7th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A) - 19 February
19th February 2023
7th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A) - 19 February
“What is perfection in love? Love your enemies in such a way that you would desire to make them your brothers...For so did He love, Who hanging on the Cross, said: ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’” - St Augustine of Hippo
A reflection on today's Gospel reading by the Venerable Archbishop Fulton J Sheen:
"Our Blessed Lord talked of revenge, hatred, violence, expressed in those sayings of everybody, 'Get even,' 'Sue him,' 'Don’t be a fool.' He knew them all, and of all of them He said: ‘You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ Then comes the awful BUT: ‘But I tell you, that you should not offer resistance to injury; If a man strikes thee on thy right cheek, turn the other cheek also toward him; If he is ready to go to the law with thee over thy coat, let him have it and thy cloak with it; If he compels thee to attend him on a mile’s journey, go two miles with him of thy own accord.’ (Matthew 5:38–38)
"Why turn the other cheek? Because hate multiplies like a seed. If one preaches hate and violence to ten men in a row, and tells the first man to strike the second, and the second to strike the third, the hatred will envelop all ten. The only way to stop this hate is for one man (say the fifth in line), to turn his other cheek. Then the hatred ends. It is never passed on. Absorb violence for the sake of the Saviour, Who will absorb sin and die for it. The Christian law is that the innocent shall suffer for the guilty.
"Thus He would have us do away with adversaries, because when no resistance is offered, the adversary is conquered by a superior moral power; such love prevents the infection of the wound of hate. To endure for a year the bore who afflicts you for a week; to write a letter of kindness to the man who calls you dirty names; to offer gifts to the man who would steal from you; never to answer back with hatred the man who lies and says you are disloyal to your country or tells the worse lie, that you are against freedom—these are the hard things which Christ came to teach, and they no more suited His time than they do ours. They suit only the heroes, the great men, the saints, the holy men and women who will be the salt of the earth, the leaven in the mass, the elite among the mob, the kind who will transform the world. If certain people are not lovable, one puts love into them and they will become lovable. Why is anyone lovable—if it be not that God put His love into each of us?" (Life of Christ)
Prayer for a Contrite Heart
Dear Lord, grant me true compunction of heart for all my offences against Your Divine Self and give me the grace of true conversion. Amen. 🙏💖💐
Prayer of St Francis of Assisi
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love with all my soul.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen. 🙏💖💐