I don’t give titles to homilies but if I did, I think I’d call this one,
“Journey to the Center of the Faith.” Our Christian faith is about many
things, but at the heart of it are the words from the Sermon on the
Mount in today’s gospel: “You have heard the commandment, ‘An eye for an
eye, a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, offer no resistance to evil.
When a person strikes you on the right cheek, turn and offer him the
other…. You have heard the commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor
but hate your enemy,’ but I say to you, love your enemies, pray for your
persecutors….”
Those words of Jesus may just be the hardest
thing about our faith. But they are more than words: they are commands.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew presents Jesus as the new Moses, the
new Lawgiver, but his commandments are so lofty and demanding that we
might wonder if Jesus was out-of-touch with the harsher realities of
life. But, of course, he wasn’t. Jesus knew the dark side of human
nature only too well, and in the end, he would become a lightning rod
for human cruelty at its worst. Even so, he refused to strike back. When
nailed to the cross he spoke only words of forgiveness: “Father, forgive
them, for they know not what they do.”
There’s a part of us that stands in utter
amazement at this, but there’s another part that says, ‘Jesus was
divine. I’m only human.’ But we don’t get off that easily. Divinity for
Jesus was no shortcut around his humanity. That would turn the
Incarnation into play-acting. No, Jesus, who was “tempted like us in all
things,” must himself have struggled to get beyond the normal human urge
to strike back. And you and I? Rather than struggle with it, we look for
ways to justify it because if we took Jesus at his word, were we to do
what he did, wouldn’t we become doormats? Wouldn’t human society
dissolve into anarchy?
These are far from theoretical questions.
They’re very practical, and they’re timely. At the societal level the
issue of the death penalty comes to mind. It’s hard to read the gospel –
particularly today’s gospel – and find any defense for capital
punishment. The same goes for the teachings of recent popes, including
Pope Francis. And yet, credible polls indicate that about 60% of
Catholics still favor the death penalty.
There’s some history here, some unhappy
history. The Church itself down through the ages, when it was a secular
power, made liberal use of the death penalty. A chilling thought, but
true, and it continued well into the 19th century. And you have to
wonder, how could that ever have happened? Where was the teaching of
Jesus? Did it count for nothing? And did Jesus’ own personal embrace of
non-violence count for nothing - Jesus who, when he became the target of
human cruelty, refused to retaliate, instead, opening his arms on the
cross – as if to say, only in this way will we ever break the endless
cycle of retaliation and revenge?
All this can seem naïve, but Jesus says that it
is God’s way and that means it must be our way, too. “You must be
perfect”, he says, “as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
My friends, Jesus calls us to do nothing less
than what God does in the face of evil: confront it, not with violence
or revenge but with love. After all, God makes the sun shine on the just
and the unjust alike, shows mercy and compassion to all, especially on
those who are in the grip of evil. This is not to say that society
doesn’t need to protect itself from dangerous and violent offenders. It
does, of course. But to take a life in order to exact revenge for
another life is to play God and to sin against the inherent value of
each and every human life.
I want to share with you a story I’ve shared
with you before. It merits repeating. A few years ago, I attended a
lecture over at Town Hall given by a Muslim doctor by the name of
Izzeldin Abuelaish, a remarkable prophet of peace. His three daughters
and a niece were tragically and senselessly killed one night by Israeli
shells that should never have been fired but which directly hit his home
in Gaza. His response to that tragedy that stripped him of the very
dearest people in his life is set forth in an extraordinary book
entitled “I Shall Not Hate.” Instead of calling for revenge or
retaliation, he calls for dialogue - for Palestinians and Israelis to
talk - to listen - to each other. And he expresses the hope that his
daughters will be (I quote) “the last sacrifice on the road to peace
between Palestinians and Israelis.” Would that his hope would be
realized, I found myself thinking during our recent pilgrimage when we
came uncomfortably close to an outbreak of hostilities! Any way you look
at it, it’s a remarkable story and a more powerful homily on today’s
gospel than I could ever give.
Another powerful homily on non-violence was the
life and teaching of Dr. Martin Luther King who famously said that, “The
ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Returning violence for
violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already
devoid of stars.”
My friends, we live in a night all too devoid
of stars, but it doesn’t have to be this way. When He opened his arms on
the cross and willingly accepted death, Jesus showed us the path to
peace and reconciliation, and every time we offer this Sacrifice in his
memory and receive into our own bodies His Body that was broken for us,
Jesus not only shows us the path to peace and reconciliation, he takes
us there. But only if we’re willing to go!
Father Michael G. Ryan
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