“You have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, offer no resistance to the one who is evil.” Jesus is not calling the disciples to become “door mats” but rather he is using common 1st century Middle Eastern hyperbole attempting to make a key paradigm shift from violence to nonviolence. He is challenging his followers to be willing to go beyond the letter of the law and embrace something much more difficult, to embrace the other! He calls us to be holy as God is holy, to love our enemies, to give to whoever asks of us.
How is all of this humanly possible? It seems too much! God’s goodness is so great, how can any human act as good as God? Some theologians say that God’s goodness comes down to “generosity”, a generosity so grand that it created all known reality, that even the incarnation is as self-giving as was Jesus’ death as was his resurrection and as is our salvation. So then this “generosity”, this “out pouring” of God’s self into the world empowers us, fills us, emboldens us and ultimately changes us to become more generous, less violent, less bent on getting more and more for ourselves, and rather moves us to be kind and generous.
So we begin to work for ways in which our society makes room for the immigrant and the refugee rather than ways to keep them out. This spirit of generosity calls us to let go of, and to call out racist and bigoted attitudes towards others and to work for justice and peace in our nation and in our world. Perhaps this generosity of spirit grows from first finding our own gratitude for being loved so deeply and passionately by God, just as we are. And from that gratitude grows our ability to be generous towards “the other”. For what am I grateful for today? To whom will I be generous towards today…how will I show that generosity of heart?
Blessings,
Fr. Tim
How is all of this humanly possible? It seems too much! God’s goodness is so great, how can any human act as good as God? Some theologians say that God’s goodness comes down to “generosity”, a generosity so grand that it created all known reality, that even the incarnation is as self-giving as was Jesus’ death as was his resurrection and as is our salvation. So then this “generosity”, this “out pouring” of God’s self into the world empowers us, fills us, emboldens us and ultimately changes us to become more generous, less violent, less bent on getting more and more for ourselves, and rather moves us to be kind and generous.
So we begin to work for ways in which our society makes room for the immigrant and the refugee rather than ways to keep them out. This spirit of generosity calls us to let go of, and to call out racist and bigoted attitudes towards others and to work for justice and peace in our nation and in our world. Perhaps this generosity of spirit grows from first finding our own gratitude for being loved so deeply and passionately by God, just as we are. And from that gratitude grows our ability to be generous towards “the other”. For what am I grateful for today? To whom will I be generous towards today…how will I show that generosity of heart?
Blessings,
Fr. Tim
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