Retaliation is the automatic human response. We can see it reflected in the way that people and even animals react with one another. The under lying implication is this: we must be able to defend ourselves. If someone comes towards us with violence we must be ready to push back with violence, because if we do not, the aggressor might get the upper hand and we could be revealed as cowardly or weak.

This basic principle of retribution is pervasive in our society. Ninety percent of our action films are based on some variation of it. Some person is wronged by someone else and finds a way to strike back, often with excessive violence. We struggle with this in our own lives trying to figure out how we should assert ourselves against those who would take advantage of us. We debate in our minds what we should say to our children about defending themselves against those at school who bully them. It is clear that the automatic response to violence is a response with violence in return.

This is what makes Jesus’ teaching in today’s gospel so difficult. Jesus tells us that we are to respond to violence with non-violence, that we are to offer no resistance to the one who does evil, that we are to turn the other cheek. It would be difficult to find a more challenging teaching of Jesus in the entire Bible. But at least part of his strategy is clear. Jesus wants us as his disciples to be different. He wants us to stand out against the rest of society. We go back to what we heard two weeks ago where Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth.” We are to have a distinctive flavor. We are not supposed to be just like everyone else. You can sense this at the end of today’s gospel where Jesus says that if we only love those who love us, what good is there in that. Everybody does that. We have to be different. We have to be distinctive.

Regardless of what you think about climate change,
there’s no denying the heat of the contemporary political climate
and the vitriol and venom that suffuse it.

That’s the context in which we hear Jesus in the gospel
counsel us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.
Regardless of our political leanings, how are we supposed to do that?
Or how about the Lord enjoining us to be as perfect, as holy – as God?

I’m pretty sure everyone here probably wants to be a good person
and to be known as a good person.
But how many of us want to be holy?
How many of us would feel comfortable
being identified, known, as a holy person?

We’re probably more comfortable with holiness
as a quality we admire in others
(Jesus, Mother Teresa, or our grandmother
who goes to Mass and prays the Rosary every day)
but I’m not sure holiness is something we feature or strive for
or want for ourselves.

And insofar as we think of holiness as something too pious,
spiritually over the top, even odd or quirky
to that degree, holiness might even be something we don’t want.
But here’s the Lord calling us to be as holy as God is holy –
which of, course, is almighty holy!

The counter force that withstands the mechanism that governs the world is the emphasis of Jesus Christ in the gospel. Jesus Christ proposes going the extra mile in order to be a step ahead of the evil mechanism that holds sway of humanity. This extra mile will not only put human beings ahead, it will also bring out the divine human aspect that is suppressed by the mechanism.  As long as we look at the aggressor from his own point of view, we will fall into the danger of revenge. But when our focus is on the imago Dei, i.e. the essence of our being, we will understand why we should jettison revenge and embrace love.

Today’s gospel begins with a human natural justice of an eye for eye, tooth for tooth. This natural justice implies that what you give is what you receive. But experience has shown that oftentimes it entangles us into conflict than peace. The aftermath is always a motivation towards revenge. Rather than settle the dispute, it motivates further into conflict. The Shakespearean Merchant of Venice is an indicator of the error of this natural justice. It is not possible to have your pound of flesh without spilling blood. The ruler of this world, depends on this illusion of eye for eye, tooth for tooth, to feed the mechanism that operates in the world. He preys on our human nature, by attacking our humanness which naturally incline to this natural justice. The evil mechanism is such that the unjust aggressor attacks us in a manner that appears to diminish our humanness. When the attack is perceived as insult, disgrace, humiliation etc., we react with the natural impulse that is inclined to revenge in order to recover our humanness. The mechanism while holding sway of the human nature, gives no room for the second thought that will reveal the illusion at work.

St. Paul reminds us of the divine nature we inherited at baptism as God’s living temple. He warns against the wisdom of this world which does not edify the Temple of God that resides in our souls. The wisdom of this world, he claims, is foolishness to God. We should not base our arguments according to wisdom of this world. The ruler of this world has fashioned a mechanism based on the wisdom of this world in order to prevent any argument from revealing the illusion at work. So we are left with the advice of St. Paul which is to always focus on that divine wisdom of the cross which is the motivation of his apostolic ministry.

Jesus Christ encourages us to go the extra mile that will keep us far ahead of the mechanism that govern the world. He tell us not to revenge, not because we are not hurt by the aggressor, but because the aim of the aggressor is to hurt us in order to destroy us. We are destroyed when we are caught in the web of revenge. The hurt we feel is an illusion because it only appears to be, the aim is to provoke that anger that recourses to retaliation. It appears to be because we look at it not from the point of view of the aggressor, but from the image of God that we are made of, the temple of God living inside of us. When we react in anger, we lose sight of the correct point of view, and thus we revenge. But a constant reflection of who we are, images of God, Temples of God, will always put us ahead of this evil mechanism.

Going the extra mile means to recollect our image of God in order to understand that the hurt is merely a bait and not the aim of the attack. To be perfect means to live above the influence of the human mechanism that pulls us down. Then we shall by His grace love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

Hatred kills. There is nothing earth shaking about that statement. Wars demonstrate this. There are people who hate other people and who do everything they can to eliminate the other people. There are atrocities taking place every day. The innocent, particularly children, die. I’ve been to London three times, and all three times a bomb went off. This is the result of centuries of hatred between the English and the Irish. But we don’t have to go so far to find hatred. People are being attacked on our American highways, in the cities and even in the suburbs all due to hatred. The Klu Klux Klan, Skinheads, and other Fascist orientated groups feed on hatred.

Hatred kills. There two victims of hatred: the person who is physically hurt and the person who hates. The foremost victim of hatred is the person who hates. Hatred transforms a person from a compassionate human being, to a person whose main concern is to seek vengeance on someone who the person feels has wronged them. Life is consumed with the desire for retaliation and reprisal. Maybe this vengeance will not be seen in a physical attack. It very well may result in a verbal attack or a destruction of another person’s reputation. The fact is that the person who hates has transformed his or her life. This person cannot be the loving person Christ called him or her to be.

In the readings today we hear about Adam and Jesus. In the second reading St. Paul compares the two of them, recognizing that by one sin many became sinners and by one righteous act many became righteous. So, we have the correlation of the first Adam and the second Adam: the first brings sin and death to humanity; the second brings acquittal and life to humanity.

While the actions of the two can be placed side by side as St. Paul does, a major difference exists in the effects of these actions. Every human person (except our Lady) is affected by Adam’s sin because it is passed on by inheritance. There is no choice on our part as to whether or not we want to be affected by Adam’s disobedience. On the other hand, the effects of the righteous act of our Lord are offered to everyone but it requires our free choice to receive the fruits of His obedience.

For a culture that has grown weary and even intolerant of holiness and perfection, our Lord’s words at the end of today’s gospel must be a cause of confusion: “You shall be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” For many of us, the commandment to be perfect triggers feelings of anxiety and discomfort. Jesus seems to be advocating a new kind of evangelical perfectionism. Perhaps, the real problem is that many confuse the commandment of Jesus to be perfect with the call to perfectionism. “Perfect,” in this context, means “complete, finished, fully developed.” Who doesn’t wish for this?  Notice that the term does not mean “flawless!”

For people who struggle with perfectionism, it is always a personal struggle to outdo themselves. They are much too hard on themselves, expecting perfection from themselves and becoming bitter and even hating themselves for coming up short. Perfectionism is an obsession with control and Christian perfectionists often believe that they can earn God’s love and work their way to heaven. They fail to understand God’s grace and the nature of His unconditional love. They forget that perfection belongs to God alone, but the story doesn’t end there.

Yes, the goal of Christian life is perfection. But perfection isn’t perfectionism. In fact, Christian perfection is not just different from perfectionism, it’s diametrically opposed. The very perfectionist impulse that makes us winners in the world’s eyes is the one we need to overcome on our journey to eternal life with Christ. If perfectionism is about control, perfection is about surrender, about letting go so that God can be in control. For only God can perfect us, and He did so by sending His Son Jesus Christ to die as a perfect sacrifice for sin.  Though we are flawed, we can be forgiven, saved, sanctified, and perfected.  St Paul assures the Philippians in Chapter 1 verse 6, “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.”  Christ completes us. Paul reminds us that perfection and the call to holiness isn’t a singular one-off event but a process of sanctification as we continue to learn to walk in the path of Christ.  Perfection is never possible by our own efforts, that’s the illusion posed by perfectionism. Perfectionism can indeed be an obstacle to perfection in holiness because it prevents us from allowing God to perfect the good work He has begun in us. Thus, we should struggle against perfectionism, yes; but always be ready to embrace perfection, especially in the area of spiritual excellence.

As Christians, called to love, easily we may live in the illusion of seeing ourselves as loving people. Consequently, not only may we be a little uncomfortable to admit it but we may also go as far as to deny we actually have enemies. Well, in any case, there are persons who have offended us and because of that we don’t want to have anything to do with them. We resent them and their presence makes us feel ill-at-ease. The Gospel draws our attention to such people. What do we do with them?

By teaching about love Jesus is not treading an unbeaten track. In fact, Moses, as the First Reading shows, taught about it. At God’s instruction, Moses taught the people to be holy because the Lord their God was holy. Precisely, that meant no hating of their kin, correct the erring neighbour, no vengeance or holding a grudge against one’s own people and loving a neighbour as oneself.

Nevertheless, the talk about love here is quite different from what Jesus teaches in the Gospel. The characteristic of love in the OT is that it focuses on your brother, your kin, your people and neighbour. What does it mean?

For Jews it meant one had the obligation to love and act kindly towards a fellow Jew. Once that’s fulfilled, you can easily treat all the rest like a dog.  Don’t think of a dog in terms of that beautiful pet that you love so much but rather in the sense of the contempt the oriental people of that time had for dogs as impure animal. It’s here Jesus introduces a perspective quite revolutionary.

In the first reading, the Lord commands us to be holy as He is holy. Holiness is God’s very character and our heavenly Father wants His children to act and look like Him. In many passages in the Bible, Holiness is exalted as the only key to the Kingdom of Heaven. Without holiness we cannot go to heaven (Heb 12:14). We are called to be a “holy nation” (1 Pt 2:9), and the Lord is coming back a final time for a Holy Church, “holy and immaculate, without stain or wrinkle or anything of that sort” (Eph 5:27).

To be holy the Lord exhorts us in Leviticus to avoid hatred of our brothers and sisters, to correct them openly and avoid bearing grudges. For Leviticus the litmus test for Holiness is that “you must love your neighbour as yourself”. Jesus further shows that the litmus test for holiness lies not only in the love of one’s neighbour but also in the love of one’s enemy.

The Law of Love has its importance in our world today where the Law of Talion seems to dominate. Bishop Helder Camara opines that “Spiral of Violence”, the violence of poverty which keeps over two-thirds of the world’s population in a sub – human condition, the violence of revolt when peaceful demands have no effect and the violence of repression with which the powerful try to crush the demands of the poor, are central problems of today’s world. We are born and nurtured within a culture of violence.

A serious look at the modern world reveals something intriguing – a concatenation of violence in many forms. One notices a modernity where murder, massacre, extermination, world wars, the unimaginable absurdity of the Shoah and genocide, portray the world’s inhumanity. It is of such a world that Jesus says, “You have learned how it was said, ‘You must love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I say this to you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. In this way you will be sons of your Father in heaven.”

The litmus test for being holy and perfect is in the love not only of our neighbour but also moving forward to even loving our enemies and those who persecute us. In abstaining from applying the principle of “an eye for an eye” we become peace makers. Jesus tells us that “Blessed are the Peace Makers for they shall be called children of God” (Mathew 5:9). Mahatma Gandhi tells us that “an eye for an eye” makes the whole world blind. The challenge to be holy is also the challenge to be men of peace.

Jesus’ command to love one’s enemy is difficult to accept for those who follow worldly standards. St. Paul warns us in the second reading not to think of ourselves as wise in the ordinary sense of the word and to note that “the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God”. Fr. Hebert F. Smith, sj, gives us a very beautiful example to illustrate this point. “Think of a man returning from a hunting trip, gun in hand. He sees a man striking his brother and feels a raging impulse to shoot him dead – and in the nick of time sees that the attacker is his other brother”! (Sunday Homilies, Year A).

Christ has always taught that the other man is our brother. Fr. Smith further proposes what is known as the Messianic License which involves the refusal to fight violence with violence and hated with hatred. It is the permission to return love for hatred and kindness for evil. There is need for brotherly love, the love of enemies and the cultivation of nonviolence. Only these can provide a lasting solution. If you tackle the same issues on a nonviolent basis, you stop the violence. Let us strive for holiness by loving our enemies.

The renown theologian, Cardinal Avery Dulles, tells about seeing a church banner that caught his attention. The banner proclaimed: God is other people! Cardinal Dulles said he wanted to add a comma: God is other, people!

As you can can see, the comma makes a big difference. Without the comma, the banner is saying that we are God and God is us. Or that God is everything and everything is God. With the comma, however, it means: People, listen – God is other.

That’s what our first reading says, “Be holy, for I, the Lord your God am holy.” The word “holy” has the sense of being separate or other. Think of the distance between a human being an an earthworm. Well, the distance between us and God is greater. God is other.

How are we to react when someone is unkind to us, or even worse, causes us harm of some kind? How are we to react to those who do evil to us? Jesus answers those questions in the first half of the Gospel today. (Matt 5:38-42) Jesus says we are not to take revenge. Just as last Sunday, when Jesus took Old Testament teaching and moved it beyond externals (Matt 5:21-37), today Jesus again takes Old Testament teaching and gives it deeper meaning. Today, concerning revenge, Jesus quotes the Old Testament, “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” (Ex 21:24; Lev 24:20; Deut 19:21). Originally the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth was meant to ensure that punishment for a crime was not excessive, that the punishment suited the crime. But as time went by, people began to use “eye for eye” as a way to justify their own actions, in other words, to justify revenge. In reaction to this, Jesus responds, “But I say to you” and gave examples of non-retaliation. So, Jesus is saying to us to consciously control feelings of revenge. Violence is not the Christian response to violence. When Peter cut off the right ear of the high priest’s servant in Gethsemane (John 18:10), Jesus healed his ear (Luke 22:49). I once heard of a parent whose child was causing problems. The parent responded lovingly and said to the child, “I will love the sin out of you!” It seems to me that this is a helpful way to understand the non-retaliation Jesus requests in the Gospel today. How are we to react when someone is unkind to us, or even worse, causes us harm of some kind? How are we to react to those who do evil to us? We are to love the sin out of them. Not “eye for eye” but “love for eye.”

The “eye for an eye” teaching that our Lord refers to in today’s gospel (Mt. 5:38-48) was actually an attempt to restrict violence in a time when revenge was indiscriminate and excessive.

In the revenge culture of the time not only was it the perpetrator of a violent act who became a possible target for reprisal but any member of the same family, clan, ethnic group or even someone “thought” to be responsible or connected.  The culture of revenge was excessive.  An “eye for an eye” therefore was an attempt to limit the continuous cycle of revenge and violence.  With this understanding it would almost be better to read the injunction as “one eye for one eye and no more”.

For our Lord though it was not enough.  His desire is not just to limit the cycles and structures of violence but to actually heal the human heart from which all evil desires spring.  Evil and violence can never overcome evil and violence, even when co-opted for a good.  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had an astute awareness of this truth.  In his writings and speeches we certainly find the call to end the massive injustices that the African-American community faced but we also find Dr. King reflecting on how the path of non-violence was also meant as a means to help heal those white brothers and sisters whose hearts were hardened by racism and prejudice.

Today’s Gospel looks at this virtue of meekness. A person is said to be meek when he or she is at once strong and gentle. Sometimes another person’s aggression is too hurtful and the best we can do is to admit our inability to cope. We distance ourselves from the aggression. We know we are being weak but there doesn’t seem to be any other way. At other times we put up a fight and give as well as we get. On such occasions we may even feel strong and assertive, but it is a risky strategy and can cause a lot of hurt to the other person as well as to ourselves. Jesus shows us another way to respond where we neither run away in weakness nor treat our attacker with the same kind of nastiness with which he or she is treating us. Jesus shows us how to be strong by standing our ground and not letting evil have its way unchallenged, while at the same time responding gently and with love. This is called meekness and we can learn it from him who is ‘meek and humble of heart’.

Sometimes I feel everything in my being recoils from the words of Jesus. I want even more than an eye for an eye. And who has a right to ask me for an extra shirt, much less a coat? I reluctantly give up a minute of service, much less a mile. Go two miles? Love enemies? It’s hard enough to love those close at hand.

When I see my own resistance to the gospels, how can I be surprised that our church seems to ignore what he said? How can I be upset if a nation would think it sheer idiocy? Try forgiving the creep down the street, much less Saddam Hussein.

Our resistance to the gospel is all of a piece. To hold myself not accountable is to hold my nation or church not accountable. To exempt my nation or church from the truth is to exempt myself.

Love in this context isn’t about having warm and fuzzy feelings about the people who persecute us. Nor does it mean avoiding tough situations, quite the opposite. Love means choosing to want our persecutor’s salvation, so much so that we pray for their salvation every day and sometimes take risks to demonstrate this love by taking the high road in our dealings with frustrating people, hopefully bringing them closer to a relationship with God by our example. This is of course a lot easier said than done, I get it. However, it is important for our spiritual health.

You see, when confronted with an adversary, there are two instincts that we humans have. Those instincts are to fight or flight. Both are ultimately unhelpful. Both will ultimately perpetuate violence. Jesus offers a third approach, turn the cheek. When we turn the cheek, we are not avoiding the confrontation, we are not fleeing the scene, nor are we returning violence with violence. By turning the cheek, we demonstrate that we are not going to sink to our adversary’s level of violent behavior, and by not fleeing the scene we are demonstrating to our persecutor what just behavior looks like in contrast to unjust behavior.

What does this look like? A legend about Mother Teresa that I am told is a true story: One day, Mother Teresa took a starving little girl’s hand and led her to a store for some bread. Mother Teresa begged on behalf of the little girl for some bread. What happened next? The owner of the store looked squarely into Mother Teresa’s eyes and then spit on her. Unshaken, Mother Teresa wiped off the spit and looked squarely back into the store owner’s eyes and said, “Thank you for the gift. Can you now give something to this starving girl?”

“Speak to all the congregation of the children of Israel,” God told Moses. “Say to them: ‘You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.’”

“Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” St. Paul asked the Corinthians. “God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.”

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” Jesus told his disciples.

We are human, not divine. At our birth, even our human nature is fallen, for we inherit the guilt and stain of the original sin of our first parents. That sin was a sin of pride, in which Adam and Eve wanted to be “like God,” but “without God, before God, and not in accordance with God,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

We cannot become holy on our own.

Second: To go to hell means being separated from God forever ”by our own free choice,” the Catechism says.

Our choice may be gradual, but we affirm it by every sin. If we repent, God forgives us, but repenting takes humility, and we all inherit the pride underlying Adam and Eve’s original sin.