As a child hearing today’s Gospel, my attention always focused mistakenly on Christ’s line, “An eye for an eye . . .,” rather than its main point about loving our enemies. I remember an interminable safety lecture from Sr. John Michael Richie, S.L., our first grade teacher, before our excited class was allowed to first take sharpened pencils in hand. Though Sister’s warnings underscored the ghastly outcome should we injure ourselves or another, the prospect of losing one’s eye seemed remote. I thought: “People in the Old Testament actually took out people’s eyes?! Whew! No wonder Jesus had to say something!”
In truth, “an eye for an eye,” illustrated the “law of retaliation” in the code of the Ancient Near East. It was meant to keep retaliation in check and encourage just proportionate response to aggression. Even with this tempered understanding of the text, however, Jesus is not satisfied, and neither should we be. Jesus’ message reminds us we are called not to mere passivity when facing an adversary, but to loving action. On the eve of Lent, the Gospel counsels that in seeking understanding in disagreement, in extending mercy to one with whom we quarrel, lies the means of true “perfection.”
—Fr. William T. Sheahan, SJ, is a Jesuit of the Central and Southern Province and serves as rector of the Rockhurst Jesuit Community in Kansas City, MO.