![]() Sybil 1998 |
Gospel text
Luke 6: 27-38 27 I say to you who hear me: "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you. 28 Wish God's blessings on those who wish you the worst, ask God to change the hearts of those who destroy your reputation. 29 When someone strikes you on one cheek, present the other as well, and to him who tears away your cloak, do not deny him your underwear as well. 30 To everyone who asks you, give; and when someone takes [as pledges] what is yours, do not claim it. 31 Whatever you want others to do for you, you yourselves do likewise for others. 32 If you love only those who love you, how do you show yourselves to be benevolent? For even those who are far from God love those who love them. 33 And if you do good only to those who do good to you, how do you show yourselves to be benevolent? For even people far from God do the same. 34 And if you lend only to those from whom you expect gratitude, how are you being benevolent? Even people far from God lend to people far from God in order to receive the equivalent in return. 35 So love your enemies, do good and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be immense, and you will be children of God, who is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. 36 Be compassionate, as your Father is also compassionate." 37 "Do not bring anyone to trial, and you will not be brought to trial. Do not condemn anyone, and you will not be condemned. Release others from all wrongdoing, and you will be released from all wrongdoing. 38 Give, and it will be given to you, like a good measure of food, well packed, well shaken, overflowing, which they will put into your sack. For it is with the measure you have used [to measure others] that it will be used to measure you." |
Studies |
![]() Loving even in difficult situations |
Gospel commentary - Homily How do we respond to the forces of evil? I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: it is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. I intentionally wanted to introduce this dramatic context of the Second World War to reflect on this passage from Luke's Gospel. For when we read this passage without anchoring it in the complex situation of our lives, we risk either relaying it in the world of sweet pious dreams, or turning the Christian into a schizophrenic, torn between his faith and "real life". Let's try to understand this passage first. We're looking at a long discourse by Jesus, called the "discourse on the plain", after returning from the mountain where he prayed and finalized the choice of his twelve apostles. This speech represents the charter that defines the Christian life. In short, we could say that our passage expresses the different facets of love. It does so in five moments. First of all, to love is fundamentally to want the good of others at all times, including those who hate us, to wish God's blessings on those who wish us the worst, to ask God to change the hearts of those who destroy our reputation. In all this, we refuse to play the same game as those who wish us ill, and remain true to our values. Strangely enough, wanting the good of others can include a certain amount of violence. Think of the scene in which Jesus chases the sellers and money-changers out of the temple by overturning their tables (Mk 11:15-16); John even tells us that Jesus made himself a whip to chase them out (Jn 2:14-16). Then there are the calls to love when we are subjected to violence, whether physical or psychological. The image of turning the other cheek to the one who strikes us on one cheek simply means not returning blow for blow; it's a way of stopping the cycle of evil that can be an endless wheel when everyone takes revenge for the blows they receive. Yet it doesn't mean we don't react. Think of Jesus when he was slapped by the high priest's guard during his trial. He said: "If I have spoken evil, bear witness to what is evil; but if I have spoken well, why do you strike me?" (Jn 18:24). Let's think of Saint Paul when the assistant to the high priest struck him on the mouth? He cries out: "It is God who will strike you, you whitewashed wall" (Acts 23:4). Neither of them turned the other cheek. Another form of violence comes from creditors: in ancient times, a debtor sometimes had to pledge even his clothes; today, the bank can take back his house. When Jesus says not to resist the creditor and to give him everything, there is of course a typically Eastern form of hyperbole, and we are in a society that ignores the language of human rights. But the idea remains: don't start a useless war, it's a dead end. Now comes a general rule, the so-called Golden Rule: whatever you want others to do for you, you must do the same for others. The fourth part of this speech is an invitation to go beyond the habitual attitude of most people, who only act in order to receive something in return. For the believer, the important thing is to imitate the attitude of God, who loves everyone without expecting anything in return, and shows himself sensitive to what everyone is experiencing, without exception. Finally, our passage ends with a call to live in a world where, as it were, fault does not exist, i.e. no one is put on trial, no one is condemned, no one is tied to a fault. Rather, it's a matter of being generous, of giving without counting the cost, and that's how we'll be measured before God. The idea is that locking people into their fault is a path to death, whereas giving more than you've received opens up a path of boundless fruitfulness: you find yourself giving birth to life. What are we to make of such a speech, especially after hearing Churchill's? On the one hand, we have a call to want the good of all, even those who want to destroy us, not to retaliate against those who do us violence, to give to others all that we would like to receive, not to bind others to their faults but to show great generosity, and on the other hand, we have a call to mobilize to wage war against an extremely dangerous being, probably a psychopath, and to be ready to shed our blood to stop him. It may seem difficult, perhaps even impossible, to compare two contexts as different as that of Jesus and Churchill. So I propose this mind experiment. Let's imagine that all humanity represents the children of the same mother, a loving and sensitive mother who wants to see all her children develop and be happy. Suppose a child is in crisis because he's been refused something and kicks her. Would she slap him? No. Because that would only encourage violence. Probably, as calmly as possible, she'll explain that he's done something wrong and send him to his room for a while to think things over. This will be a little more complicated if the child is in fact almost an adult. The dialogue, if possible, will be longer, with more focused questions, and perhaps the suggestion of going into therapy. But the perspective is the same: how to raise awareness and help emotional and intellectual development. And what to do if there is a complete refusal of openness and dialogue? And what if your child becomes violent and dangerous for the whole family? As our exercise is set in a global perspective, what if one part of the family violently attacks another part of the family? The mother with a loving heart must first protect the most vulnerable members of the family. But how? This is where minds are divided. Think of Gandhi, who first said towards the end of the First World War: "We must have the ability to defend ourselves, that is, the ability to bear arms and to use them...", but much later, in his effort to gain Indian independence from the British Empire, insisted that no Briton should be harmed or killed, while being prepared to suffer and die if acts of violence were committed against oneself. He condemned Fascism and Nazism. But what would he have done about it? Presumably, he would have encouraged all those under Hitler's rule to live what he called "ordered anarchy", radical non-cooperation, even at the cost of his own life. What would have been the result? Nobody knows. Perhaps the 3rd Reich would have cracked and imploded after 10 or 15 years. But in the meantime, the Holocaust would have continued. We know Churchill's choice. But let's not forget that today it's considered a good choice because of the victory in 1945. But at what price! We're talking about over 50 million dead. And what would have happened if Pearl Harbour had not occurred and the Americans had not entered the war? What would have happened if Germany hadn't had the stupidity to attack Russia too? What can we learn from all this? Unfortunately, the gospel doesn't give us a recipe for similar situations. We simply know that there's a huge difference between taking someone's life out of vengeance or disrespect for the life of others, and taking life in tears because there's no other way to stop a catastrophe. Jesus was a prophet of his time. He looked at people as a loving, sensitive mother looks at her children, hoping to see them become as great as they can be, accepting his limits in the face of human freedom, as was the case with Judas. Today's Gospel passage reflects this view. He was not a head of state, and did not have to make the difficult decisions of a head of state. But he lived what he taught, and was faithful to it, even to the point of shedding his own blood. And this path has been so fruitful for all who have experienced it, that it has been a light that has illuminated thousands of people over the centuries, and has become for many the assurance that humanity will have a future. It's up to us to explore this path and see how far it leads.
-André Gilbert, Gatineau, December 2024
|
Themes |