Homily for Tuesday, 17 June 2014– Ferial

Tuesday of the 11th week in Ordinary Time 

Readings of the day: 1 Kings 21:17-21; Psalm 51:3-4, 5-6ab, 11, 16; Matthew 5:43-48

Which is the most difficult commandment to observe? In Matthew’s Gospel, for the last several weekday Masses, we have been hearing Jesus give us increasingly difficult, or even difficult to understand, commandments. Jesus takes commandments of the Law of Moses from the Old Testament and raises the standard for observing these commandments, even if the original commandments seem easier to keep than Jesus’ modified (or, better yet, intensified) ones.

“Thou shalt not kill.” This is an easy enough commandment to keep, right? “But I say whoever is angry with his brother [or sister] will be liable to judgment.”

“You shall not commit adultery… whoever divorces his wife must give her a bill of divorce.” But Jesus says that treating another with lust‒ as a thing to be used instead of a human being to be loved‒ falls short of acting according to God’s love for us; for human community; for marriage, the great sacrament of communion between a woman and a man.

“Do not swear at all,” Jesus says in Matthew. “Let your ‘yes’ mean ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ mean ‘no.’ Anything more is from the evil one.” Then he says, “Offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other one to him as well.”

Today, Jesus says in our Gospel reading, “Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.” How many of us think, when someone is especially irritating or consistently makes us angry, even for good reason, to pray for this person? Today’s intensified commandment may be the most difficult of the commandments that Jesus gives us in Matthew’s Gospel to follow.

“Love your enemies”? “Pray for those who persecute you”? Is Jesus serious? Is keeping this commandment even possible?

I believe that Jesus is serious and that keeping this and his other commandments is possible, although perhaps not without the help of God’s grace. Martin Luther King, Jr., once said, “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”

Who then is the source of this love that is “capable of transforming an enemy into a friend”? We know that the source of this love is God, and that God calls us to love as God loves. This is not to create for us an impossible-to-observe commandment but to strengthen human interrelationship; human community; and finally communion between us and God.

Let us then pray to God, the source of love; the source of transformation even of enemies into friends, to strengthen us with his love; to strengthen us in our human relationships; to strengthen us with the grace to keep God’s commandments, especially those we find most difficult to observe.