7^th Sunday of Ordinary Time (A); February 19^th, 2023

Lv 19:1-2,17-18.  Ps 103.  1 Cor 3:16-23.  Mt 5:38-48

Deacon Jim McFadden

            Last Sunday we reflected how Jesus instructed his disciples on the Sermon of the Mount to watch over little things that undermine our love relationships.  Today, he goes further by calling us to love our enemies, which is a radical departure from the way most people live; indeed, our Lord’s challenge is nothing less than a Christian Revolution.

            Keep in mind that as we reflect upon our Lord’s teachings, that via our baptism we were grafted onto Jesus as we became viable members of his mystical Body, the Church.  Being in Christ, St. Paul can boldly proclaim that Jesus is never far from anyone of us and that being the case “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:27c-28). That includes everyone because “…we too are his offspring” (v. 29a). So, living the teachings of Jesus is not an option; we can’t pick-and-choose which teachings of his we want to follow.  So, if we backslide, ignore, equivocate, or reject his challenge to “love our enemies”, we are by that fact rejecting as  Jesus as our Lord—in short, our relationship has been compromised.

            Make no mistake, Jesus is proposing a Christian revolution that can only be lived through the life of grace.  Our Lord is not trying to make our lives difficult by cluttering them with spiritual obstacles.  Rather, he is guiding us into reality that is grounded in Trinitarian love.  Put simply, Jesus shows us that the way of true justice—the fair and equitable way human beings should interact—is done through the love of love, which is greater than the law of retaliation, “an eye for eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

            Getting down to the heart of the matter, Jesus commands us to love our enemies because that person is a child of God, made in the image and likeness of God, and is, therefore, worthy of our love.  None of this implies that we should condone bad behavior or to abide evil, but that we should react in a revolutionary way.  Rather than respond to evil with another evil action, he calls us to respond with the good.  Since Jesus is Immanuel, God among us, he is a realist: he knows that the only way to break the chain of evil is to live how God operates, which is self-giving love.  That is the Law of Grace; that’s how the universe is grounded and sustained.  The chain of evil can only be broken and things will only truly change through God’s love and mercy.  To be sure, evil, in fact, is a “void”—it’s the absence of good.  Ontologically, it has no being, though its effects are very grim and real.  But, It’s not possible to fill this void with more evil—it simply can’t work because it’s based on an illusion.  The only way this void can be filled is with the “fulness” of God’s being, which is the ultimate Good—namely, Trinitarian Love.

            How would love of our enemy manifest itself?   In our lifetime, we have witnessed some extraordinary examples of enemy love.  Recount the Amish couple who befriended and then defended in court the young man who had brutally killed their own son.  Or, Cardinal Bernardin, who visited and anointed the man who has accused him falsely of sexual misconduct.  Sadly, these examples are precious and rare,  but this is what Jesus is calling us to.

            Brothers and sisters, Jesus’ Way is the best option.  Revenge never leads to long-term conflict resolution.  We’ve all been there, done that—and we know deep down that it just doesn’t work!  Yet we keep going down that same well-trodden path, which Neil Young once said leads to “no where.”

            As we conclude our reflection, at her trial, St. Joan of Arc said that one thing I know for sure is that “the Risen Christ and the Church are one and the same.” As such Jesus is challenging us to live a life patterned after the holiness of God; it is to live a life radically dependent upon grace.  Such a life can only be lived in community because it is just too difficult to do by ourselves.  We need models of Christian living that embody integrity, honesty, and faithfulness to one another as interconnected members of Jesus’ mystical Body.  That’s why we have to refrain from objectifying our enemy, by identifying them with their sin, but to see them as they truly are: a beloved child of God.   If we see someone doing wrong, we will rebuke them—we won’t  enable or condone their behavior.  But, at the same time, we can pray for them, pray for those who mistreat us, expressing a solidarity with them as our brother or sister.  For our own good, Jesus is forbidding us to entertain any kind of vengeance; we our told to love our enemy as we love ourselves because that is the Way of Jesus!  If we want to abide in him, now and forever, we have to live like him.  Let us embrace this Christian revolution. Amen.