Today’s passage from Matthew chapter 5 basically inaugurates the great Sermon on the Mount of Matthew’s gospel, which is actually a collection of teachings of Jesus. The Church would not be the same without the Sermon on the Mount along with Luke’s somewhat altered parallel, the Sermon on the Plain. Today’s passage is the first of what are known as the “Six Antithesis” of Matthew’s Sermon that all begin with the phrase, “You have heard,” where Jesus basically begins with one of the ten commandments and then brings that to its fulfillment (“But I say to you”). This first Antithesis must be united with the fifth and sixth in order for us to understand fully what Jesus is telling us. Luke’s parallel of this in Lk 6 makes it even more clear.
First, even anger and annoyance with our brothers and sisters is a sign that we are not in the spirit of love and acceptance that Jesus calls us to. That is a most excellent beginning to the spiritual life that Jesus invites us to. We must embrace everyone spiritually, denying our pride and vanity and see all people as in great need of our love and acceptance as we are of theirs. Everything else is but judgement. Everything else is entirely a product of ourselves and has nothing to do with the other in any way. The fault is always ours alone, no matter what the other does. If we take offense it is not because we have been offended but because we simply chose to take offense at something that has nothing to do with us.
It culminates in Mt 5:39, “Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” When was the last time you did not resist the one who is “evil?” And why do we even use the term “evil” to describe another human being. God continues to love them through their “evil.” Then why should we not also? It all culminates in Mt 5:43-48. “Love your enemies and do good to those who persecute you.” “If you love only those who love you [and greet only your friends], what merit is there in that?”
These are the central messages of Christ Jesus, “Love one another as I have loved you.” Nothing else can ever replace this or take its place. No works, no prayers, no religious practices, nothing else will ever be greater than love, without which, everything else is useless (1Cor 13). It requires us to lose ourselves in the humility of Christ, who, “Though he was in the form of God… he emptied himself to become a slave.” It is the Jesus who, later in Matthew, told Peter at his arrest, “Do you not think that I could ask my Father and he would immediately send more than twelve legions of angels to defend me?” We walk with the meek Christ.
Let us pray each day of Lent to seek this love for all people. It needn’t be in any big way. Just simple kindness, gentleness and compassion and the grace to forgive. Then God will do all the rest.