Homilies

7th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME: LOVING OUR ENEMIES

THE GOSPEL PASSAGE reveals the dark side of our human nature. We are a people who have the tendency to make retaliation to every hurt or harm inflicted on us. We can trade insult for insult or injury for injury. As a result, we can nurse hatred and harbor grudges toward those who harm us or to people whom we consider as enemies. Jesus has corrected this attitude, and perfected the Old Testament laws.

First, Jesus commented on and perfected the old law “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” In Latin, this is called “lex talionis” which is translated as the law of retaliation. This law does not say that we should seek vengeance; instead what it says is that punishments shouldn’t be disproportionate.  To illustrate this, we may take as an example what happened once in Singapore. A maid was alleged to have stolen money from her employers. In response to it, the maid was beaten on the head and on her back with an iron rod, having hot wax poured onto her head, hot water poured onto her private parts and was threatened with a knife. Certainly, the punishment is not proportionate to the crime committed, that is, stealing. Now, if the “lex talionis” had been applied, it could have prevented the excesses of punishment. But for Jesus, there is another way to respond to this situation. The message of Jesus is “Don’t retaliate!”  We should not pay injury with injury, It is dangerous. Instead, he taught his disciples to “turn the other cheek.” Jesus teaches us to take the insult gracefully, forgive onvert the offender, and allow the offender to be converted.

Second, Jesus commented on the old law, “you shall love your neighbor; hate your enemy.” He perfected it by saying “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” This is called the Christian ethic of personal relationship. This is indeed difficult to do. We do love our friends, but we never love our enemies. I remembered that once I told a woman to pray for her enemy as a means to heal the broken relationship. But she told me, “Father, for sure, I will pray for her. But my prayer would be different: that one day she will die in a vehicular accident.”

There was a story of widow named Mrs. Hannah. One evening, her one and only daughter did not come home from school.  She thought that her daughter must have at a friend’s or classmate’s house. On the following day, she heard news that a student was brutally raped and killed. At that time, she never pondered that the victim was here own daughter. But in the afternoon of that day, she had to face and accept the sad truth that the girl who was raped and killed was her daughter. She was devastated. The killer was caught and imprisoned. Mrs. Hannah was a religious woman. She heard holy mass almost every day.But she felt uncomfortable because, while she goes to Mass, she carries with her that feeling of hatred toward the murderer. She relfected on the gospel passage, and started praying fror the murderer. Days had gone, and one day after the holy mass, she was led to go to a Catholic bookstore and bought a Bible. Afterward, she got a piece of paper, and wrote the words, “I forgive you.” Then she went to the prison to meet the murderer of her daughter. When she faced the prisoner, she handed to him the Bible. The prisoner was surprised, and he noticed the inserted sheet of paper. He read it, and then cried. He thanked Mrs. Hannah, and vowed to change his life.

In all these, what Jesus is trying to tell us is this: that our life should be governed by love, not hatred or grudge. He expects that Christians should make a difference in this world. In a culture of revenge or retaliation, our reaction is not to pay revenge with revenge. We should have the ability to accept pain. We should be loving instead.  If our life is governed by love, then indeed we are and we become children of the Father.

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