Triumphing Over Evil As Jesus Did, 11th Monday (I), June 14, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Mary of the Lake Seminary, Mundelein, Illinois
Catholic Medical Association Boot Camp for Medical Students and Residents
Monday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
June 14, 2021
2 Cor 6:1-10, Ps 98, Mt 5:38-42

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today we’re one week into our annual 16-day meditation on Jesus’ words to us in the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus gives us an image of how he lives and how we’re supposed to live as his disciples. He explicitly calls us with him to fulfill the law, to surpass the standards of righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, to surpass the standards of the pagans who love those who love them, but to live by Jesus’ own standards, encouraging us to make his words and his example the rock on which we build our life.
• Today we enter into the heart of the contrast between Jesus’ standards and those of the pagans, the Scribes and the Pharisees. Jesus talks about the Law of Talion, which antedates the Old Testament, but was included in the law of Moses, which sought to limit vengeance by saying, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Merely limiting retaliation, however, wasn’t enough for Jesus. He wanted us to stand up for our dignity while, as he would say later, loving even those who are making themselves our enemies. To turn the other cheek as someone was seeking to backhand us was not principally to be beaten on the other cheek with a forehand but to stand for one’s dignity not to be slapped by preventing one from backhanding us again. It was a means to prevent our being eaten away by resentment by affirming that we’re not resisting but we’re also not giving the other person an opportunity to offend our dignity and his own. Jesus would build on this in the other examples he gives. If someone wants to have our tunic or inner garment, he tells us to give our cloak or jacket, and if he wants us to be pressed into service to deliver something for one mile, that we should go for two. The lesson in all of the examples is the same. It’s the lesson Jesus himself taught in his Good Shepherd Discourse: “No one takes my life from me. I freely lay it down” (Jn 10:18). Rather than being victimized, we willingly participate with love. He wants us to triumph over evil not by allowing it to triumph over us but by responding with love to others’ hatred. Far more courage and virtue are required to be a disciple than to fight evil with more evil. These are Jesus’ standards, to give to the one who asks rather than worrying about the quid pro quo, not to turn our back to someone in need no matter how many times others — or even that person — have turned backs on us. This is the way our righteousness will surpass the scribes and pharisees. This is the way we will love not only those who love us but love like Jesus. This is super challenging teaching but it is part of the truth that sets us free. As Christians we always fight back with love, for if we don’t, to paraphrase St. Paul, we’re nothing more than noisy gongs and clashing cymbals and will gain nothing (1 Cor 13:1-8).
• St. Paul is someone who certainly lived and loved by Jesus’ standards. In the first reading he calls the Corinthians and us urgently to let our lives be transformed by them as well. He reminds us that God gives us his grace today — that now is the acceptable time and the day of salvation — and prays that we will not waste that grace. These worldly hardships and annoyances Jesus describes in the Sermon are all graces to sculpt us more and more in his divine image. St. Paul himself suffered all of the indignities to which Jesus alludes and more, yet “in everything,” he said, “we commend ourselves as ministers of God.” He responds always as a minister of the grace, love and mercy of God. He did so through “endurance, in afflictions, hardships, constraints, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, vigils, fasts.” He did so with “purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in unfeigned love, in truthful speech, in the power of God, with weapons of righteousness at the right and at the left.” He did do both in “glory and dishonor, insult and praise.” No matter what was happening he was seeking to show himself a minister of God and to fight with the weapons of holiness, which are the gifts and fruit of the Holy Spirit. He describes that when he’s treated as a deceiver, he doesn’t descend to that level but remains truthful; when Christians treat him as unrecognized, he knows he’s acknowledged by God; when others account him a dead man, he knows he’s alive by faith in Christ; when he’s made a messenger of sorrow, he shows he rejoices in suffering; when people respond that he’s poor having to work as a tent maker, he focuses on the riches he has received and distributes for the Lord. He shows that even though in the eyes of the world he has nothing, he demonstrates that he possesses all things because he is possessed by God the pearl of great price. Today is the day for us to begin to choose like him, imitating the way he emulates Jesus.
• The great grace we have to do so we receive each morning. Jesus himself was slapped on one cheek by Pilates’ soldiers during the crowning with thorns, but he didn’t fight back. When they played dice for his tunic, he gave them also his underwear and his body and blood. When they pressed him to walk the Way of the Cross, he did so until the end. He gave himself to all of us who were asking for his salvation and has never turned his back on us. Entering into communion with him here, like St. Paul did, is the means by which we will be able to live by the challenging standards he announces to us in the Sermon on the Mount. Today is the day for us to receive that help not in vain but in full, to turn our cheeks and faces toward him, to be equipped with the weapons of righteousness and to seek in everything to commend ourselves as the ministers of the one who freely laid down his life in love so that we could freely lay down ours with his.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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