Monsignor Owen P. Jinks, deceased pastor of St. Paul of the Cross Catholic Church in La Mirada, California, when preaching on St. Luke’s Gospel from today, would say: “Hate the sin, not the sinner.” He did so because he understood we all have people who come into our lives who we either don’t like or who cause us problems. So, instead of focusing on the person, it would lead us to look at what happened and possibly why we found it difficult to love someone we believed was our enemy or at least caused us to be upset or angry.
Jesus realized there would be times in our lives when what we believed should be easy would become complicated. We don’t all think about life in the same way. Not all of us were reared in the same family structure. In today’s society sociologists look at 11 types of families. The nuclear family which consists of a father, mother and children represents a quarter of today’s families and is third in order on the list by residence following matriarchal and patriarchal family structures.
I grew up in a nuclear family as an only child. I didn’t have any siblings with which I needed to share anything I had and my mother doted on me because she lost a child from a disease at a time when there wasn’t any medicine for a cure. My outlook at an early age was that I could do anything I wanted and if someone got in my way, they would have to contend with me. This often ended in a fight if it was a boy and using words to hurt that person if they were a girl. It wasn’t until at the age of 10 when I entered a Catholic school that I began to understand we are all created by God in His divine image and likeness creating a commonality that needed to be nourished rather than conquered at someone’s expense.
As time enfolds in my life, my perspective has changed in that I am being opened more and more into what I hoped it could become but am sorrowfully disappointed by the multiple distractions of evil as depicted in greed, power and fame. Prayer and Scripture leads me to believe in God’s goodness and to trust in His ways, but humankind tears at the very fabric of life consistently destroying the lifeblood of all that is precious and good as depicted in a media of social networks, television, radio, newspapers, podcasts, tweets, blogs and all sorts of materials.
It is hypocritical to espouse that loving, showing mercy and forgiving others is a normative because one is a fully initiated and practicing Roman Catholic. On the contrary, most of us due to our humanness and sin nature are often the opposite. Therefore, to love one’s enemies as you would yourself as asked in St. Luke’s Gospel is almost an impossible goal without placing our trust in God who both teaches and lives it through his only-begotten Son, Jesus.
What always amazes me are people who suffer a tragedy such as the loss of a child through a criminal act, especially on purpose, and find forgiveness in their heart towards the perpetrator knowing that child will never bring joy to them while they live on earth. It seems like they have seen into the heart of the person who caused harm and believe what happened would not now be, but other circumstances caused it.
God throughout the Bible tells His creation that we need to practice love, mercy and forgiveness if we are to follow His beliefs and come into everlasting life. Certainly David in the first reading understood, even though Saul was pursuing to kill him that it was God’s choice as an anointed king to how his life should end. By showing mercy, David received a blessing from Saul not only because he saved his life, but Saul knew that David also was anointed and as such was in God’s care.
As disciples of Jesus, we are called by our Baptism to love God and all that He has created as Jesus loves us. In doing so, we must adopt the image of a heavenly person of the risen Christ, the last Adam, as St. Paul writes about in his first letter to the Corinthians so we can help all to reach the heavenly kingdom. We must not judge or condemn them, nor do we need to hug who we consider an enemy each time we meet him or her. But, what we need to do is see the other person as the image of God and the good each possess. This is how we deal with personal attacks and the negativity of society by accepting we are part of that which happens as well. In doing so, we adopt the stance of a non-violent person who works to restore justice, dignity and right relationships between people.
Added to all of this, we need to pray. St. Ignatius of Loyola wrote a Prayer of Generosity for us to reflect on how to implement the ways of the Lord as asked to do in the Gospel and readings of today.
Dearest Lord,
Teach me to be generous;
Teach me to serve You as I should;
To give and not count the cost;
To fight and not to heed the wounds;
To toil and not to seek the rest;
To labor and not to ask to reward;
Save that of knowing that I do Your most holy will.
Amen.
Reading 1: First Samuel 26: 2, 7-9, 12-13, 22-23
Reading 2: First Corinthians 15: 45-49
Gospel: Luke 6: 27-38
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