On September 11, 2001, America woke up to a morning that looked like any other—planes taking off on schedule, office workers pouring coffee, stock traders watching numbers flicker on screens. Everything was routine until routine itself became the weapon. That is the danger of predictability: it often looks harmless until it becomes the doorway through which risk walks in.

I have always believed that life becomes most dangerous when it becomes too easy to read. Predictability gives comfort, yes, but it also paints targets. In many parts of life—business, politics, relationships, even survival—being too predictable is like walking the same dark alley every night at the same hour and expecting no one to notice. Patterns are magnets. They invite watchers, and not all watchers come with good intentions.

Nature itself teaches this harsh lesson. In the wild, animals that repeat habits carelessly become prey. A deer that drinks from the same riverbank at the same hour will eventually meet the patient jaws of a crocodile. It is not cruelty; it is the law of observation. Hunters, whether in jungles or boardrooms, live on patterns. The world has always rewarded those who study repetition and punished those who perform it unthinkingly.

The same thing happens with money. Markets feast on the predictable. Investors who act on habit rather than thought are often the first to lose. A businessperson who keeps using old formulas in a changing economy may appear stable, but stability can turn into rust. I dislike that kind of comfort—the lazy comfort that says, “This worked before, so that it will work forever.” History laughs at that kind of thinking. Kodak learned it. Nokia learned it. Entire empires learned it.

Even in politics, predictability can be fatal. A leader who reacts the same way every time becomes easy to manipulate. Rivals learn his buttons like piano keys. Press one, and there goes the speech, the anger, the decision. I find it strange how many powerful men fall not because they are weak, but because they are readable. A predictable politician is like an open book left in the rain—soon ruined, and everyone has already read the ending.

Relationships are no exception. Love may enjoy routine, but human hearts are not machines. When one becomes too predictable—not in loyalty, but in effortlessness—neglect begins to creep in like termites in old wood. I have seen how boredom can quietly kill what betrayal never could. It is almost funny, in a sad way: some people lose the people they love not through dramatic mistakes, but by becoming furniture—always there, always the same, no longer noticed.

Technology has sharpened this truth. Algorithms love predictability because predictable people are easy to sell to, easy to influence, and easy to keep scrolling. Every click, every pause, every repeated behavior becomes a breadcrumb trail. I admit it bothers me. The machine knows what song I might like before I even hear it, what anger might hook me before I even feel it. There is no magic. That is the business of studying habits until habits become a cage.

So, what then? Should life be chaotic? Of course not. I still value discipline, order, and routine. But I have learned to keep a little mystery alive—to think differently, move differently, question my own habits, and break patterns when needed. Predictability is a good servant but a terrible master. As a house with all its doors unlocked, it may feel welcoming, but it also makes entry far too easy for danger.

THIS is what we can gather from that gospel episode (cfr. Mt 5,43-48) where Christ told his disciples: “You have heard that it has been said, Thou shall love thy neighbor, and hate thy enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you.”

And then he gave the reason for this incredible commandment by saying, “That you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who makes his sun to rise upon the good, and bad, and rains upon the unjust and the unjust.” Then, at the end, he concluded by saying, “Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect.”

As we can see, the love we ought to have for one another should have no boundaries, since it has to include our enemies. We are asked to love without keeping score. Everything has to be done gratuitously. And our love would be more perfect, more meritorious the more unlovable our enemy would be.

Said another way, we can say that loving our enemies can only show how mature our faith is, how complete our discipleship to Christ is, and how we are more identified with God who created us as his image and likeness, sharers of his life and nature.

Loving our enemies is not merely a human moral improvement. Rather, it is a living participation in the divine manner of loving, shaping us into the likeness of God’s fatherly goodness. Loving our enemies, therefore, constitutes the perfection of charity.

Still, we have to clarify that we love our enemies for who they are, children of God as we are, and not for whatever evil or mistake they have done.

We just have to understand that we can only manage to love our enemies if we truly are with God through Christ in the Spirit. He, after all, is the source, the power and the pattern of how this kind of love can take place.

So, the challenge to face and the task to do is how to immerse ourselves in God, practically identifying ourselves with him, since we are meant to be his image and likeness. Our true and ultimate dignity and identity is that of being children of God.

In other words, the fullness and perfection of our humanity is when we finally become like God which can only take place in heaven. But while here on earth, we just have to do our best to pursue that ideal.

To be sure, on God’s part, all the means are already made available. We are already given the doctrine of our faith so we would know what right and wrong are in our earthly pilgrimage. We are given the sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist, so we can truly be identified with Christ who is the pattern of our humanity. We have the Church and the accompaniment of angels, saints and holy people, etc.

On our part, we just have to learn to pray and to truly have a vital encounter with God, which is actually possible and doable, because God is already with us. Being our Creator who puts and keeps us in existence, he can never be absent from us. We just have to learn how to get in touch with him, for only then can we aspire to be in our ideal condition as man.

We have to understand that the commandment to love our enemies is due to the fact that we are meant to be truly one with God. And it is the fullness of love that can do that.