6th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C
First Reading: Jer 17:5-8
Second Reading: 1 Cor 15:12,16-20
Gospel Reading: Lk 6:17,20-26
In this Sunday’s Gospel Acclamation, Christ gives us a new commandment: “Love one another just as I have loved you.”
“Love your enemies,” he says in the Gospel Reading, “do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.”
We see an example in the First Reading: David spares King Saul, who, by all human standards, deserved to be killed.
After David defeated Goliath, Saul, out of jealousy, twice tried to kill him with a spear; he stationed him in his army so that the Philistines could kill him; he attacked him in his own house; and he put the entire priestly city of Nob to the sword in order to find him.
The Psalm proclaims that God himself is like David: “The Lord is compassion and love, slow to anger and rich in mercy. He does not treat us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our faults.”
In fact, as we hear in the Second Reading, God raises us to heights we could never reach on our own. The first man, Adam, and all his descendants were living beings, but “from the earth, made of dust,” St. Paul says. However, the “last Adam,” Christ, became for us “a life-giving spirit.” He makes us divine; grafted on to him like branches on to a vine, we share the life and the bliss of the Holy Trinity.
Moreover, St. Paul says elsewhere, Christ saved us while we were still his enemies, still in rebellion against his Father.
The world urges us to take revenge on our enemies. However, in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey gives an interesting sidelight on Jesus’ command to love them.
He describes the experience of Viktor Frankl, a Jew who survived the Nazi death camps. “One day, naked and alone in a small room, he began to become aware of what he later called ‘the last of the human freedoms’ ... He could decide within himself how all of this was going to affect him.”
He realized that between what happened to him and how he responded to it, he was free to choose his response.
Thus “he became an inspiration to those around him, even to some of the guards,” says Covey. “He helped others find meaning in their suffering and dignity in their prison existence.” How?
Remember how Jesus, about to be betrayed, arrested, tried, condemned, and crucified, said “I lay down my life.... No one takes it from me; I lay it down freely.” Remember how he comforted his apostles: “Take courage! I have overcome the world.”
Covey tells how this doctrine affected a woman at one of his talks. “I’m a full-time nurse to the most miserable, ungrateful man you can possibly imagine,” she told him. “This man has made my life miserable.”
Covey replied that no one could hurt her without her consent, implying that it was her choice to be miserable. At first, she denied it, but then she realized its truth.
At that moment, she said, “I felt as though I was being let out of San Quentin. I wanted to yell to the whole world, ‘I am free! I am let out of prison!’” No longer, she said, would she let herself be controlled by someone else’s treatment of her.
We can choose our response to our enemies. We can love them. We have to, for Christ will treat us as we treat others. “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned,” he says. “Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.”
As David said to Saul, “As your life was precious today in my sight, so may my life be precious in the sight of the Lord, and may he rescue me from all tribulation.”
Father Hawkswell is again teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English. The whole course is available in written form and Sessions 1-20 in YouTube form at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. Session 21, "Death and the End of the World," will be available in YouTube form starting Feb. 20.