Thursday of the 10th week in Ordinary Time
Readings of the day: 2 Corinthians 3:15- 4:1, 3-6; Psalm 95:9ab-10, 11-12, 13-14; Matthew 5:20-26
Are we able to think of values that go together with other values, such that without one of the pair of values the other is diminished or made incomplete?
Our Psalm response today offers us vivid images of values that seem naturally to exist in pairs: Kindness and truth, justice and peace, truth and justice, and justice and salvation. Unless both elements of each pair are present, one suffers for lack of the other. Truth spoken or acted without kindness will ultimately diminish the truth of the words or actions. Kindness without truth or, as Pope Benedict XVI says in his last encyclical letter Caritas in veritate (Love in Truth or Charity in Truth), charity without truth becomes meaningless sentimentality. True and lasting peace is only possible with justice and vice-versa. Truth and justice depend on each other, and ultimately our salvation depends on how justly we speak and act.
Our Gospel reading today, from Matthew, is similar to our Psalm response in that Jesus, like the Psalmist, groups together key values: Truth, justice, and reconciliation. On a superficial level, it may seem most true and most just to exact revenge upon somebody who wrongs us with a clever insult: Raqa‒ “You fool”! But ultimately these kinds of attacks against the person (the Latin phrase is ad hominem) destroy more than the logic of such arguments; they destroy the person him or herself against whom they are directed. This is why Jesus compares these kinds of personal attacks to murder. Jesus’ words here may sound harsh to our ears, but increasingly his teaching here, I believe, is apt in our culture in which the capacity for debate and legitimate disagreement is being eroded by recourse to simplistic and destructive ad hominem attacks. And, Jesus goes on to say, holding angry grudges, which often take the form of passive-aggressiveness and gossip to avoid open hostility, is no better than open personal attacks. In fact these are frequently more destructive than open attacks.
How, then, are we to mend the damage caused by attacks against one another’s person, open or not? Reconciliation, Jesus says, must be pre-emptive; let us not wait for one who has wronged us to seek our forgiveness. Pre-emptive reconciliation means to stifle our pride enough to say clearly to another person, whatever the discord or disagreement, that we desire the best, the good, for our sister or brother. We desire, in no uncertain terms, good relationships with everybody, based on recognition of the dignity of the other person as much as our own; based on kindness; based on justice; based on charity or love without which any truth we speak or act is not fully true. We desire one another’s salvation.
The better we are at expressing these desires for one another, the more our Christian faith becomes authentically other-centered and ultimately God-centered as opposed to self-centered. But, almost paradoxically, only then does our self flourish fully. Only then shall “kindness and truth… meet, justice and peace… kiss, truth… spring out of the earth and justice… look down from heaven[;] justice… walk before [us], and salvation, along the way of [our] steps.”
Our Psalm response today offers us vivid images of values that seem naturally to exist in pairs: Kindness and truth, justice and peace, truth and justice, and justice and salvation. Unless both elements of each pair are present, one suffers for lack of the other. Truth spoken or acted without kindness will ultimately diminish the truth of the words or actions. Kindness without truth or, as Pope Benedict XVI says in his last encyclical letter Caritas in veritate (Love in Truth or Charity in Truth), charity without truth becomes meaningless sentimentality. True and lasting peace is only possible with justice and vice-versa. Truth and justice depend on each other, and ultimately our salvation depends on how justly we speak and act.
Our Gospel reading today, from Matthew, is similar to our Psalm response in that Jesus, like the Psalmist, groups together key values: Truth, justice, and reconciliation. On a superficial level, it may seem most true and most just to exact revenge upon somebody who wrongs us with a clever insult: Raqa‒ “You fool”! But ultimately these kinds of attacks against the person (the Latin phrase is ad hominem) destroy more than the logic of such arguments; they destroy the person him or herself against whom they are directed. This is why Jesus compares these kinds of personal attacks to murder. Jesus’ words here may sound harsh to our ears, but increasingly his teaching here, I believe, is apt in our culture in which the capacity for debate and legitimate disagreement is being eroded by recourse to simplistic and destructive ad hominem attacks. And, Jesus goes on to say, holding angry grudges, which often take the form of passive-aggressiveness and gossip to avoid open hostility, is no better than open personal attacks. In fact these are frequently more destructive than open attacks.
How, then, are we to mend the damage caused by attacks against one another’s person, open or not? Reconciliation, Jesus says, must be pre-emptive; let us not wait for one who has wronged us to seek our forgiveness. Pre-emptive reconciliation means to stifle our pride enough to say clearly to another person, whatever the discord or disagreement, that we desire the best, the good, for our sister or brother. We desire, in no uncertain terms, good relationships with everybody, based on recognition of the dignity of the other person as much as our own; based on kindness; based on justice; based on charity or love without which any truth we speak or act is not fully true. We desire one another’s salvation.
The better we are at expressing these desires for one another, the more our Christian faith becomes authentically other-centered and ultimately God-centered as opposed to self-centered. But, almost paradoxically, only then does our self flourish fully. Only then shall “kindness and truth… meet, justice and peace… kiss, truth… spring out of the earth and justice… look down from heaven[;] justice… walk before [us], and salvation, along the way of [our] steps.”
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