Making Friends With The Lord Jesus Fr. Edwin

Jesus points out today in the Gospel that this principal enunciated in the title was development of Jewish law or the Mosaic Law. However, Jesus perfects it by saying that we should not even think about getting back at our opponents. We should expose our other cheek if he hits us on the other. This means that we need to forgive our offenders. The violence has to end in us. We should not spread the violence to others, beginning with the one who is our aggressor. This does not mean that Our Lord wants us to be like sitting ducks. We can defend ourselves, and we should fight back following justice and self-defense. However, in situations where we cannot achieve that, we need to learn to forgive the others and not spread the harm. We need to imitate Jesus during His Passion and Death on the Cross. He absorbed all of the cruelty of His enemies.

Jesus illustrates to us through parables what the Kingdom of God is like. He uses today the images of seeds, plants, sowing and harvesting. He underscores the phenomenon of how these seeds grow and mature for the harvest. We do not know how it develops, but the seed does grow. And that is an image of the Kingdom of God growing in us and through us. We receive the seed first in Baptism and then in subsequent sacraments. How it grows we don't know how, but it is there growing and maturing. What we only have to do is not to pose obstacles to its growth. Returning to the analogy of Jesus, the farmer takes care of the growth of the seed and the plant. We, too, need to take care of the life of Jesus growing in us but defending it, nourishing it and taking care of it. Thus, when harvest time comes, we would find ourselves in the Kingdom of God!

The Lord emphasizes simplicity in speech. We fall for egoism and primacy of selfishness when we lie and complicate our speech. Truthfulness is the best to follow. Making oaths need not be necessary just to assure the others that we are telling the truth and that one will fulfill his commitment. Ordinarily, what needs to be done is to say things simply and truthfully. Yes if we want to say Yes, and No if we want to say No.

Today's Gospel sends to listen to Jesus Christ who on His own authority as Creator and, therefore, as Supreme Lawgiver, teaches that it is enough to look at a woman lustfully to commit adultery with her. So, God's prohibition against the action of a spouse to engage in sexual intercourse with someone not his or her spouse, also includes "lesser" decisions in a person like looking, imagining, desiring, and remembering such sins. Jesus also corrects Moses' relaxation of this commandment by permitting a certain kind of divorce. He affirms what was from the beginning. One who divorces and remarries, another person commits adultery.

The good Lord explains to us today in the Gospel of the Mass that we need to address the waywardness of our passion called Anger. It should be the right kind of anger. Anger is one of the emotions God has given us. It is a certain vehemence of our strength in battling evil, i.e., evil that we ascertain to be conquerable. However, we cannot give it vent just like that. To be virtuous, it needs to be modulated and moderated by reason, and for Christians, by reason enlightened by faith. This latter means that we should hold Jesus Christ as our model and imitate Him in His Anger.

The Church sets up the life of St. Barnabas for our contemplation today. We can learn from him a lot, especially how he disagreed with the Apostle of the Gentiles and set off in separate journeys on the matter of St. Mark accompanying them.