The infernal cycle of violence and revenge, of which we are witnesses every day at the very heart of our homes, through television, is only broken when somebody offers the other cheek. When somebody does not return evil for evil. When somebody replies to evil with good, with love.

Love is certainly stronger than hatred. Only LOVE can overcome hatred.

A man full of the Spirit of God was capable of saying to his enemy: "If because of hatred, you take off an eye from me, I will continue looking at you with love, with the other eye".

This unconditional and extreme type of love, is only possible and understandable in the perspective of eternity that faith gives us. The faith that fills us with hope and LOVE. We really can only love the enemy if we have the conviction, that faith gives us, that LOVE has the last word and that evil has its days counted.

The second reading of Saint Paul has spoken to us of this perspective of eternity, of Paradise, of Heaven:

The "earthly man" is an easily violent and vindictive man. However, the man who is from Heaven, the Celestial man, is capable of rising with Christ towards the peaks of the love that forgives everything, that excuses everything.

The victory that overcomes the world, with its infernal cycle of violence and more violence, is our faith in the GOD WHO IS LOVE, revealed by Jesus Christ, the man "come down from Heaven". A faith that fills us with hope, a hope that enables us to love, and to love even crazily, in a radical way.

Of this crazy way of loving, which can only come from Heaven, I personally have a most shocking witness. The person who explained it to me asked me not to keep it to myself, but rather to communicate it to others. This I have always tried to do, without letting any opportunity pass by. For example, I explained this witness in the Seminary of Barcelona (Spain), on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the Auswitch concentration camp.

I met this person in a completely haphazard way (they say that chance is the pseudonym with which God signs). I was about 20 years old and I was studying in the United States, at the University of Texas, at Austin. My parents, because of my father’s work, had to spend some months in New York, and I went to visit them for some days.

On a weekend, we decided to do some tourism through the famous universities in the East Coast of the United States: Harvard, Princeton and Yale, in the state of Connecticut. It was during the short visit to the campus of this big and prestigious university, Yale, that I personally heard a life witness that I would never forget.

With my mother we were walking through the campus. We were completely lost, in the midst of gardens and buildings, and more buildings of the university. So that I thought that the best was to ask somebody to tell us on the map where we were. And I halted a woman who was walking towards us. It was an older woman, in her sixties, short in stature and very nice. She kindly indicated to us where we were, and we started a casual conversation. I do not well remember what we were speaking about. I only vaguely recall that she was explaining to us some family project she had.

But I well remember that we were not speaking about God, and for me, at a very strong moment of my faith, it was unthinkable that someone would speak about future projects without counting at all on God. So I thought to myself that I would do a favor to that woman if I suddenly interrupted her and said to her: "Don’t you realize that without God you can’t go anywhere?!"

She suddenly became silent and looked at me straight in the eyes (looking upwards, since she was quite shorter than me). And she said to me: "Did you say, G – o - d?... Did you say, G - o - d?... Did you say, G - o - d?"

Three times. And she did not dare pronounce the name of God. You should know that Jews do not pronounce the name of God.

And next she says to me: "Let me explain something about God to you." And she went on to say:

"We were standing around a room, and they forced us to witness the torture of own family members. Can you tell me where God was?"

I understood that she spoke about a Nazi concentration camp, and I attempted to tell her something about the mystery of where God was during the Nazi Concentration Camps, but she interrupted me and continued explaining:

The conversation continued, now centered completely on the subject of God and the life of faith, since she saw us, my mother and I, specially receptive and very impressed with her words.

She explained to us that, at that precise moment, she had a sorrow in her heart because somebody had painted the Nazi symbol on the door of her office at the university. She also told us that she was a metaphysics professor of the University of Paris, La Sorbonne, who that summer was giving some lectures at Yale.

And, after explaining all this to us, she said to me that I should not keep it for myself, that I should share it, that I should pass it on. And this is what I have just done for you.

We, my brothers and sisters, are made in the image and likeness of a God who is INFINITE AND ETERNAL LOVE. We, therefore, are also LOVE, and we are capable of loving as God loves, if we let Him help us. God wants us to be perfect in the UNCONDITIONAL SELFLESS LOVE, just as He is. We have read it in today’s Gospel (Luke 6,32-38):