7th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Leviticus 19:1-2, 17-18 1 Cor 3:16-23 Matthew 5:38-48
In the extract from the Sermon on the Mount which we heard last Sunday Jesus had updated the Law of Moses in order to ‘complete’ it. By repeating his phrase ‘But I say this to you’, Jesus asserts his divinity as Son of the Father.
In today’s Gospel reading from the Sermon on the Mount Jesus raises the bar even more – “But, I say this to you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”.
While there is no place in the Scriptures where it says that we should hate our enemies, it does teach revenge in the form of ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’. Jesus will not tolerate any revenge at all. Again and again in the course of the Gospel Jesus returns to this need for unconditional forgiveness. Forgiveness is not just a cancelling out or minimising of a wrong or a sin, it is something productive and positive and lasting.
The American author, Mark Twain defined forgiveness very vividly; “Forgiveness is the scent that a primrose sheds on the heel that has crushed it”. By conforming to what Jesus now teaches, we will be regarded as ‘children of our Father in heaven’.
Being called children of the Father suggests a new intimacy between us and God. When we pray we acknowledge our relationship with God and we come to know that God addresses every individual among us by a name that no one else knows. As Scripture tells us; “I will give the hidden manna and a white stone – a stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it” (Rev 2:17) In God’s eyes each of us is unique!
In our prayer to the Father we dare to ask for that manna, that bread. In the ‘Our Father’ it is Jesus who teaches us to pray. “Give us this day our daily bread …..”
The words of Jesus as reported to us by Saint Matthew in today’s Gospel really stand as a catechesis on prayer. This catechesis is a warning to us against false forms of prayer which seem to put the one praying at the centre instead of forming a relationship of love and dependence. It is in this relationship that we learn from God. We learn to forgive as God has forgiven us and to love as God loves us. We learn what is good and how to reject evil.
As children of the Father in heaven we can say ‘Our Father’ and aspire to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. This is just the point that the Lord makes to us today. ‘But I say this to you; “You must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect”’