Brothers and sisters, today we respectfully leave behind David and King Saul, from our first reading, as well as the hallowed words of St. Paul from the Letter to the Corinthians.
This is because we need to focus our energy and attention on the Gospel, which brings with it a supremely challenging message: forgiveness and love of enemies. You could preach a year’s worth of homilies on this reading alone. I will also spend some time speaking about the meeting on the Protection of Minors, which just finished in the Vatican.
From the first part of the Gospel it is clear that we are not to be passive in the face of our enemies; notice how many “action” words Jesus uses in this supremely important passage: we are to love, to do good, to bless, to pray. The word love here is agape love, the love that doesn’t have much to do with feeling and instead, is the love that seeks the good of the other person. If someone hits us on the cheek, we are to offer the other also; if anyone takes our coat, we are to offer that person our shirt – in Greek our chiton, literally our undershirt. We are to give to everyone who begs – notice it doesn’t say that we need to give exactly what the person asks for, but we are to give. We are also not to ask for the return of our goods.
What is Jesus doing? He’s framing our relationship with our enemies in a completely new light. Instead of an attitude of revenge and contention, strife and conflict, Jesus asks us to seek the good of even our enemies. What is more, Jesus doesn’t ask us to be passive in the face of our enemies; we are not to allow others to walk over us; we are not mats on the front steps of the church. Offering the other cheek, giving more than someone asks for, blessing and praying – these are all ways to reach the heart of our enemy – to give him or her pause. Let me give some cases, starting from the light hearted, to the more serious.
An example for you: you’re standing in line for the cashier at the food store, your shopping cart is fully loaded; you’ve got your elderly mother’s groceries in the cart, you know that she’s waiting for you. You’ve got a couple of more things left to do, and Saturday afternoon is only so long. The grocery store is very busy, people are stocking up before a storm – another one! Suddenly, someone cuts in line, goes in front of you, gets their groceries on the belt first. How do you react? Instead of giving that person a piece of your mind, or stewing inside of yourself, you could say “I see that you’re in a hurry. Go ahead please”, or even just “go ahead please”. Maybe that would give that person some pause, give him or her an opportunity to think about what they did?
Another example: A man is praying the Rosary in an airplane. Some fellow travellers notice it and start making fun of him. They ask him, in a mocking way – “what are you praying for?” “For you”, the man replies calmly. The person praying the Rosary was not passive, but he also did not meet evil with evil.
A final example for you. On May 13th, 1981, Ali Agca shot Saint John Paul II in St. Peter’s Square. The Pope just barely survived this attempt on his life. Agca was sentenced to life in an Italian prison. On December 27th, 1983, the Pope met with the would-be assassin in his cell; in pictures of this encounter, its interesting to see that Saint John Paul is dressed up to a tee – as if he were meeting a head of state. Ali Agca, on the other hand, is unshaven, and wearing an old sweater – as if he didn’t care much about the encounter. Saint John Paul II forgave the man who was commissioned to kill him; he even received Ali Agca’s mother in a private audience in 1987. A fact that is not well-known is that Ali Agca was pardoned, and released from an Italian jail in the Jubilee Year, in the year 2000; it was Saint John Paul II who asked the president of Italy, Carlo Ciampi, to pardon the man who shot him.
The words of the Gospel ring out: “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven”. Yet, we know that in this fallen world, forgiveness does not always equal pardon; forgiveness does not always go hand-in-hand with reconciliation; in the face of someone who persistently does not acknowledge his or her guilt, who persistently does not see the evil that he or she is doing – we might only be able to forgive – but not re-establish the relationship.
The Gospel ends with the words, “the measure you give will be the measure you get back”. So, in tandem with forgiveness, the love of enemies and such, goes the principle of fairness. What you give, you’ll get back. Today, the meeting that Pope Francis convened in the Vatican to discuss the protection of minors in the Church draws to a close. When a cleric – priest, bishop or even a cardinal – sexually abuses anyone, they need to be held accountable. Credible allegations of abuse will entail civil penalties, and the loss of being able to do public ministry. Forgiveness is not a “get out of jail free” card; the principle of fairness requires that a cleric atone for his sins. Atonement also requires sorrow for the evil committed, and a firm conviction to not repeat the sins of the past.
My brothers and sisters, as we finish this heavy topic, let us try to live out the principle of forgiveness and love of enemies. We are not to be passive in the face of evil. Let us also pray that our world – and the Church – be purified of the scourge of sexual abuse. Amen.
(Fr. Pawel Ratajczak, OMI, Feb. 24, 2019)
