Num 11, 25-29 / Jas 5, 1-6 / Mk9, 38-43, 45, 47-48
The question today’s gospel asks is basically: What does it mean to side with Christ? How do you know you are on Jesus’ side of things? And a further question the gospel poses is: How do you pass on to the young this being on Jesus’ side?
These are crucially important questions for us to ask ourselves and to answer honestly? What does it mean for us to find ourselves on Jesus’ side of things in today’s world? St. Paul would ask us: Have you taken on the attitude of Christ – taken on his way of seeing, valuing and acting on things? And then: What do we tell our children? What attitude toward life do we model for the young?
The gospels call the attempt to be on Jesus’ side – to take on his attitude toward life – they call that being a disciple. The word itself, disciple, means “learner”. A disciple of Jesus is someone learning to follow Jesus’ way of life. And the gospels are full of instructions from Jesus on how to be his disciple. Most instructions have something to do with love. Over and over Jesus tells his disciples they must learn to love as he loves. “This is how people will know you are my disciples,” he says.
But there is throughout all the gospels a recurring touchstone of discipleship – a repeated signature piece that lets everyone know: this is a disciple of Jesus. That signature piece is loving your enemy. Jesus uses all sorts of images to describe the love he wants for his disciples: turn the other cheek; let your love be like the rainfall, falling on good and evil both. And, of course, the most vivid image he left us is his own passion and death with words of forgiving love for his executioners.
Love your enemy! Doing that will put us on Jesus’ side. Loving – not hating – those who seem to be Jesus’ enemies on earth. Suppose they really do hate and reject Jesus; nevertheless he loves them. And to be on his side we must love them too.
Love your enemy! This is also the cornerstone for Christian thought on war and peace. How are we to handle violence as disciples of Jesus? St. Augustine teaches us that for the Christian love of enemies admits of no exceptions. And St. Thomas Aquinas in taking up the question of war and violence asks: “Whether It is Always Sinful to Wage War?” In our tradition the clear presumption is always and insistently against the use of violent force. The disciple’s attitude is always and insistently poised against the use of violent force. The disciple of Jesus has an unsparing distrust of violence.
As citizen-disciples, as American Catholics do we find ourselves on Jesus’ side of things? We might ask ourselves: have we allowed violence and war to become our presumed, our preferred answer to dealing with troubling and threatening situations? Have we come to rely on violence – rely on violence in our words and in our actions?
Our Catholic tradition poses this explicit question to anyone, to any nation considering the use of violence: Do the rights and values at issue in the conflict at all justify the deliberate decision to take human life? You will notice how the question itself moves us beyond thinking of war as a means to some strategic or political goal. Rather, it confronts us with war’s simple, brutal reality. War is the decision to kill people. Killing human life is always a matter of utmost gravity. It may not be simply dismissed as “collateral damage” – even with regret. And such killing undertaken to maintain a comfortable lifestyle is indefensible in our tradition.
Pope John Paul II spoke the attitude of Christ when he said: I proclaim with the conviction of my faith in Christ and with the awareness of my mission [as pope] that violence is evil, that violence is unacceptable as a solution to problems, that violence is unworthy of man…
Are we on the side of Christ? What do we communicate to the young? Do we tell them that war and violence are things we don’t want but things we think we can’t refuse? Crucial questions for us all that we need to reflect on and pray about. And we need to pray for one another that we may take on the attitude of Christ and learn to be his good disciples. And let us recall our opening prayer: O God, you manifest your almighty power above all by pardoning and showing mercy, bestow this grace abundantly upon us… Amen.
Fr. Pat Earl, SJ
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