Loving Those Who Hurt Us: The Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time 2020

    Loving Those Who Hurt Us:

The Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time 2020

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February 23, 2020

Leviticus 19:1-2, 17-18; Psalm 103; 1 Corinthians 3:16-23; Matthew 5:38-48

Christians revere this hard teaching of Jesus to love the one who wronged us because it is an ultimate test of our faith in God’s love. Jesus is not merely speaking about those strangers who say or do mean things to hurt us, he is also referring to those who are closest to us who cause us the greatest pain because our ability to love well has been compromised.

When a loved one has hurt us or we have hurt them, the last thing we want to do is to listen compassionately because we want to correct them, have them do what we want, give them human judgment and punishment, and let them know of our anger and hurt. However, it is only when we listen skillfully that we can begin to understand the other person more fully. This is how love is nourished. The basis for love is understanding, which means to understand how we each suffer. If you really want to love someone and make the person happy, you have to learn about your own and their suffering. It’s the only way forward. With understanding, you will reconcile, and your love will deepen and become a more binding love.

It is important to know that we will never communicate well when we are angry. We can hold onto our anger, but we have to do it in a way that does not consume us or knock us off kilter. We have to treat our anger tenderly and once it is settled, we can figure out the nature of our anger, because it probably is different from what we expect it to be. Many times our anger comes from a wrong perception or a habitual way of responding to events that does reflect our deepest values.

We have to genuinely get in touch with our anger in order to heal. Often our anger covers over our suffering, and we need to see ourselves as a person who suffers rather than a person who is angry. Others will be able to see that our suffering causes the anger, not someone else’s mistreatment of us.

Understanding ourselves sufficiently is crucial for understanding another person. We cannot understand or love another person until we first understand or love ourselves first. When we are able to see how another person’s suffering comes about, we can be compassionate to them, and we lose the desire to punish or blame them. We see them as someone who needs and seeks our love. Our work is to listen as fully as we can without speaking, and when it is finally time for us to speak, we do so from a place of compassion and understanding. The person, who used to be angry with us, feels comfortable because of the loving concern in our voices. Our relationships depend upon our capacity to understand our own difficulties and hopes, and also those of others. We then can find happiness in the place that once held anger, and life is the way it should be once more. Everyone profits from our ability to reconcile and to become happy. Enemies can become friends again, and the hard teaching of Jesus is attainable.

Scripture for Daily Mass

First Reading: 

Monday: (James 3) Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show his works by a good life in the humility that comes from wisdom.

Tuesday: (James 4) Where do the wars and where do the conflicts among you come from? Is it not from your passions that make war within your members? You covet but do not possess. You kill and envy, but you cannot obtain; you fight and wage war. You do not possess because you do not ask. You ask but do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.

Wednesday: (Joel 2) Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the LORD, your God. For gracious and merciful is he, slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishment.

Thursday: (Deuteronomy 30) “Today I have set before you life and prosperity, death and doom. If you obey the commandments of the LORD, your God, which I enjoin on you today, loving him, and walking in his ways, and keeping his commandments, statutes and decrees, you will live and grow numerous.

Friday (Isaiah 58) Cry out full-throated and unsparingly, lift up your voice like a trumpet blast; Tell my people their wickedness, and the house of Jacob their sins. They seek me day after day, and desire to know my ways.

Saturday (Isaiah 58) If you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech; If you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted; Then light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday.

Gospel: 

Monday: (Mark 9) He asked them, “What are you arguing about with them?”
Someone from the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I have brought to you my son possessed by a mute spirit. Wherever it seizes him, it throws him down; he foams at the mouth, grinds his teeth, and becomes rigid. I asked your disciples to drive it out, but they were unable to do so.

Tuesday: (Mark 9) They came to Capernaum and, once inside the house, he began to ask them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they remained silent. For they had been discussing among themselves on the way who was the greatest.

Wednesday (Matthew 6) “Take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them; otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father. When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win the praise of others.

Thursday (Luke 9) “The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.”

Friday (Matthew 9) “Why do we and the Pharisees fast much, but your disciples do not fast?” Jesus answered them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?

Saturday (Luke 5) Jesus saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the customs post. He said to him, “Follow me.” And leaving everything behind, he got up and followed him. Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were at table with them.

Saints of the Week

February 23: Polycarp, bishop and martyr (69-155), was made bishop of Smyrna and was the leader of the second generation Christians. He was a disciple of the apostle John and a friend of Ignatius of Antioch. He wrote catechesis and rites for initiation into the Christian community. He was martyred in 155 and is a Father of the early church.

February 25: Mardi Gras is your last chance to eat meat before Lent. This is the last day of Carnival (Carne- meat, Goodbye – vale). Say goodbye to meat as we begin the fasting practices tomorrow.

         February 26: Ash Wednesday is the customary beginning to the season of Lent. A penitential time marked by increased fasting, prayer and almsgiving, we begin our 40-day tradition of sacrifice as we walk the way of Jesus that ends at the Cross during Holy Week. Lent is a time of conversion, a time to deepen one’s relationship with Christ, for all roads lead to his Cross of Suffering and Glory.

This Week in Jesuit History

·      Feb 23, 1551. The Roman College, the major school of the Society later to become the Gregorian University, began its first scholastic year with 15 teachers and 60 students.

·      Feb 24, 1637. The death of Francis Pavone. Inflamed by his words and holy example, sixty members of a class of philosophy that he taught and the entire class of poetry embraced the religious state.

·      Feb 25, 1558. St Aloysius Gonzaga received tonsure at the Lateran basilica. Within the next month he would receive the minor orders.

·      Feb 26, 1611. The death of Antonio Possevino, sent by Pope Gregory XIII on many important embassies to Sweden, Russia, Poland, and Germany. In addition to founding colleges and seminaries in Cracow, Olmutz, Prague, Braunsberg, and Vilna, he found time to write 24 books.

·      Feb 27, 1767. Charles III banished the Society from Spain and seized its property.

·      Feb 28, 1957. The Jesuit Volunteer Corps began.