LOVE AND COMPASSION.

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February 20, 2022
Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time – C.

READINGS: 1 Sm 26:2, 7-9, 12-13, 22-23; Ps 103:1-2, 3-4, 8,10, 12-13; 1 Cor 15:45-49; Lk 6:27-38.

“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.” (Lk 6:27)

A British proverb says: “All beings seek happiness so let your compassion extend itself to all.” And a Sicilian proverb adds: “Don't love only the one who loves you, it's tyranny.”

Love your enemies. Do good. Be compassionate... These simple sentences are the code of harmony, peace, and fulfilled life. They are the perfect way to happiness. No one can live in harmony without others, without love, and especially without love for those who hate him. Humanly speaking, our common tendency is to do to others what they did to us. That means, if someone hurts you, hurt him back, and maybe more painfully, that he may feel what you felt. If someone hates you, make no effort to love him. To the one who is uncompassionate with you, be merciless as well. An eye for an eye, the talion’s law, retribution equal to the crime, vengeance…

Last Sunday, the Lord gave us the way to the blessedness of life, the Beatitudes. He also taught us how life could be a mess, a curse. Today's liturgy amplifies that teaching. We are called to nurture the virtues of love and compassion in their greatest expression and our relationship with each other. The example of this beatific life, we have it in Jesus Christ our Lord. The Catechism says “Christ died out of love for us, while we were still "enemies." The Lord asks us to love as he does, even our enemies, to make ourselves the neighbor of those farthest away, and to love children and the poor as Christ himself. The Apostle Paul has given an incomparable depiction of charity: "charity is patient and kind, charity is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Charity does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Charity bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."” CCC.1825

What does it mean to be compassionate and how is love truly proved? Beyond the sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others, real compassion is, when, while having the possibility to make someone pay back the evil, he did you or plots against you, you decide to forgive out of love. It is the fact of showing kindness and empathy.

In the first reading, we see David extending that compassion to King Saul who was hunting him, willing to eliminate him. Though David got the God-given opportunity to kill Saul who became his enemy, he chooses to spare his life, to not raise the hand on him, because he was God's anointed and also because of his love for him. This act of compassion of David will win over the anger and fierce jealousy of Saul and abase his evil plot. Thus, the saying, mercy, and kindness win the fierce enemies and transform them into greater friends.

In the Gospel, through a series of short but powerful and demanding pieces of advice, the Lord Jesus teaches his followers the way to harmony and peace. It passes through loving our enemies, doing good to those who hate us, blessing those who curse us, praying for those who mistreat us. These are things humanity unbelievable and unthinkable as we said before. The Lord goes further to say, “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.”

The Gospel of Christ is demanding. It is challenging to be a Christian. It is difficult to search for harmony. But this is not impossible to reach. It is simply the cost of our own peace. For, if we fail to apply these bits of advice in our relationship with others when it will come to us, no one will be willing to extend it to us too. Therefore, Jesus quotes the golden rules: “Do to others as you would have them do to you... For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”

Life is like a domino effect. What goes around comes around. The way you treat others, the way they will treat you. Kindness begets kindness. Love begets love. Compassion begets compassion. As Christians, our model is not the flesh, but Jesus. If in Adam we are all made flesh and so sinners, attracted to retaliation and hatred. In Jesus we are made spirit, so children of love and compassion.

These sayings have great implications for our daily existence. In everything, we must seek harmony, peace, and do good. The world has not gone better because we take revenge on all who do evil to us. War has never stopped a war, just like fire cannot stop a fire. When we fight fire with fire, what remains are only ashes. The only and surest way to quench hatred, jealousy, rivalry, and any evil resent is love. Even though that sounds very demanding, it is at that cost only could we reach harmony and peace. Jesus did it to us. He loved us and that love cost his death.

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