Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time (A)

 Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time [Mt 5:38-48]

19.02.2023

The Law of Non-retaliation and Love for Enemies

Readings: (1) Lev 19:1-2.17-18 (2) 1 Cor 3:16-23

1.  Theme in brief

Overcoming evil with good

2.   Focus Statement

Since we are God’s children, we must imitate God’s perfection by doing good to, praying for and greeting those who hate and persecute us or those who are evil and unrighteous.

3.   Explanation of the text

In  today’s gospel, just like last Sunday’s, Jesus once again “fulfills” or radicalizes two more old laws with his new understanding and interpretation of them, namely (1) the law of retaliation or the law of tit-for-tat (5:38) and (2) the law of hating one’s enemies (5:43) which is not directly mentioned in the OT. In plain language, the OT law of retaliation (also found in the ancient Code of Hammurabi) that commands “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” (Lev 24:20) means this: If your enemy destroys one of your eyes or breaks one of your teeth, you are legally permitted to destroy your enemy’s one eye or break a tooth, but not both the eyes or all the teeth. Your revenge has to be proportionate to the loss or injury caused to you by your enemy.

Though in modern view this law sounds barbaric, in ancient days it was meant to restrict or limit the enormity of vengeance and violence that was prevalent before this Code came into existence, like killing several people even when one was killed or wiping out the whole village for a wrong. This law was meant to enact fair justice among the people of ancient Israel. Jesus radicalizes even this limited retaliation permitted by the law by ruling it out altogether. He teaches his disciples to refrain from resisting an evildoer violently, or from the common practice of returning evil for evil (5:39); instead he teaches them to overcome evil with positive good.

Though there is no direct command in the OT to hate one’s enemies, Jesus here projects the prevailing mentality among Israelites in his days and states it in the form of a command: “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy” (5:43). It was understood that Israelites “hate” non-Israelites. Actually, the word used for “hate” in the original lanuage does not mean the strongest aversion or disgust for someone as we commonly understand. Plainly it means to love somebody less than others. In this text Jesus takes the command “to love your neighbour” beyond the narrow boundary of loving only fellow Israelites – as the Jews understood – to include loving one’s enemies also.

Who are our enemies?  When we analyse mn/ today’s gospel text, we come to know that our enemies are those who injure us (5:38), strike us (5:39), sue us and take away our belongings (5:40), compel us to work for them against our will (5:41), do not return what is borrowed from us (5:42), do evil (5:39), hate and persecute us (5:43-44), and are unrighteous (5:45). Jesus gives four examples to explain how to love this kind of people positively and conquer evil with good, which should be understood not in their literal but symbolic sense:

(1) Showing the other cheek to them (5:39) implies a refusal to return insult for insult from them. [In order to hit on the other cheek one has to use either the left hand or the back of one’s palm; both symbolize a great insult in Palestinian culture.] (2) Giving our cloak also if they forcibly take away our coat (5:40) means giving others more than what they ask. (3) Walking an extra mile if they force us to walk one mile (5:41) means going beyond what is asked of us, or doing much more than the minimum of what is expected of us. (4) Giving whatever the beggars and borrowers ask of us (5:42) means doing charity without expecting anything in return or willingness to give more than what is asked by those in need (5:42). (5) Praying for them (5:44) and greeting them (5:47).

Why should the disciples love their enemies? The reason given by Jesus for loving their enemies is to show their nature as God’s children (5:45).  If his disciples’ conduct does not reflect anything of God’s nature or character, how can they claim to be his children, or a reward from him (5:46)? God’s nature is so impartial and generous. He makes his sun rise and rain fall on the hideouts of terrorists and compounds of cloistered nuns equally (5:45). What greatness is there in calling oneself his disciple if one’s love is purely reciprocal, that is limited only to returning love for love? Even the sinful tax-collectors and hated Gentiles do that much (5:46-47). Instead, he tells his disciples to imitate the perfection of God himself, that is, his own nature of being holy, pure, faithful, generous, forgiving and single-minded.

4.   Application to life

In today’s gospel Jesus invites us to be perfect as our heavenly Father is. Here “perfection” does not mean totally flawless or faultless. What it means is that we, being God’s children, have to imitate God’s own nature or character such as his holiness, generosity, forgiveness and single-mindedness. It also implies acquiring God’s way of thinking, loving and forgiving. In other words, our conduct should correspond to our status or dignity as God’s children. In the OT, to be perfect means to be holy, “for I the Lord your God am holy” (Lev 19:2). Holiness does not mean only regular prayer and church attendance. We become holy and imitate God’s own perfection by loving, praying for, and resisting the temptation to retaliate against those who injure us, strike us, take away our belongings, hate and persecute us or those who are evildoers and unrighteous. Again, since God provides necessary things such as sunshine and rain to the evil and the good or the righteous and the unrighteous, in order to be perfect like the heavenly Father we (his children) are to imitate his own qualities. Instead of retaliating evil with evil, we are called to return evil with good or with a loving deed. The word “perfect” can also mean complete or thorough.  When we love only our family members and friends, our love is incomplete. To do that one need not be a follower of Christ. All do it naturally. It is only when we love those who hate and persecute us, our love becomes complete.

It is clear, according to Jesus the reason why we are to love our enmies is because we are called to exhibit God’s own nature or qulaities as his children. To be children of the heavenly Father means striving day after day for the goal of treating our enemies as God treats them. It also means going beyond justice, beyond what others deserve or ask of us. It further implies imitating God’s own generosity and forgiveness by responding to hatred with love, refraining from all revenge and retaliation. Showing the other cheek does not mean allowing our enemies to attack us. It means not to return a slap for a slap, an insult for an insult or a hurt for a hurt, but instead do good to those who do such evil. Since our heavenly Father treats the good and the evil ones impartially, since we are his children, we too have to do the same as explained in the above-mentioned text.

Though Jesus identifies a number of enemies in today’s gospel (cf. explanation above), his list is not to be taken as exhaustive. We can extend it to include the following kind of enemies: our personal, national (e.g. India and Pakistan), political, religious and business enemies; those who hate, oppose, criticize, harm, challenge and speak ill of us, etc.  To find this kind of people, we need not go to a foreign or hostile land. Sometimes we can find some of them within the four walls of our own house and in our own neighbourhood. Even those whom we love genuinely can turn out to be our enemies. The law of retaliation – “an eye for eye and tooth for tooth” – is alive and active even today in other forms, such as revengeful aerial strikes to smash one’s national enemies totally, genocide, ethnic cleansing, communal riots, blacklisting of troublemakers by managements and governments. In our ordinary sense, love means a good feeling, a natural attraction or affection towards somebody. But the type of love (“agape” in Greek) advocated by Jesus goes beyond a good feeling, attraction or affection. What good feeling can we have for our enemies? Jesus does not command us to be affectionate towards our enemies, but he commands to do good also to those people towards whom we have no affection or attraction. To do this we need to make a decision of the mind almost everyday to do good to those whom we don’t feel like doing good.

Retaliation against the injury, harm and insult caused by our enemies is a natural instinct in us. Jesus calls us to go against our natural instinct that prompts us to return blow for blow. Given the human instinct for revenge, if all the citizens of the world were allowed to apply the law of retaliation mentioned above liberally, today most people would have been blind and toothless. Faith gives us what nature cannot give. With a deep faith we can rise above our human nature that cries for vengeance to regain our lost honour. Only God’s grace can sanctify and elevate our human nature and enable us to do good even to evildoers.

Jesus wants that we should avoid not only any sort of revenge but also actively and positively do good to above-mentioned enemies. St. Paul rightly projects the mind of Jesus when he tells the early Christians, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom 12:21). The motive behind this is to win over our haters, persecutors and insulters with benevolence and generosity after God’s own heart. St. Paul further says that this kind of benevolence towards our enemies “will heap burning coals on their heads” (Rom 12:20) leading to a purification of their evil intentions. Modern St. Paul would have given the example of heaping ice cubes on their heads to melt their anger or resentment and eventually heart itself. A few years ago, in India we were touched by the example shown by Franciscan Clarist Sister Selmi, the younger sister of Sr. Rani Maria. She visited a prisoner named Mr Samundar Singh, who had brutally murdered Sr. Rani Maria by stabbing her about 54 times, to offer him a ‘rakhi’. [‘Rakhi’ is a band of string tied around the hand by a sister to her brother on a feast day (also called ‘RAKHI’) as a sign of sisterly love.] This benevolent gesture of public pardon by calling the murderer “my brother” melted his heart in such a way that he began to weep bitterly. Later on it led to his conversion from a murderer to a follower of Christ.

Jesus’ instruction on non-resistance of evildoers should be understood to mean avoidance of violent resistance that may breed further violence. That does not include the passive resistance which we sometimes need to offer to unjust oppressors and tormenters as exemplified by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King (Jr.). When we are wronged by those who hate and persecute us, our first reaction is to teach them a lesson. Jesus tells us not to return violence for violence. Instead of planning revenge and retaliation in our minds, he wants that we plan how to do good.

In Jesus’ time people prayed against their enemies so that God may punish them. Instead, he asks his disciples to pray for the reform of enemies. Since we cannot love easily those who hate and persecute us, he advocates the practice of praying for such people constantly so that with the power of prayer we may be able to overcome bitterness against them. Loving one’s enemies and praying for them is not natural but supernatural. Humanly speaking, what seems to be impossible can become possible with supernatural grace, as Jesus says in another occasion: “For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible” (Mt 19:26). Whenever we run to God with the impossibility of forgiving an enemy who has hurt us so deeply, God tell us as he told St. Paul: “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Cor 12:9).

It’s prayer that gives us the power to move from our natural response of vengeance in the face of injury done to us by our enemies to the supernatural response of forgiveness and goodness towards them. It is immaterial whether our prayer will change or convert our enemies. Even if it does not change them, it will change our plan of retaliation against them. We cannot pray for our offenders while keeping hatred and revenge in our hearts. By our constant prayer, they get converted in our hearts first – though we do not know whether they will be converted in reality or not! We should leave it to God. Our prayer is a sure sign that we do not want to nurse hatred for our enemies and are interested in overcoming the harm done by them with the good we wish for them in prayer.

Jesus’ teaching urges us to make our love pro-active and not re-active or reciprocal. Re-active love means we return love for love, help for help, kindness for kindness, and do it only for those who love, help and are kind to us. What is so special about this type of reciprocal love? Jesus asks to go beyond this to make our love complete or perfect. Pro-active love involves doing good to people who do not do any good to us or harm us, or from whom we do not expect any good in return.

5.   Response to God's Word

As God’s children, instead of showing God’s magnanimity, do we go for personal vendetta and even justify it later? What is our response to the culture of hatred, revenge, violence and retaliation around us? Are we a part of it? Were there instances in our life when we won over our enemy’s good will through our kindness to him/her? If not, shall we try it?

6.  A prayer

Lord, I pray for those who are different from me, do not like me, whom I do not like, who get on my nerves, who have hurt me deeply, who insult me, who strike me, take away my belongings, force me to work for them and do not return what is borrowed from me. Holy Lord, purify my negative and bitter feelings towards such people and bless them. Amen.