In Luke’s Gospel yesterday, we heard Jesus declare the Beatitudes, calling blessed people we would not necessarily think of in that way. Tomorrow, in Luke, we hear him decry the hypocrisy that he sees in the Scribes and Pharisees. Today, from Luke, we hear Jesus telling us to turn the other check if someone strikes us, which is very different from the “eye-for-an-eye” mentality we see in the Old Testament, very different from the way we see vengeance and revenge play out in the world. Earlier in the week, on September 9, we commemorated the feast day of Blessed Frederic Ozanam. He was a student at the University of Paris when he was challenged as to what his Catholic faith was doing to reach out to the poor and the needy. He was one of the founders of the Society of St Vincent DePaul, an organization that helps the poor from the faith journey of the society’s members. Ozanam was a leading historical and literary critic in the neo-Catholic movement in France in the early 19th century, yet his good works and the St Vincent DePaul Society are what he is most remembered for. Ozanam was beatified by Pope John Paul II in the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris in 1997. Jesus wants us to be much more than passive observers. He wants us to live out our faith with passion, vibrancy, and compassion in the spirit of saints like Blessed Frederic Ozanam.
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