When I was in primary school, I begged mum to let me do Karate lessons. So once a week for about a month me and a mate would go to Karate down the road. I didn’t last very long because I just wanted to beat people up and Karate wasn’t about that.

Generally speaking, martial arts is about consuming and redirecting your opponent’s aggressive energy so that you flow and move with it until the other person eventually realises that fighting you is useless.

Today Jesus tells us to love our enemies. Not to accept them, not to tolerate them, and not to simply endure them but to love them. It’s a difficult task for anyone especially towards those who have deeply wounded us.

Perhaps there is some similarities between Jesus’ teaching on loving your enemies and Karate. Next time you feel victimised in some way, and you feel that all consuming passion welling up inside you, instead of finding a way to beat them up or just tolerating them, try consuming and redirecting their attacks like a martial artist. So that through faith and works our aggressors see that violence is not the answer, Love is.

by Fr Isaac Falzon