Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dear Friends,

In this week’s Gospel, Luke continues his Sermon on the Plain (which parallels the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s). It is a challenging passage that prescribes a defining Christian characteristic: a universal call to mercy and forgiveness.

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you... For if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them.

You’ve heard these words add to the depth of last week’s beatitudes. It’s not enough that we are blessed in our sorrow, persecution, and poverty; the Lord also asks us to love those who would cause our sorrow, our persecution, and our poverty. This sounds very beautiful, but in practice it can seem impossible or absurd.

To testify against its seeming impossibility, I invite everyone to listen closely to the first reading. David’s story is not merely a historical account of loving one’s enemies—it touches something deep within us that we long to imitate. There is a reason the Lord speaks of David as a man after His own heart, and this account powerfully illustrates it.

In turning our gaze to Christ, we see how truly un-absurd this teaching is. The world of division, anger, misunderstanding, and heartlessness that we experience today was not unfamiliar to his time. He was fully immersed in our fallen humanity which was caught in this relentless cycle of injustice, revenge, and retaliation. It was this same humanity that persecuted and condemned the only truly innocent one to a torturous death. Yet, this innocent one, who alone had the right to exact perfect justice, broke this cycle with divine love. He prayed for those who tortured Him, forgave those who killed Him, and embraced the ones who betrayed Him.

As those who now “bear the image of the heavenly one” and partake in Christ’s life through Baptism, may our lives be true sacraments of his reconciliatory love, extending even to those who have harmed us.

-Michael Gokie, Assistant Newman Director