Breaking Open the Word - 7th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C
7th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C - February 20th, 2022
This Sunday, we reflected on some of the most challenging teachings in all the Gospels: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you …” Such an approach obviously runs counter to our natural instincts, and it takes the grace of Christ to make such a lifestyle even possible. But when that grace is given and received, how amazing the results can be!
A Sister opened our sharing this week by bringing out the starting point and basis of all Our Lord’s words in this Gospel reading: love. We are to begin by loving our enemies, and it is that love which gives us the strength necessary to return good for evil. Without this underlying attitude of charity, our acceptance of mistreatment reduces us to a sort of spineless passivity, too weak or lethargic to stand up for ourselves. When a proper balance is achieved, however, the result is the beautiful serenity we witness most vividly in the lives of the Saints. They were able to bear all manner of ill-treatment and even cruelty in a spirit of peace, breaking the cycle of violence by their powerful witness of love. This kind of witness, in fact, was what converted the pagan Roman Empire to the faith of Christ!
St. Therese of Lisieux
But suppose, by God’s grace, that we do not have any enemies, are generally treated well by others, and are not aware of being hated or cursed by anyone. Do Jesus’ words in this Gospel still apply to us? The answer given by St. Therese is a resounding YES. In her autobiography, the Little Flower has a beautiful passage applying these teachings of Christ to her own cloistered contemplative life – and, by extension, to the ordinary lives of men and women everywhere. Therese begins by affirming that she had no enemies in Carmel, but that there was a certain Sister whom she found very irritating. It was not a matter of malice on the part of that Sister – she simply had a personality and attitude that Therese found grating. (Surely all of us can think of someone in our lives who annoys us in a similar way!) Therese’s natural instinct would of course have been to avoid this nun whenever possible, but she realized that she could not reconcile such a course of action with the teachings of the Gospel. Instead, she went out of her way to show love for this Sister, to seek out her company and give her special attention, to the point that this Sister actually thought she was one of Therese’s very favorite nuns in the community! This is just one example of how Jesus’ teaching on love for enemies can apply just as much in the “little things” of everyday life as in more dramatic circumstances.
Another Sister shared how she had been pondering this week’s Gospel in light of the Paschal Mystery. The Alleluia verse for this Sunday was Christ’s words to the Apostles at the Last Supper: “I give you a new commandment … that you love one another as I have loved you.” How did Jesus love us? “Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end” – all the way to the Cross. In fact, as Sister pointed out, these descriptions of how to treat our enemies are a real portrait of Jesus Crucified! While we were “enemies” of God through sin, He loved us and redeemed us. In the face of mankind’s hatred, cursing, violence, and rejection during His Passion, Jesus remained unshaken in love and mercy: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Paradoxically, it was in this seeming weakness and failure that He conquered death and defeated the devil! The same can be true for us, when we truly live up to the example of Our Lord in returning good for evil. As the Saints have said, the smallest act of true love (willing the good of the other) is more powerful than all the evil in the entire world. Let us then refuse to be discouraged when we see the evil that is running rampant today. The Enemy is working all the harder because he knows his time is short, and we can hasten the triumph of Christ through our daily growth in love. We know Who wins this battle … and He wants us to share in His victory!