7th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Fr. Vinner)
My brothers and sisters in Christ,
The readings today are linked together by one main theme: the power of Christian love, when exercised in unconditional forgiveness by the believing community of forgiven sinners. The readings also instruct us about our right and wrong choices. The right choices lead us to God, and the wrong ones break our relationship with Him and with one another. This Sunday we hear some of the most difficult teachings of our Lord, Jesus Christ. But first, let us reflect a bit about our faith. At the very basis of our faith is a belief in God. Today more and more people don’t believe in God at all. Even many people who would call themselves Catholics say that they do not believe in a God. That is difficult to imagine, perhaps, but it is documented in at least one opinion poll. Let us assume for a moment that all of us here believe in God.
We who believe in God also believe that God created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them. We have our own distinctive creation stories in our Bible, the Holy Scriptures. We believe that God has sent His Son, Jesus Christ, fully human and fully divine, to be our Savior. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.
This short statement of what we believe, our Creed, is really important today. We want to continue to understand more profoundly what we believe. Only in the context of this belief do the teachings of Jesus make sense. We accept the teachings of Jesus first of all because He is God our Savior.
Jesus teaches us how to be faithful to God. He also teaches us a wisdom tradition. We must be careful here and not think that Jesus teaches us only human wisdom. On the other hand, divine teaching reveals to us the best of human wisdom. The danger with thinking of the teachings of Jesus as simply human wisdom is that people can begin to discard his teachings, thinking that we have better wisdom today because we life in a different age, we have a deeper understanding of human psychology, we are more aware of the diversity of the human family and for lots of other reasons.
At the heart of the teachings of Jesus that we hear today are two teachings that are so important in our lives: forgiveness and acceptance of mistreatment. Jesus tells us “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” These teachings are so against our modern ways of thinking! Yes these same teachings would revolutionize our present world if we all lived them. The challenge is not to think to ourselves: “Nobody lives that way.” Rather, we can be thinking: “How can I live this way because Jesus has invited me to live this way.”
We see these teachings today in the story of David’s relationship with King Saul. We also see this today clearly in the Gospel reading. In the reading from the First Letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul tells us that we bear the image of the first man and we can bear the image of Jesus Christ.
Let us pray today that our hearts might truly be open to forgiveness and to the acceptance of being treated badly. Let us love all of our enemies: the enemies of our country, the enemies of our families, our personal enemies, the enemies of our Church and whatever enemy there is. Let us love the outcasts, the lepers of our times: anyone that we would not want to live with on a regular basis! Let us learn to do good for all of these enemies. Let us bless them and pray for them. What a world we can create together if we walk this path with our Lord Jesus Christ! In our celebration of the Holy Mass today, may God give us strength! Let us remember this phrase from today’s Gospel: “For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”
1) We need to practice grace-filled behavior: What makes Christianity distinct from any other religion is the quality known as grace, i.e., God’s own life working in us, so that we are able to treat others, not as they deserve, but with love, kindness and mercy. God is good to the unjust as well as to the just. Hence, our love for others, even those who are ungrateful and selfish towards us, must be marked by the same kindness and mercy which God has shown to us. His love conquers our hurts, fears, prejudices and grief. Only the cross of Jesus Christ can free us from the tyranny of malice, hatred, revenge, and resentment, and give us the courage to return good for evil.
2) We need to pray for the strength to forgive. At every Mass we pray the “Our Father”, asking God to forgive us as we forgive others. Our challenge is to overcome our natural inclination to hate family members, co-workers, neighbors etc. who offend us. To meet that challenge, we need to ask God for the strength to forgive each other. We must forgive, because only forgiveness truly heals us. If we remember how God has forgiven us, it will help us forgive others. Let us start forgiving right now by curbing the sharp tongue of criticism, suppressing the revenge instinct and tolerating the irritating behavior of a neighbor.
May God Bless us.
FR. S.Vinner HGN