SEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2022

SEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

First Reading: 1 SAMUEL 26:2, 7-9, 12-13, 22-23

Responsorial Psalm: PSALMS 103:1-4, 8, 10, 12-13

Second Reading: 1 CORINTHIANS 15:45-49

Gospel: LUKE 6:27-38

The killing of Goliath, the champion of the Philistines who were enemies of Israel by David, brought David to instant fame. Saul who was king was not happy about that. He burnt with jealousy because of David’s popularity and saw him as a threat to his throne. He set out to kill him. God put Saul into the hands of David. But David chooses to show forgiveness and mercy to his enemy. To show forgiveness and mercy to an enemy is not easy. In David, we see a future king, because forgiveness and mercy is a perfection proper to God as king and therefore a virtue to be expected of any representative of His and of everyone who wants to be like God.

Immaculee Ilibagiza wrote a book she called “Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust.” She documented the bloody genocide, how her family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives of a million Rwandans. She was a 22-year-old university student when this terrible violence broke out. Hutus killed her parents, her brothers, and her Tutsi friends. A Hutu pastor, who risked his life to save her, hid her and six other women. They lived in a small bathroom with a wooden wardrobe covering the door. For 91 days, they endured hunger, fear, and the sounds of soldiers and machete-wielding killers in the house searching for Tutsis.

In that cramped bathroom, she began to pray the Rosary. She always stumbled over the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” She knew that the prayer called her to forgive those who had killed her family and endangered her. She didn’t think she could do it, but she realized she was consumed by hate. She was afraid she would become like the people who had killed her family. Nevertheless, in her mind, forgiving her family’s killers was like forgiving the devil. Finally, afraid that her hate would crush her heart, she asked God to forgive those who had done her so much harm. Slowly, with God’s help, she was able to let go and forgive her family’s killers. Eventually, she even visited one of her brother’s killers in prison, taking his hand and offering forgiveness. She says that forgiveness saved her life. In her own words, “It’s a new life, almost like a resurrection.”

Legally speaking, an offended person is entitled to redress. People reserve the right to get even with those who hurt or exploit them. But Jesus is inviting His followers to give up their right to get even. Why? Mahatma Gandhi explains it so well: “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” In a world of revenge, there is an ever-widening spiral of hate and violence. And the only one way to break this vicious circle; is that some people will decide to absorb the hurt or violence without passing it on to others. This is what Jesus did on the cross when He forgave and excused His executioners: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

In the Gospel today, Jesus is calling for the reversal of the universal urge for retaliation. He demands of His followers, a standard of human relationships that involves going beyond “do to others as you would want them do to you.” The repeated reproach, “what credit is that to you,” is aimed at the minimalism of an ethics of “tit for tat,” as is also the repeated comparison to “the sinners” who also live by that norm. This new standard is grounded on the covenantal attitudes and actions of God who is kind toward all, the just and the wicked alike. So, are the disciples to be. And the reward is itself the reality of being “children of the Most High.”

In loving our enemies, there shines forth in us some likeness of God our Father, who loved us while we were still sinners, His enemies and hostile to Him.  Following the example of God our Father, we must desire for everyone, even those who hate us, eternal life and the very best in life because they also, are made in the image and likeness of God. By praying God the Father to forgive those who nailed Him to the cross, Jesus teaches us that this is a real precept and not just a pious recommendation.  St Stephen, the first Christian martyr will later imitate this, and countless other martyrs. 

Jesus said, “to the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other one as well, and from the person who takes your cloak, do not withhold even your tunic.” St Thomas Aquinas said Sacred Scripture is best understood in the light of the example of Jesus and the saints. Christ did not offer the other cheek to be struck in the house of Annas, nor did St. Paul when, as we are told in the Acts of the Apostles, he was beaten in Philippi. Therefore, we should not take it that Christ literally meant that you should offer the other cheek to someone to hit you; what he was referring to is our interior disposition; that is, we should be ready not to be intolerant of anyone who hurts us, and be ready to put up with this kind of treatment, or worse than that. That was how the Lord acted when he surrendered Himself to death.

God Himself is our model. The greatest perfection a creature can have is to be like his creator; and the more like Him he is, the perfect he is. St Paul tells us, even in this present life the Christian should strive to reflect the image of “the man of heaven,” by reproducing in himself the life of Christ who died and was raised to new life. He raises us those who desire to live. Let us go to Jesus, let us seek His mercy, and by forgiving as Immaculee Ilibagiza said, we will find new life, a resurrection.

Happy Sunday

Rev. Fr.  Chidi Onwuka MSSCC