Doing What Comes Supernaturally

February 23, 2014
7^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

 

Lev 19, 1-2,17-18 / 1Cor 3, 16-23 / Mt 5, 38-48

 

 

 

Whenever I hear these words of Jesus – words about turning the other cheek – about giving to everyone who begs – about loving your enemies – all sorts of images and feelings come up.  I see myself walking along Tryon Street, meeting a homeless man, being asked for money and referring him to Urban Ministry.  Usually the comeback is: “I’ve been there already.  They can’t help me.”  And usually my comeback is: “Sorry, I can’t give you money.”  My feelings in all this are very mixed, as are my thoughts.   Am I doing right here?  Am I just avoiding doing the right thing?

Then there are the times I recall my not so loving feelings toward someone who loudly disagrees with me or clearly dislikes me.  As I said, my inner feelings, my secret words to myself are not at all loving or kind or understanding toward that person.  Can I react differently?  I try.  But you come at me in a threatening way – I can’t promise you a turned cheek or a loving response.  I can’t promise you that.

But then there are the times when – in a modest way, even in a stumbling way – I really try and somehow do manage a bit of love toward those who hurt me or dismiss me or just ignore me.  There are those times when I can almost hear Jesus saying: “I think you’re getting it, Pat.  Keep at it!”  These are times when I feel myself being stretched.  And the stretching is not all coming from me.  The stretching hurts, and yet feels right, feels good, feels: This is as it should be.  It feels like a gift – like a demanding grace.  And I’m doing it.  I’m doing what grace is demanding of me.  And what grace demands is that I begin to love as God loves.

This is the amazing grace and the amazing challenge that Jesus is giving us in the gospel: to love, yes, - but to love as God loves.  It is to be good as God is good.  That requires moving beyond what common sense tells me to hold on to: to my suspicions, fears and angers.  And I do feel the push to move beyond these.  After all, my life can’t be made to depend on what I fear and hate.  These can’t be defining for me.  There’s got to be more – more to me – more to life.  And Jesus says:  You’re right!  There is more, much more to you and to your life than fear and anger.

It is deeply true, it is gospel truth that this sense within me of the more-ness of life – that life has got to be more than the confines of my fears and angers – it is deeply true that this sense within me is the call, the voice of Jesus.  It is the voice of the Living, Risen Lord calling me to follow him – follow him in the way he makes present to the world how God loves.

It is the Lord!  Those are the words we hear in the gospel from people who recognize the Risen Lord’s presence to them.  It is the Lord!  It is ever the Lord’s call to us to the more-ness of life – to the more-ness of love.  It will confuse us.  It will humble us.  And it will free us – for deeper life and deeper love.

It is the same Living, Risen Lord at this Eucharist who calls us to take in his life and his love – to take into ourselves his way of living and his way of loving.  He calls us to have communion with him – communion with him as the one who feeds and forms the way we are with other people.

So let us respond to the call.  Let us be good as God is good.  That is what makes us a parish.  We try to make it a little easier for each of us to be good as God is good.

 Fr. Pat Earl, SJ