Fr. Albert
St. Peter Catholic Church, New Iberia
In 2003 Gary Leon Ridgway confessed to the murder of 48 women and hinted that he may have actually killed as many as 60. During his sentencing, a father of one of Ridgway’s teenage victims looked directly and him and said “You’ve made it difficult to live up to what I believe… what God says to do… to forgive. You are forgiven, sir.” That statement reduced the Green River Killer to tears.
On the evening of June 15, 2015 and young man went to Emanuel Church in Charleston and sat in on a bible study. After sitting through a period of discussion, the man stood up and, without warning produced a handgun and began shooting the other people present, leaving nine of them dead. After being captured and convicted, the young man, named Dylann Roof, has not shown any remorse for what he has done. Despite not even wanting forgiveness, some relatives of the murdered men and women spoke directly to him saying “I forgive you, my family forgives you.” Unlike Ridgway, these words appear to have had no effect on the murderer.
I could list story after story of Christian men and women looking squarely at murderers and monsters and offering nothing but forgiveness. Some of those end with repentance and even in friendship. Others end much like Dylann Roof’s story without any earthly sign that such forgiveness accomplished anything. But is that the point? Are we called to forgive so that we can finally make a person feel sorry? The old law, eye-for-eye and tooth-for-tooth was a way of limiting revenge; it was designed to give a person what they wanted – some kind of justice – without allowing it to escalate further. Is the new law a new kind of exchange? A clever way of exchanging forgiveness for the satisfaction of seeing them sorry and repentant?
No, because that still tries a human logic of quid pro quo, of manipulation and concern for oneself. And the whole of what Christ speaks to us today is about transcending that cycle. It is about entering into the generosity of God himself; to be perfect as our heavenly father is perfect. Turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, giving to a beggar without hesitation, and even forfeiting a lawsuit. All of these follow a common thread: they are generous.
But not resisting evil, really? Abuse, terrorism, theft to the point of becoming destitute – why would God want to let evil win in these ways? That is not what the Lord is commanding. He says not to offer resistance and then he gives us some helpful examples. Being insulted with a slap, being sued for a piece of clothing, and being forced to do hard, but temporary labor. Each of these affects only oneself and none of them are directly life-threatening. They serve as good examples of injustice that can be met with meekness and even generosity: excellent ways to manifest God’s own generosity. He even includes literally giving money to a beggar to drive home the point: it is about generosity even in the face of evil, about forfeiting our rights and our desire to get even to display the way that God’s love overflows with generosity. God does not forbid self-defense.
None of these concern harm to another person, either. Jesus never teaches that we should not protect those that we can or that we should not work to stop criminal activity. Always, these things refer back to Love: love of God and love of neighbor. But Jesus knows he has to address our dangerous habit of finding ways to justify hatred. “You have heard that it was said you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” The Old Law never taught that you should hate your enemy. You won’t find it in the bible. Still, people said such things so he makes his point even more explicit: love your enemy.
But what does Jesus mean by love? Not an emotion, not a feeling, not even liking the person. Love means to want, to will, to choosewhat is best for the person you love. And Jesus tells us quite clearly what that means for an enemy: to pray for them. Like the stories I started with, this includes forgiving them even if they are not sorry. That kind of love; the kind that prays for and forgives even our enemies… that serves the Love of God. It makes us children of our Heavenly Father.
That kind of love, that kind of generosity reveals God himself to others. God did not need to create us. He did not benefit from creating us. He does not benefit from allowing us to live and from providing rain, sun, and food to us, despite our sinfulness. But he does it anyway out of generous love. And when we show a similar kind of generous love by praying for our enemies, by going the extra mile, by suffering for the sake of showing our love to others, we reveal God. Like natural children, we begin to resemble our Father and others can begin to recognize Him in us. And that is the point of Christ’s strange demands. God is beyond ordinary human appearances, worldly wisdom, and earthly logic. He wants our love and generosity to seem unusual, so that it might be ever more evident that something greater than us is at work.
And that is perfection. “Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.” We assume that this word means without flaw, having no faults, never messing things up. It does not. Perfect is from the Latin per facerewhich is more literally “to make through.” We could say to be complete. Or, as the first reading says “be holy for the Lord, your God is Holy.” Christ does not want a stuffy perfectionist, but someone who is complete in the way that God the Father is: in the practice of love. Perfection is not never making a mistake, but in doing everything for love. To be completely motivated by and immersed in love. That was the brilliance of St. Therese’s Little Way – that everything done with Love is pleasing to God, even little and pathetic things.
And our little and pathetic acts of love – things like doing one more chore than was asked, choosing to let an insult go – these entwine his love more deeply into our very being, until it woven through our every motive. And when that Love has become such a part of us, the human logic of exchange stops making sense to us, the desire for vengeance becomes distasteful, and we care less about our own rights than about our chances to love. And it is then that we can understand what St. Paul means when he says “everything” and “all [people]” belong to you. They belong to you in love, whether they are wicked or not. And you belong to Christ in that love, and Christ belongs to God; to a God who is perfect and who can, and will, make us perfect too.