7th Sunday of the Year A, 2017

May the good Lord bestow you with the gift of understanding that will enable you to live a life of holiness that is patterned after the perfection of God the Father who loves every person beyond human imagination.  Happy Sunday! +John I. Okoye

DOCTRINE AND FAITH

(Lev 19,1-2.17-18;  1 Cor 3,16-23; Matt 5,38-48: 7th Sunday of the Year A,  2017)

            The liturgy of the Word begins with the exhortation: Be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.  It concludes with the words of Jesus to his disciples in the gospel: You are to be perfect. The motive for the perfection is because God whose children we are, is absolute sanctity. The children of God include priests, consecrated men and women religious, the lay faithful, married and unmarried, young and old. Holiness or sanctity does not mean the capacity to work miracles or something extraordinary, that is to say, that it is not the type of holiness that is accompanied or characterized by prodigious works. The sanctity that is proposed to us is the common, ordinary one, that is accomplished through the extraordinary and heroic way in which we fulfil our daily duties. It means being faithful to God in very little things of our daily lives as we pray in the opening prayer of today’s holy Mass: Grant, we pray, almighty God, that always pondering spiritual things, we may carry out in both word and deed that which is pleasing to you. Holiness is to live according to the will of God, which he reveals to us through the Sacred Scriptures, the teachings of the Church and our consciences. It means attaching ourselves to God, orienting our lives to him who is the Absolute Good and who is to be loved above all things. As we know, holiness consists in the perfection of love: love of God and love of neighbour. Love of God should reflect itself and manifest itself in the love we have for our neighbour. The love of neighbour becomes concrete, true, visible sign and manifestation of the love of God. The exact measure and the sure proof of our love for God is indicated by the love we have for our neighbour. Already, in the book of Leviticus, in today’s first reading, there are already indications of some demanding exigencies and implications of the love of neighbour: You must not bear hatred for your brother in your heart. This means that in order to be holy as God is holy, we must refrain from nursing hatred in our hearts. More of the exigencies are:  if we see someone doing wrong we are required to rebuke him/her or we will share in their guilt; we are forbidden to entertain any form of vengeance and we are told to love others as we love ourselves. All these imply that the well being of others must be as important to us as our own.

It is in the gospel that the commandment to love our neighbour is developed to its maximum perfection and brought to its extreme exigencies. Jesus’ reinterpretation of some of the tenets of the Old Testament Law that began last Sunday continues today and touches our theme of love of neighbour especially as it regards the manifestation of the life of holiness in our interaction with people we share a strained relationship with. Jesus says: You have learnt how it was said: Eye for eye and tooth for tooth… This policy known as lex talionis, was found as early as the eighteen century BC in the code of the Babylonian ruler Hammurabi. It was really a moral advance over the common custom of blood vengeance which would exact a price that far exceeded the wrong done. Jesus says that even this more humane form of justice should not be practiced by his followers. In fact, he instructs his disciples to offer no resistance at all when someone tries to take advantage of them. Jesus exhorts his disciples that they should turn the other cheek to the person who strikes them on one. By this Jesus is telling his disciples that they should not retaliate when insulted but should offer non violent resistance in such a situation. The disciples are further told that if the court requires that they  hand over the clothings they are wearing in order to pay a debt, they  should willing relinquish even the cloak they might use at night as a blanket. Finally, if a soldier of the occupying forces compels them to carry his gear for a mile (as the Roman soldiers often did), they should be willing to carry it twice the distance. The point of these examples can be summarized in Jesus final admonition: Give to whoever asks. In fact, give more than is asked. In effect it means: disarm them with your willingness to go beyond what is required; outdo yourself in generosity. The most likely outcome is that through your kindness you may turn enemies into neighbours. Still on the theme of love of neighbour as index or pointer to our love of God, Jesus again, in the gospel reading of today, offers another reinterpretation of some of the tenets of Old Testament Law: You have leant how it was said: You must love your neighbour and hate your enemy. In his radical reinterpretation, Jesus insists that the disciple’s love must be patterned after God’s love, which is given unquestioningly to the just and the unjust alike. Among the people, to whom we have to show unconditional love, are those who do not particularly like us. We are to love those who deliberately exclude us from their social circles, talk about us behind our backs, make us feel we are not good enough for them, resent us for our accomplishments, and exploit us or do us harm. It is expected that those who strive for sanctity are to love as God loves.

    In order to be able to love as God loves, including our enemies, we should fix our gaze on Jesus who as he hung on the Cross of Calvary exclaimed: Father forgive them (his executioners) for they do not know what they do. Jesus is our model. We should imitate him who forgave those who did him harm. What is even more is that Jesus seems to be saying as he hung on the cross. Love your neighbour (your enemies inclusive) as I do by giving up my life to save the just and the sinner. The love of God for his people is a motive for us to love our neighbours. The author of today’s responsorial psalm enjoins us to praise and bless the Lord. The reason for such encouragement is because of God’s willingness to pardon, to heal and to redeem and save. These are acts that flow from God’s loving kindness (hesed) and compassion (rehamim). It is out of God’s mercy that he acts, ignoring the harsh punishment, the sins of the covenanted people would warrant. The extent of God’s mercy is further sketched by means of the figure of speech, east to west, which denotes immeasurable distance. Using this figure of speech the psalmist is claiming limitlessness or immeasurable extent for the compassion of God. Out of covenant love, God puts our transgression so far from us that the distance cannot even be imagined. In effect, God has forgiven and forgotten our transgressions. Finally, the psalmist uses a familial image to characterize God’s compassion. Although the reference is to the compassion of a father for his children, the familial word itself comes from the word for the womb (rehem). Here compassion is much more intimate than empathy felt for those who suffer.  It is a womb love.  In other words, the love that God has for us is the love a mother has for the children of her womb. This explains God’s commitment to us, and it is certainly reason to bless and praise the Lord. Undeservingly, we are sons and daughters of God through our baptism and God being our Father we should be able to imitate him both in his universality of love, as the gospel of today indicates, and in the depth of love, even the womb love, as the psalmist inculcates in the responsorial psalm, Psalm  103. Happy Sunday! +John I. Okoye

 pictures  by  chukwubike