Scripture Reflection for the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time:
1 Samuel 26:2, 7-9, 12-13, 22-23
Psalm 103:1-2, 3-4, 8, 10, 12-13
1 Corinthians 15:45-49
Luke 6:27-38
Even if I've not always heeded it, it's advice I've never forgotten. Strange advice, ancient and monkish, from St. Maximus the Confessor, from his "Four Hundred Chapters on Love": it's advice on the surface so odd, that's why it has stuck with me. Advice about loving those who've hurt you, when I first came across it, it was unrecognizable to me as love. I didn't understand it at all.
What St. Maximus said was this. Imagine someone did something to offend you or hurt you, "and the hurt led you to hate." Now imagine also that the person who offended you or hurt you didn't apologize, perhaps not even acknowledging the wrong done or the pain caused. What then?
Here's where it gets strange. "Do not be overcome with hate but overcome hate with love," St. Maximus said. That's not the strange part; how he said we should overcome hate is the strange part. He said, "You will prevail in this way: Pray for him sincerely to God, accept his apology, or else come up with an apology for him yourself."
Catch that? He said that if you've been wronged, the way to overcome the hurt and the hatred that may come of it is to accept an apology – even if the apology is one you had to make up yourself. See what's strange? I get the whole love-your-enemies thing but doesn't that go too far? Maybe a little? Must we love those who wrong us so much that we even do their apologizing for them? I mean, what about justice? What about right and wrong?
It seems a strange sort of love. But maybe that's the point. I remember what St. Thérèse of Lisieux did once about a nun she didn't like: "I set myself to do for this sister just what I should have done for someone I loved most dearly." Even though St. Thérèse didn't really like her, she acted like she did. And it worked. The two of them soon found enough charity between them to do away with whatever irritation had previously existed. All because St. Thérèse was willing to act the part until Jesus made "the bitterest things sweet!"
And then there's this even stranger thing: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:43). Of all the moments in history the wrath of God was warranted – at least for the wicked – why not at Calvary? What was God thinking? What was he doing? Why apologize for them? Why forgive there? Why love the world so much that you send an only Son? What sort of love is this?
What sort of love is it we see in Jesus and the saints? It is certainly a different kind of love. Again, that's the point. Hearing these words of Jesus in Luke's Gospel, from his "Sermon on Plain," we must be open to the possibility that Jesus is talking about a love that is utterly beyond any conventional or cultural ideas may have about love.
Jesus knows he's telling his disciples something different. "To those who hear," he says; that is, to the disciples who've already bought in. "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you" (Luke 6:27-29). He's talking about love that refuses to keep score of rights and wrongs; he's talking about love that shines like the sun upon everything.
Or, to put it another way, love that is like God's love. Later, Jesus will say that if we love our enemies, our reward will be great and that we'll be "children of the Most High" (Luke 6:35). That, ultimately, is why this love – love for enemies, love that makes up apologies, love that is kind even to the irritating – at times shows itself to be so strange, because it's just like God's strange love for us.
That's the love Jesus wants his disciples to practice: God's love for all – even for the wicked, for your neighbor, for the person with different political opinions. It's love that has always been strange. Ever since Jesus preached this love two millennia ago, it's been a strange sort of love, difficult even for many Christians to accept. But again, I think that's the point. Hearing these words of Jesus on Sunday, that's what will be laid bare – that how strange it all sounds will reveal how strange we must still yet become.
Father Joshua J. Whitfield is pastor of St. Rita Catholic Community in Dallas and author of "The Crisis of Bad Preaching" (Ave Maria Press, $17.95) and other books.
