Many countries in Latin America have gone through revolutions or civil wars or military dictatorships, with a lot of killings and murders and violence taking place. Nicaragua, a country in Central America, is one such place. A man named Tomas Borge was a leader in the struggle against the dictatorship in control of his country. He was captured and put into prison. He was subject to the worse type of torture for months. It seemed like it would never end. After the dictatorship was toppled, Borge was freed and actually became the Minister of the Interior of the new government. One day, the tables were turned. The guard who inflicted such terrible punishment on him was now an inmate in prison himself. Borge visited this man in prison. He walked up to the man and said: “I am going to get my revenge from you”. He then held out his hand and said, “This is my revenge, I forgive you.”
For the last couple of weeks, we have heard passages from Christ’s Sermon on the Mount from Matthew’s Gospel. With images telling us that we are to be a light in the world and the salt of the earth, with a perspective on God’s commandments beyond their literal meaning, Christ’s teachings in the Sermon on the Mount push us to grow in our faith. Let us reflect upon the Pharisees for a moment. Jesus could be very tough on them. With good intentions, the Pharisees desired to live in the light of God’s justice, to be just before God. But the Pharisees had a very specific approach, trying to attain justice through the strict observance of God’s laws and commandments. The Pharisees thought that through their own efforts, they could succeed in being where God wanted them to be. Jesus understands where the Pharisees are coming from, but instead of validating them and their efforts, he announces a different kind of justice which surpasses the justice of the Pharisees. We may think that taking an eye for an eye is justice. We may think that getting revenge is justice. Instead, Jesus challenges us to a higher standard: “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” When most of us think of justice from our own point of view, centering justice on God and his law may be a very different point of view. Yes, we are to strive toward perfection, to fulfill God’s purpose in creating us, to cooperate with God’s grace in our lives. We achieve this state of perfection when we try to love as God loves, to forgive as God forgives, to show unconditional good will and universal benevolence as God does.
What are some suggestions we can employ on our journey of faith that can help us live in the spirit of today’s Gospel? I thought about what it means to be holy, to aspire to be like God. We can begin by approaching holiness as as state of being, rather than just being able to follow God’s law and commandments. Holiness is fundamentally not about doing, but about being. We are called to live consciously in a state of prayer, a state of union with God, to live consciously inside of God. Holiness does not signify being perfectly pious, but doing and living for God’s sake what we used to do and live for our own sake. We are called to live as in a different way, as human beings with centers that are outside ourselves and inside our unification with God. We are only free to live as disciples of Christ when we are free from ourselves. Holiness is not just about morality; it is more about transforming ourselves and making God the center of our lives. When we are able to do this, then we can truly understand the point of today’s Gospel.
When Thomas Aquinas was celebrating mass during the feast of St Nicholas in the year 1273, he had an experience of God that completely changed his life. Aquinas was not yet 50 years old and was considered one of the greatest theological minds the world had seen. He had written more than 100 works, including commentaries on Scripture and on the Church Fathers, philosophical treaties, commentaries on Aristotle, explorations of disputed theological topics, and his greatest work, the Summa Theologiae, which stood unfinished. Yet, after celebrating Mass, Aquinas revealed to his secretary that his writings will now come to an end. Compared to the mystical experience he just had with God during the celebration of the Mass, he considered all his writings nothing more than straw. The intellectual aspect of our faith, God’s laws and commandments, Church dogma and doctrine: these are all important, but they are not everything, they are not the end. If we do not have an authentic relationship with God, if our spirit and soul do not experience him and love him, then the rest is for nothing. As Aquinas experienced, words sometimes fail miserably to describe that transcendent, loving, mystical experience we have in our Lord.
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