Psalm 23:5
Thou preparest a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
thou anointest my head with oil, my cup overflows.
One of the hard facts of life is that we really do have enemies. This is hard to take. We try to be nice. We pay our taxes, do our jobs, love our families and support the Red Cross drive every year. We try to be decent people, to play fair, and give others the benefit of the doubt. And yet, we find there are people who still hate us. They hate us because we have the wrong color skin, or because we are Catholic, or because we have the wrong sort of last name, or because we remind them of somebody else they hate. We look at these “reasons” they hate us and what strikes us most strongly is how lame they are. My skin? That’s why she hates me? My name? Because of that they despise me? And we are right to think such “reasons” lame, for they are. But we must also remember that the people held in the chains of such enmity are themselves prisoners. For as St. Paul says, “For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). It is Satan, not man, who is our true enemy, for he enslaves us to enmity one with another. And so Jesus has prepared a table for all the fallen children of Adam, for us and those who hate us, that we might be saved and reconciled with one another. The best way of destroying our enemy, said one of the Church Fathers, is to make him our friend. Pray for your enemies today that they may one day join you at the table the Lord has prepared. And, where possible, do something good for your enemies today.
