Thursday in the 23d Week of Ordinary Time, September 10, 2020

Luke 6:27-38

Jesus said to his disciples: “To you who hear I say, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. To the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other one as well, and from the person who takes your cloak, do not withhold even your tunic. Give to everyone who asks of you, and from the one who takes what is yours do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. For if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same. If you lend money to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, and get back the same amount. But rather, love your enemies and do good to them, and lend expecting nothing back; then your reward will be great and you will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as also your Father is merciful. Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”

Today’s Gospel reading comes directly after yesterday’s, which concluded with the Lord warning the Pharisees and scribes, who persecuted him and his followers, that their actions were leading them to eternal punishment.  The Greek text for today’s reading thus begins, “But to you who hear”, as though the Lord were turning from the Pharisees and scribes back to his disciples.  And having consoled his followers with the promise of heaven and rebuking the wicked, the Lord Jesus now instructs the faithful in how to act towards the wicked: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”  The Lord is telling his disciples that they are not to act merely as one sect among others, with rivalries, feuds, and grudges.  They are not called to be followers of just some human leader, vying for influence and power.  They are called to follow the Son of God and to become saints.  This requires utterly different behavior, and a completely new mind, that of Christ.  They are to act in ways radically different and even opposed to how others would act.

Notably, he does not tell his followers to pray against their persecutors, to mock them, or to take action against them, but to pray for them and their conversion, and to perform good acts for them.  In order to emphasize this, which must have seemed a strange or at least a surprising teaching to his followers, the Lord says, “To the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other one as well, and from the person who takes your cloak, do not withhold even your tunic. Give to everyone who asks of you, and from the one who takes what is yours do not demand it back.”  Jesus uses hyperbole, a common rhetorical device, here.  Thus, the one who believes in Jesus is not to attack his persecutor when he sees an opportunity to do so.  Rather, he attempts to live peaceably with him.  That, in essence, is the meaning of the injunction to “turn the other cheek”.  The command to “Lend expecting nothing back” can be understood as offering generosity when it is possible to do so without taking from one for whom one already has responsibility.  For instance, we can be generous with our money in giving alms, but not if it means losing our rent money or the money that would be used to feed our own families.  And while the Lord says to us, “Give to everyone who asks of you”, he does not enjoin us to give a person everything he asks for, for certainly he could be asking for that which we do not have, or that which is otherwise impossible to give.

We must be careful in understanding, “Do to others as you would have them do to you“, which has been styled “the golden rule”.  This rule has been criticized as impossible, but it is quite practicable if we read it as, “Do to others the good as you would want them to do the good for you.”  Thus, if a person comes to us and asks for a large amount of money, and we have it to give him, we prudentially consider whether this would be good for that person, bearing in mind what we know of the person and his situation.  It is certainly not good to give a drug addict a large amount of money, or to perform an illegal action on someone else’s behalf.  The actual good in the first case might be simply to provide food or to even to pay a bill for the addict, and, in the second, to simply refuse to make the situation worse for a person who requires an illegal act, such as perjury.  What is the true good for the person before me, as best as I can know it?  That is the question the believer in Jesus asks himself when someone asks something of him.  And this is the key to understanding what it means to love someone, whether friend or foe, as St. Thomas Aquinas points out: to desire what is best for that person and to do what we can to help the person achieve or receive this.  To the extent that we do this, it will be done for us by Almighty God: “Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”