Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Having defended his apostleship, St. Paul now begins to remind the Corinthians of the collection to help Christians in the Holy Land, Christians, a community chiefly of Jewish origin.
Their troubles started before the Corinthians knew Christ, when famine struck during the reign of Claudius.
At the time, Paul and Barnabas brought aid from the first Gentile Christian community at Antioch.
Now, two or three years after Nero had succeeded Claudius, St. Paul was preparing another collection.
The Corinthians had already said that they wanted to help, and soon St. Paul would be coming with other disciples to collect their contributions.
To encourage them to be generous, he tells them of the extraordinary generosity of the churches to their north in the province of Macedonia, they have given until it hurt.
He does not command them to give, they are free to give nothing, or a little, or a lot, but he would have them show the genuineness of their love by their concern for others.
To the example of the Macedonians, he adds the example of Christ, and now there is someone who really gave until it hurt.
This is the gem in today's reading.
For your sake, he became poor, although he was rich, so that by his poverty, you might become rich.
These words, the Apostle tacitly tells the Corinthians that if they wish to imitate Christ closely, they should enrich the poor with their alms, and impoverish themselves so as to enrich others.
But what St. Paul says is very profound, and St. Francis understood it, and that is why he wanted to be poor.
He deemed it an honor to be like our King Jesus Christ, who, though he was Lord of all, willed for our sake to become the servant of all, and although he was rich and glorious in majesty, came as one poor and despised in our humanity.
Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, St. Paul says elsewhere, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.
The human nature is infinitely poor in comparison with the divine nature, so by the Incarnation, Christ became poor to a degree that we cannot match.
Furthermore, he did not choose to become a rich man, but a poor man, one with nowhere to lay his head.
This poverty made us rich, because, by it, he redeemed us and made us partakers of the divine nature, which is the greatest riches anyone could have.
So while we cannot equal him, because we do not start as God, we can imitate him by giving up such riches as we have in order to make others rich, and above all, rich in God's grace.
This St. Francis did, giving up every worldly possession to preach and sacrifice himself for the salvation of souls.
This you can do in a small way when you give up at least a little of your possessions to help someone in need, as St. Paul asked the Corinthians to do.
This is called for by the commandment to love our neighbor, of which Jesus speaks in today's Gospel.
The Hebrew word for neighbor can also mean friend or companion, and this helps us to understand how “love your neighbor” had come to be understood and expanded to love your friend but hate your enemy.
Jesus explains that this is a misunderstanding.
You must not hate your enemy, but love your enemy, because this is what your Father in Heaven does.
He gives sun and rain to the good and to the wicked, to his friends and to his enemies.
To love your friends and companions but hate your enemies is not something that needs to be commanded.
Sinners do this, even though they have little care for God's commandments.
To greet your friends and shun your enemies is nothing praiseworthy.
They can do it without having ever heard the word of God.
Our Father in Heaven is not looking for mediocrity, but for perfection, and if it's true that we'll never become perfect, this means that we always have to try to improve.
We must strive to be worthy sons of our Heavenly Father, who loved his enemies so much that he gave his son to die for them.
To pray for them is really the least we can do.
In our enemies, we love the person, and we hate the evil they do.
The person is not inseparable from the evil he does.
This is what repentance is all about.
So loving our enemies means desiring that they love God, it means desiring their conversion and sanctification.
This supposes that we are dealing with an enemy who can love God.
The demons cannot, and therefore we are not to love demons even though they are our enemies.
It is rather our neighbor who is an enemy that we must love because he can change, however unlikely it may seem.
God loves his enemies by offering them the opportunity and sufficient grace to change.
So he gives them sun and rain and other things they need to live, and he sends his son to become poor that they might become rich.
This goes with some words of St. Gregory Nazianzen, let us become like Christ since Christ also became like us.
He became poor that we, through his poverty, might become rich.
He took the form of a slave that we might regain freedom.
He descended that we might be raised up.
He was tempted that we might be victorious.
He was dishonored to glorify us.
He died to save us.
He ascended to draw to himself us who lay below in the fall of sin.
Let us give everything, offer everything to the one who gave himself as a ransom and an exchange for us.
One can give nothing comparable to oneself.
Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.

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Ave Maria.