TRANSFORMING THE HUMAN NATURE

Mt 5:43-48

Two shopkeepers were bitter rivals. Their stores were directly across the street from each other, and they would spend each day keeping track of each other's business. If one got a customer, he would smile in triumph at his rival. One night an angel appeared to one of them in a dream and said, "I will give you anything you ask, but whatever you receive, your competitor will receive twice as much. Would you be rich? You can be very rich, but he will be twice as wealthy. Do you wish to live a long and healthy life? You can, but his life will be longer and healthier. What is your desire?"  The man, in a deep silence, thought for a moment, and then said, “Here is my request: Strike me blind in one eye.”

“All we want is justice.” This is a refrain of family and relatives of victims of a crime. They want by all means that the perpetrators of the crime are imprisoned or executed, as if that will even out the score and give them peace. When we are hurt, it is our natural instinct to get back at the one who hurt us. But in today’s gospel Christ calls us to make a radical change in our thinking. He says: “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,”

With this commandment, Jesus gives new meaning to an old law about the love of the neighbor and defines exactly who our neighbors are, extending the neighborhood to the farthest corners of the globe, even including one’s enemies. This is certainly a challenging task Jesus puts before us as his disciples. We need to understand that Jesus' definition of righteousness involves a freedom that enables us to move towards our enemies in a new and surprising way. "But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." Jesus is saying that the one who is righteous will treat his/her enemy with love, the same way he treats his neighbor. And he adds that to deal righteously with those who persecute you is to bring them to the Father in prayer. It is clear that Jesus intends for us to go beyond what we could do on our own; transforming conflict into peace and well-being. What Jesus is asking us now is that we should not return hatred for hatred or hostility for hostility; in other words, we must not exclude a single person from our love no matter what they have done or will do to us.

Becoming a Christian involves a transformation in which your way of thinking is utterly changed. Paul says the same thing in Romans 12:2. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. You stand out in the world as someone different. You are so different because God’s transforming power has made you to be born again. You have been transformed into a new kind of person, with a new way of thinking, with God’s way of thinking. And so, you deliberately love as God loves. In loving even the unjust, you prove whose child you are. The love that you express proves that you are a child of God. God has empowered you to become His son and daughter.

If we really want to be sons and daughters of our Father in heaven, let us be perfect, just as he is perfect. Are you acting like Our Father who is in heaven? May the new commandment of our Lord during this period of lent provoke us to consider the proper way to respond to the people we meet, especially those we don’t like.