7th Sunday in Ordinary Time
February 19, 2022
Cathedral of Mary Our Queen
What Difference Does It Make?
Not long ago, a friend of mine asked me this question: “What difference does it make to practice the faith? How are church-going Catholics different from other people?” He added, “Unless the non-churched can see a real difference in the churched, they’re not likely to spare the time or make the effort to practice their faith.” He concluded by saying, “Frankly, I don’t see much of a difference.”
Hearing his observations was like eating green grapes: they set my teeth on edge. After all, I’ve been celebrating Sunday Mass for 45 years. Has it all been for nothing? Besides, studies show palpable differences between the churched & the unchurched. Those who attend Mass each week are likely to be more knowledgeable of their faith. They are more likely to accept the moral guidance of the Church. They are more likely to engage in charitable activities and to be more philanthropic. Yet, the more arguments I marshalled, the more I realized my friend had a point. If, in this age of declining religious practice, we would convince others to join us, then they must sense in us a critical difference. But what might that be?
Love Your Enemies
In today’s Gospel, Jesus teaches what should distinguish believers from non-believers, disciples from non-disciples, church goers from non-church goers – and it’s this: If we would be his followers, it is not good enough for us to love only our neighbor and only those who are good to us. That’s what everybody else does. That’s what non-believers do. If we would be Jesus’ disciples, we are to love our enemies and do good to them – and Jesus doesn’t stop there. He goes on to say that we should not expect our enemies to return our kindness. We are to stop judging and condemning but instead forgive in order to be forgiven.
I hope you would agree that loving one’s enemies is an important distinguishing mark, especially these days when bitterness, division, and recriminations are in vogue. In an angry culture, forgiveness and reconciliation are hard to come by. The goal is not to forgive one’s enemies but to destroy them, not to offer them a chance at redemption, but to banish them, not to provide an opening for dialogue but to flay one’s opponent verbally. It is all-too-easy for us to get caught up in this angry culture and its ugly rhetoric.
Nor should we imagine that we would win plaudits for taking Jesus at his word. Many think it sheer madness to forgive enemies and to settle for unrequited love. We might feel that way too once we start thinking about what it means to each of us. Does it mean I have to forgive the colleague who undercut me? Or the spouse from whom I am estranged? Or the driver who cut me off? Or the person who robbed me of innocence or killed my friend? Forgiving those who trespass against us is difficult. Some would say impossible.
But let’s add this into the mix. We all have enemies, as Jesus observes, but have we earned the enmity of others? Jesus is silent on this point but instead leaves it for our reflection. Have we given others cause to hate us? Are there others struggling to forgive us? Is there anything we can do to make it easier for others to forgive us? To repeat, forgiving those who trespass against us is difficult. Some say it’s impossible!
Beyond Nobility
Well, how far down the track can we go towards forgiving our enemies? Perhaps the story of David and Saul in our first reading helps answer that question. Saul, the King of Israel, was out to kill David of whom he was insanely jealous. Apparently, Saul was also a very sound sleeper. When David and his men snuck into his camp, Saul did not awaken. Then and there, David could have killed Saul, his mortal enemy, but he declined. David reasoned that Saul, in spite of his corruption, was still the Lord’s anointed. He also knew that if he killed Saul, a bloody civil war would follow. So he made the noble decision not to kill his enemy Saul, but he also to let Saul know that he could have killed him if he had wished to do so. David refrained from harming his enemy. That was noble. David behaved as a patriot.
In acting this way, David forecast Jesus’ teaching on loving one’s enemies, but even he did not attain to the full measure of what Jesus says to us in this Gospel. Jesus teaches us not merely to refrain from retaliating against our enemy, but indeed to love our enemies, to treat them with love and generosity. In other words, to defeat evil with goodness, hatred with kindness – and this without seeking anything in return – not a nod, not a smile, not a pat on the back. To make matters worse, elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus teaches that unless we live like this, we cannot be children of his heavenly Father. Not only is this teaching hard, it’s not optional. It’s serious business! Who will rescue us from this dilemma? How can we love those who hate us and those who would harm us?
Earthly vs Heavenly
Perhaps St. Paul comes to our rescue when he distinguishes the 1st Adam from the 2nd. The first Adam, our ancestor at the dawn of history, stands for ‘business as usual’, viz., sin that separates us from God and from one another, while depriving us of happiness. Christ, the second Adam, is from heaven and by dying for us ‘while we were yet sinners’, reveals to us the merciful heart of his heavenly Father. We really cannot hope to forgive and love our enemies in a thoroughgoing way unless and until we have encountered Christ, who is incarnation of God’s mercy, and have experienced our need for his forgiveness in our lives. By encountering Christ, I don’t meet a chance meeting or a superficial acquaintance but rather a life-time habit of allowing the Holy Spirit access to our hearts so that we can meet Christ and experience his mercy in the depths of our being. This is why we fast and pray, go to Mass, go to Confession, read the Scriptures, and leave our comfort zone to care for those who are in need – so that we might participate in the Christ who loves us even when we’re unlovable. Only by participating in Christ love, only by sharing it, welcoming it into our hearts, do we find the grace and strength we need to forgive our enemies and to love them.
Pope Benedict famously wrote that those who have hope live differently. Loving those who do not love us is one crucial way to live differently. Of course, no one of us have mastered the art of loving perfectly but if through prayer and charity we open our hearts to the Holy Spirit, we can be confident that the Lord is enlarging our hearts’ capacity for love . . . until that day we can stand before the throne of God and say, “I have loved as I have been loved!” What a blessed day that will be!