Loving my neighbor, but only for 40 days in Lent

Loving the people I don’t like. That was my Lenten discipline last year, and it is again. I’ve not made much progress in the last 12 months. It started with some prayerful reflection on what it means to love God and neighbor as the most important part of fulfilling the deepest intention of the law. Neighbors are not always easy to love, especially if you don’t like them. The generalized Christian claim that “I love everybody” just doesn’t cut it. It’s easy enough to love the people I like. Anybody can do that, says St. Paul. So my original idea was to learn to love the people I don’t like who inhabit various parts of my life. It’s more complicated than I expected.

It turns out that disliking someone is a variable that ranges from “I can tolerate you except for these two or three things you do/are that really get under my skin” to “What you say and do borders on the despicable and I really don’t like you at all.” None of the people within that range are enemies as such. I’m not trying to learn to love my enemies. I’m just trying to learn to love the people I don’t like, and it’s hard. Some I’ve learned to tolerate in reasonably good humor. Some I prefer to avoid except when socially or professionally required. Some I keep emotionally and physically as far away from me as possible. Oddly enough, it seems these are the very people Jesus would have me learn to love.

Continuing prayerful reflection on this problem, I had to face the unpleasant fact that many of them don’t like me either, and I find that very hard to believe. Me? A gentle priest of the church? How could that be? How do you bridge the gap of mutual dislike?