Mystical Word 7th Sunday Ordinary Time
If we claim to be followers of Jesus, then there can be no compromising the teachings he gives us today on loving one’s enemies. To love one’s enemies means loving with divine love: “Be merciful just as your Father is merciful.” God shows mercy to all, universally. Love is universal and all-inclusive. There is no ordering to love. Jess calls us to love everyone, even our enemies. Jesus calls us to divine love. But how do we do that?
At the end of the gospel reading, Jesus tells us to “stop judging, stop condemning.” The mind tends to do these things. It tends to complain, nurse resentment, compare, react negatively, and endlessly comment on anything in a condemnatory fashion. It is truly amazing how we seem wired to judge. It appears to be a core function of the ego mind. Hence, Jesus tells us to stop judging. Essentially it means to stop thinking, and when we stop thinking – in a spirit of faith – we open to God as God is. In other words, we pray. The ancient Christians call this contemplative prayer. It is crucial for a life of love, for then we let God love through us.
We cannot love from the ego. Sometimes, we have trouble loving our own families and friends. It is the nature of the ego to react to the world with fear, attachment, and complaint. Indeed, we are so polarized that half of the country appears to want to shut down all aid to the poor in the name of taking care of our own. The attitude is striking for its utter egotism. Jesus calls us out of such crass selfishness.
But Jesus does not tell us to get even. He prohibits any and all violent retribution. Even more, Jesus teaches us to meet evil with pure goodness arising from the inner space of contemplative prayer. He gives a few examples of physical brutality: a strike on the cheek and the taking of one’s property. With these images, Jesus is not only prohibiting violent retribution, but also demanding that brutality be met with abounding goodness. Revenge and retribution, as well as the sense of justice erroneously bonded to them, are huge false gods. We can all-too-easily give our attention to them over God when we have been the victim of an injustice. Giving our attention to God, we can turn the other cheek and act with love.
Jesus is talking about our inner reality, which will affect our outer conduct. Being grounded in contemplative presence, in God who is ever and always in this present moment, allows us to love enemies. Such presence necessitates fully accepting what is—no matter what it is. With this grounding in the presence of God, we are able to refrain from falling into another’s drama, conflict, or negativity. In its place, we can be open, free, and prayerful in the moment. We can bring interior silence to bear on the moment in which we are attacked, demeaned, or criticized. Dwelling in such contemplative silence right in the middle of an attack – whether physical, emotional, political, religious, etc. – we can be love instead of reacting to aggression. Interior silence allows us to be free of another’s aggression without the knee-jerk reaction of violence (verbal, mental, or physical) in return, because we are free from the emotions and thoughts that force us into the pattern of violent behavior.
In this same contemplative space, loving our enemies makes sense. Loving our enemy is to act as God does. God loves the kind and the wicked, the just and the unjust. In imitation of God, Jesus calls us to love those outside our group, those who annoy us, frustrate us, and oppose us. This may mean loving ourselves. But it certainly means loving those whom our country labels “enemy.”
This is tremendously radical, for this teaching suggests that we make peace with our enemies in the moment. To love one’s enemies requires the same level of awakening and familiarity with God that turning the other cheek does: grounded presence in the Mystery of God who is mercy. Loving enemies requires freedom from internal emotions, from the need to seek revenge.
And when we turn the other cheek to love our enemies, the world begins to change. The news paints a picture of the world crumbling, and, at times, plays on our fears. But Jesus constantly tells us not to be afraid. Even if the world collapses, God is with us. And when we pour the divine love into the world we are fighting evil according to the Gospel, which is to fight evil with goodness. Let us put away our fears. God is mercy. Indeed, divine love is infinite and so can encompass and heal all the evils of human history. They are but a drop in the ocean compared to the incomprehensibility and transcendent vastness of God’s mercy.