Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus commands us to love our enemies. And therefore our enemies are also our brothers and our sisters. Notice that I am not denying that we have real enemies who are wicked. But it is a Christian conviction that all of that evil is not telling the deepest truth about the enemy.

The deepest truth is that he or she is a child of God, and thus worthy of our love. None of this implies that wicked people should not be brought to justice. But it does indeed imply that the person so arrested, tried, or imprisoned should remain a beloved brother or sister.

How should this manifest itself? There are heroic examples of enemy love, such as the Amish couple who befriended and then defended in court the young man who had brutally killed their own son; or Cardinal Bernardin, who visited and anointed the man who had accused him falsely of sexual misconduct. But these are precious and rare.

Something that all of us can do is pray for those who mistreat us, offering them to God, expressing a spiritual solidarity with them.