The Seventh
Sunday in Ordinary Time
(C)
Dear
brothers and sisters,
Today, the Lord Jesus gives us, if you will, our marching
orders in the Christian life: “love your enemies, do good to those who hate
you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you” (Luke 6:27-28).
If we do this, then everything he says afterwards will follow. Here in these
islands, in the lives of Father Damien and of Mother Marianne, we have two
outstanding examples of how to keep Jesus’ command to love our enemies;
following them, we, too, can become “children of the Most High” (Luke 6:35).
Contrary to so much of our society’s understanding of love,
love does not consist so much in feelings or sentiments, as much as it does in
the will and in action. Love is the desire for the good of another person,
together with a willingness to bring it about. We see this in the Lord’s further subcommands, if you
will, to do things to our enemies: we are to do good to them, we are to bless
them, and we are to pray for them; in other words, we love our enemies
precisely by doing good to them, by blessing them, and by praying for them. In
this, we see that love entails actions to bring about the good, even, and
especially, at loss to myself. “In
the end, in fact, love alone enables us to live, and love is always also
suffering: it matures in suffering and provides the strength to suffer for good
without taking oneself into account at the actual moment.”[1]
When the Lord tells says to us, “love your enemies,” he is
“proposing his model of life to [us] in radical terms.”[2]
Because it seems so unnatural for us to love our enemies - we would much rather
revile them, slander them, and gossip about them - we have to ask what it means
to love our enemies.
If we take Jesus seriously and give his words careful
consideration, we will see that
...Christ's
proposal is realistic because it takes into account that in the world there
is too much violence, too much injustice, and
therefore that this situation cannot be overcome except by countering it
with more love, with more goodness.
This "more" comes from God: it is his mercy which was
made flesh in Jesus and which alone can "tip the balance" of the
world from evil to good, starting with that small and decisive
"world" which is the human heart.[3]
Is this not what Father Damien and Mother Marianne both set
out to do, to tip the balance from evil to good, and is this not, in fact, what
they achieved at both Kalawao and at Kalaupapa? Yes, they both sought to love
their enemies, such as they were, so that their enemies, too, might become
children of the Most High.
When Father Damien arrived at Kalawao in 1873, he found the
settlement to be a land of vice and he quickly set about uprooting the sin to
plant virtue so that the good could flourish. His actions were not always
welcome and he surely thought often about Jesus’ counsel to “do good to those
who hate you.” This led him to provide medicines and bandages to the patients,
regardless of who they were, and even to build their coffins and dig their
graves, all because he loved his enemies and wanted what was good for them.
As news of his mission spread and he made the needs of his
mission know, the world responded with great generosity, causing his superiors
at the Board of Health and even within his religious community, to become
jealous of him. Thinking he sought to make them look bad, they said many
uncharitable things about him and to him. And though Father Damien sometimes
reacted with justifiable anger, still he remembered to “bless those who curse
you,” all because he loved his enemies and wanted what was good for them.
When Mother Marianne and her Sisters arrived at Honolulu in
1883, they were sent to serve at the Kakaako Branch Hospital. For three years,
they were refused permission to go to Kalawao because it was deemed women were
not made of strong enough stuff to live among the settlement and she remembered
to frequently “pray for those who mistreat you,” all because she loved her
enemies and wanted what was good for them.
Father Damien and Mother Marianne could have responded to
their enemies in any number of ways, in ways that would have perpetuated the
violence and the injustice, yet they chose instead to follow Jesus’ radical
model of life and transformed that lawless land into a land of love.
Our own enemies may not be as strong or as numerous as
theirs, but we surely all have someone with whom it is not easy to get along,
someone who always seems to be antagonistic towards us. These two Saints of
Hawai’i show us the way forward, they show us how to follow Jesus’ model of
life. Indeed, they show us that
Love of one's enemy constitutes the
nucleus of the "Christian revolution", a revolution not based on
strategies of economic, political or media power: the revolution of love, a
love that does not rely ultimately on human resources but is a gift of God
which is obtained by trusting solely and unreservedly in his merciful goodness.
Here is the newness of the Gospel which silently changes the world! Here is the
heroism of the "lowly" who believe in God's love and spread it, even
at the cost of their lives.[4]
Let us, then, each look to the example of Father Damien and
Mother Marianne and learn from them how to love our enemies and become true
children of the Most Hight. Amen.
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