Christ Jesus knew how to love his enemies; moreover, he knew that the peace for which humanity yearns must come through the individual's daily effort to overcome enmity wherever it is encountered. He was the most successful peacemaker the world has ever known, and he did not bring peace through appeasing evil; rather did he destroy evil through his reflection of divine Love.
Jesus tells us in his Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:9), "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God." Farther on in this most wonderful of all sermons he outlines the way to earn the title of peacemaker in these words: "I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." All who would be peacemakers must recognize in these strong words of the Master's a demand to bring evil to an end through healing it in their own thinking.
Let no one assume that to obey Jesus' command to love, bless, pray for, and do good to his enemies is passive in any sense. On the contrary, it requires positive, instant, and courageous healing activity on the part of the one who thus stamps out evil as unreal. The human temptation is to retaliate in kind or to hide from evil; the divine way is to face it, deny it, and heal it through divine Love.
