Daily Gospel Reflection
Join the Notre Dame family of faith. Receive God’s Word and a unique reflection in your inbox each day.
March 15, 2025
Jesus said to his disciples:
“You have heard that it was said,
You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I say to you, love your enemies,
and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your heavenly Father,
for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,
and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have?
Do not the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet your brothers and sisters only,
what is unusual about that?
Do not the pagans do the same?
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
I strive to be excellent at everything I do, which has resulted in a fierce competitiveness within me, at times, even animosity towards others. My entire professional career since leaving South Bend has been about forming coalitions, from the bonds I forged in the military while considering very real adversaries to the relationships I have made in the corporate world as we battle against other companies.
In both cases, while I have certainly loved my neighbors, it has been natural for me to hate my enemies as well. In the competitive meritocracy of the United States, animosity can be a natural shortcut we take to compartmentalize those we are against.
Pursuing excellence for its own sake is certainly admirable. Indeed, I would argue that other gospel parables encourage it. Here, however, Jesus calls us to do something far higher. Perhaps the challenge offered by this gospel passage is to take the excellence we strive for in our daily lives to a new level. Jesus directs us to love our enemies, making ourselves perfect in the same way that our heavenly Father is perfect.
If we compete from a sense of hatred, we are no different from the sinners and pagans of Jesus’s time. On the other hand, if we can pursue excellence from love—to separate our ambitions from our need to dominate or defeat others—friend or foe, then maybe we can bring ourselves closer to God’s divinity.
Prayer
Heavenly Father, your Word is active and alive, effective and enlivening. It achieves the end for which you send it. Transformed by your Word and filled with your Spirit, may our words not be empty, but may we imitate you by speaking true words of forgiveness from the heart to those who sin against us. Amen.
Saint of the Day
St. Louise de Marillac was a French saint who struggled to find God's will for her life: she married, had a child, discerned the religious life, and struggled to find God's will in the ups and downs of life's fortunes.
In 1591, Louise was born out of wedlock to a very wealthy man, Louis de Marillac. Louise never knew her birth mother, but her father Louis embraced her as his natural daughter, although not his legal heir, until he remarried a new wife, Antoinette Le Camus, who refused to accept Louise into their household. Thus, Louise was cared for by various affluent relatives at the Dominican monastery of Poissy.
When Louise was twelve, her father passed away. She began to feel a draw towards religious life. She applied to be a Capuchin nun, and her application was denied. Louise was devastated by this rejection. When she was twenty-two, Louise was persuaded by her family to marry a wealthy young man named Antoine, who was the secretary to the queen. In 1613, Antoine and Louise were wed. Later that year, Louise bore a son, Michel.
While living in Paris, Antoine was struck ill, and Louise cared for her ailing husband and was consumed with regret and guilt for not entering the religious life. Thankfully, her spiritual advisor, St. Francis de Sales, comforted her and advised her to seek God's will in her current situation: in her life with her husband and son.
Louise was consoled in prayer on the Feast of Pentecost, 1623, that she should remain with Antoine, and, if he died before her, she would seek to make vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
Antoine passed away three years later. Louise created her rule of life, and went about her daily duties of caring for her son, maintaining her household and caring for the poor in the spirit of a religious sister. Soon, Louise was forced to move out of her fine home and seek more modest housing. She moved in close to where St. Vincent de Paul was doing his charitable work with the poor of Paris.
With a great deal of effort, Louise and Vincent founded the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, who worked in Paris alongside St. Vincent to nurse and care for the sick. More important than any of the good work the sisters did, Louise believed that it was above all, vitally important that every woman, whether married or religious, work to surrender herself entirely to God. This surrender to God is the basis of virtue in our homes, our religious communities, and is the true gift of Christian charity.
Louise died at the age of 68 in 1660. She was canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1934. She is the patron saint of widows, social workers, the sick and disappointed, children who let down their parents, and people rejected by religious orders. St. Louise reminds us all that God's will can be pursued in any state of life and it is never too late to answer God's call.
St. Louise de Marillac, who founded the Daughters of Charity with St. Vincent de Paul—pray for us!
Image Credit: Our featured image of St. Louise de Marillac is in the public domain. Last accessed February 3, 2025 on Wikimedia Commons.
