The Catholic Hater
Last week, I wrote an article on social media that began with this statement: My goal this Lent is to learn to hate.
It produced a lot of discomfort in the comments section. A generation of people raised on the bread of “Jesus loves you” and “Jesus is a lover and not a hater” swarmed in to disassociate the name of Jesus from leper known as hate.
The problem is, authentic love demands hate.
The standard “Act of Contrition” pasted on the walls of the confessional says this: “I detest all my sins because of thy just punishments, but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love.” In other words, it’s the love of God that ought to drive me to seek reconciliation and its love that leads me to hate the very thing that caused the separation in the first place.
The most famous expression of this is St. Augustine’s quip, “love the sinner, hate the sin,” translated most literally from the Latin as “with love for mankind and hatred of sins.”
More practically, or at least on a more human level, we often live out this principle on behalf of those we care about most. A mother whose son is addicted to heroin hates it out of love for her son. A father whose daughter is addicted to porn, out of love for her, hates the lust that grips her soul. And a friend hates the envy that drives his friend to misery because he loves him.
There’s no question that hate is a dangerous emotion to indulge and it ought to be handled with tremendous caution. But, if I love first, then hate for all that threatens to separate me from Him whom I claim to love, is a necessity.
The truth is, I don't desire God as much as I want to. And because my love for Him is so lukewarm, I'm too comfortable with the persistent presence of sin in my life. And this Lent, I hope I don’t pray, fast and give alms to check a box or test the limits of my will. But to learn, once again, to long for God above all things and to ruthlessly eliminate all that drains or distracts from that love.
May this Lent be blessed for you with a deeper love for God and a renewed hatred for the things that threaten to keep you from Him.
