Radio Message to the Participants in the National Catechetical Congress of the United States in Boston).
Beholding and experiencing God’s holiness and goodness gives us a divine perspective. We see evil for what it is: dehumanization. Realizing how degrading evil is, we desperately desire, all the more, God’s goodness and justice. Repentance cuts us frees from our desperation for we experience God’s power to set us free from the tyranny of evil. Repentance acknowledges our emptiness, not to shame or embarrass us, but to allow God’s holiness to penetrate our hearts, tangibly touching them, filling us with what we crave: to be made holy by the Lord our God.