February 18 Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time Mt. 5/38-48

BACKGROUND

In today's gospel - taken from the Sermon on the Mount - Jesus tells his followers and us what it takes to be the light of the world. It isn't easy. Indeed his instructions that one should love one's enemies has often (almost always) fallen on deaf ears. One sees little willingness among the good Christians on both sides of the orange/green divide in Northern Ireland to forgive and begin again. Nor among the good Christian Croats and Serbs in what used to be Yugoslavia. As G.K. Chesterton once remarked, it is not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting, but found hard and not tried.

STORY

Once upon a time a teen age boy was driving down the street in his father's car and not really watching where he was going. A little girl, three years old, ran out on the street and the car ran over her and killed her. The police said that it wasn't the boy's fault because there was no way he could have seen the girl until the last second. Still he tried to apologize to the girl's parents when they came out of Church after a mass for her because he was not sure that he wasn't to blame. They wouldn't accept his apology and screamed at him and cursed him and said that they hoped he suffered for the rest of his life just as they would and that he would burn in hell for all eternity for what he did. They sued him and the case was settled out of court by the insurance companies, but they continued to curse him whenever they saw him. One of their friends said to them you're both good Christians, don't you ought to forgive him. Never, they both shouted. Being a Christian doesn't mean you have to forgive a murderer. Jesus did, said the friend, but they didn't hear what she said.