SEVENTH SUNDAY YEAR "C" - 2

7^th. SUNDAY OF YEAR 3 (Luke 27, 27 – 38)

Let me begin by telling you a little detail in the life of Socrates, the Greek philosopher. Being a philosopher, he took life philosophically; which meant, among other things, playing it cool. His wife was just the opposite. She was an untamed nagging shrew. What was worse, Socrates’ cool made her hot, raving, running mad. One afternoon, the philosopher was sitting with his friends and pupils, when Mrs. Got into a tantrum and gave him the works, hot and spicy that the Greek language could provide. Socrates kept his cool, saying nothing. His wife ran out, filled a pale with water, ran back and gave him a shower from his bald head downwards. Now Socrates had to say something, and his friends were waiting to hear it. So Socrates, drenched to the bone, looked around and coolly remarked: “After the thunder there’s got to be some rain.”

The late Fr. Anthony D’Mello wrote somewhere about a gentleman who would go down the road to buy his daily newspaper from a very cantankerous vendor who gave him a dose of rude words every day. A friend of that gentleman advised him, “You should stop buying your paper from that rude fellow.” And the gentleman answered, “I don’t see why I should stop. After all, my happiness does not depend on other people’s moods.”

That’s a sort of carryover from what Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel. We can’t expect to be loved and accepted by one and all. Jesus wasn’t accepted by all and He made no secret of it. Take the beautiful red rose. It continues to give its fragrance whether passers-by interested or not. Someone may even pluck it and crush it. That’s precisely when it gives the most fragrance. That’s the spirt of Jesus. Slapped, cursed, sworn at, you respond with a hearty, unprovocative “God bless you.” Jesus is also telling us to have that kind of love that challenges our preferences, like and dislikes, pettiness and discrimination.

Those we gravitate towards, whose company we enjoy and relax in and whose friendship we cherish – these are God-given and we rightly rejoice in them. Jesus, however, taught that it is not hard to be kind and forgiving, generous and tolerant with these people. The cutting edge of our love is how we reach out and respond to those who irritate us, who grate on our nerves, those who provoke and annoy us, those we find difficult, slow, inferior to us in some way, or those who just don’t like us, and misunderstand us.

It is tempting to despair sometimes and say: “This teaching is too hard and demanding”. It is as we understand our inability to love our enemies, our own powerlessness in the face of our powerful passions that we humbly turn to God and ask His grace to be like Jesus, so that when we fight for justice and integrity, our struggles will always be tempered by reason and divine considerateness.

SEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

LUKE 6:27-38

Friends, our Gospel today is taken from Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain in Luke. It is one of more the puzzling texts in the New Testament. It speaks of loving our enemies—not tolerating them, or vaguely accepting them, but loving them. When you hate your enemy, you confirm him as your enemy. But when you love him in response to his hatred, you confuse and confound him, taking away the very energy that feeds his hatred. There is a form of oriental martial arts called aikido. The idea of aikido is to absorb the aggressive energy of your opponent, moving with it, continually frustrating him until he comes to the point of realizing that fighting is useless. Some have pointed out that there is a great deal of this in Jesus’ strategy of nonviolence and love of the enemy. You creatively absorb the aggression of your opponent, really using it against him, to show him the futility of violence. So when someone insults you, send back a compliment instead of an insult.

PRAYER: Most merciful Father, I confess I fall short of my vocation to live in the power of the Holy Spirit. Show me where and how I must repent so that I may bear Your likeness in terms of kindness and mercy. Amen.

St. Thomas’ Church, Calcutta, 22 Feb. 1998, 24 Feb. 2019.