7th. Sunday of the Year (A)
(Leviticus 19: 1-2, 17-18; First Corinthians 3:16-23; St. Matthew
5:38-48)
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Dear Brothers
and Sisters in Christ, those opening words recalled by Jesus are somewhat
blood-chilling to our ears:
You have heard that it was said,
‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’’
However, they
were actually intended, we are told, to keep the instinctive desire for
personal revenge/retribution -- which the Law condemned, as you heard in our
first reading, Take no revenge and cherish no grudge against any of your people –
within publicly appreciable and containable limits, so to speak.
The propensity to unbridled and endless revenge, so very common to fallen mankind in general, and which even to this very day so bitterly afflicts peoples living and suffering in middle-eastern regions, was thus opposed by divine revelation from the beginning, and that is why Jesus Himself said repeatedly:
If you forgive others their
transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not
forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions. (Matthew 6:14-15)
Last week I
mentioned that Matthew’s Gospel was meant for his own congregation of former
Jewish believers and synagogue worshippers, now converted, or perhaps in the
process of conversion, to Christianity; and in today’s Gospel reading Matthew
presents Jesus as enforcing that original divine opposition to revenge, by
urging His hearers to most carefully avoid any actions that might provoke
retaliation.
When someone strikes you on your
right cheek, turn
the other one as well.
Jesus then
went on to declare the same in a yet more decisive manner:
You have heard that it was said,
‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy; but I say to you, love your
enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
Now, there is no
O.T. biblical text that commands hatred of one’s enemy; which shows that Jesus
was relating to, and quoting, current words and popular attitudes, which He
then went on to correct by proposing the only suitable attitude for
His followers in such situations; He was
not prescribing detailed procedures to be carried out literally
in His name.
Notice also that Jesus’ words are adapted by Matthew for his own particular congregation when He continues:
For if you love those who love
you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax-collectors
do the same? And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about
that? Do not the pagans/Gentiles do the same?
Former
Pharisees and practicing Jews would feel at ease with such references to very
old adversaries! And Jesus’ last quoted words here are ideally suited for
a former Jewish and newly-Christian congregation:
So, People of God, we must be aware that Matthew In his Gospel was trying to help former Jews/Pharisees to truly understand their Christian faith; and we, for our part, must not in any way allow people of our times -- who no longer have any Catholic /Christian faith and have acquired, adopted, lots of edge against it and opposition to its propagation -- to suggest that Jesus in today’s Gospel passage is wanting to make us into Christian Pharisees: do this action and you will get that spiritual reward!
Jesus later on, when Himself addressing the Rich Young Man who wanted to be perfect, said, again according to St. Matthew (19:21):
If you wish to be perfect (same word as earlier), go sell what you have and give to the poor,
and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, FOLLOW ME.
Perfection for
Christians is a gift, it is not the result of a transaction, nor is it an acquisition: it is a gift given by
the Father, through the Spirit, to those whosoever – be they perhaps former tax
collectors or even pagans cum Gentiles -- now humbly loving and obeying the
Person of Jesus in His Church, working for the redemption of mankind and the
glory of God. As St. Paul said:
