In today’s Gospel, Jesus gives us another one of his many teachings that can be hard for us to put into practice in our lives. Jesus said to his disciples (and us): "You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. . .” We live in a litigious society. I know this from experience because I am a paralegal by profession. I have worked on countless lawsuits filed between friends and even family members because one party felt that the other wronged them and so they sought retribution through the courts.
However, our Lord challenges us, saying: “But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other one to him as well.” I bet you are thinking to yourself “I must be a saint” to follow this teaching of Jesus. Well, is not living a life of holiness and saintliness something that we are striving for as followers of Christ? I am reminded of a story that I read about Saint Ignatius of Loyola:
When he first came to Paris, he received from a merchant twenty-five gold crowns on an order sent from Barcelona. These he put for safekeeping in the hands of one of the Spaniards with whom he lived. This latter very soon appropriated them for his own use, and when called upon, could not restore them. The result was. . . Ignatius found himself unprovided for. . . he was forced to seek his livelihood by begging, and to leave the house where he lived. . . the Spaniard who had spent the money of Ignatius and had not paid him, had set out to journey to Spain and fallen sick. As soon as Ignatius learned of this, he was seized with a longing to visit and help him, hoping by this to lead him to abandon the world and give himself wholly to God.
How would we have responded if we found ourselves in a similar situation that Saint Ignatius of Loyola found himself in with the Spaniard?
Jesus’ teachings, like the one today, though challenging, are not commandments as much as they are an invitation from Christ for us to participate in his divine life, to enter into the communion of love of the Holy Trinity - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We certainly cannot respond in the way that Saint Ignatius of Loyola did on our own. We must depend on God’s grace. This is what Saint Paul tells us in in today’s first reading: “in everything we commend ourselves as ministers of God, through much endurance, in afflictions, hardships, constraints, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, vigils, fasts; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in unfeigned love, in truthful speech, in the power of God. . .” It is as St. Thérèse of Lisieux wrote: “I had to pass through many trials before reaching the haven of peace, before tasting the delicious fruits of perfect love and of complete abandonment to God’s will.”
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