Fr Billy Swan
Dear friends. On Sunday evenings at this time of year, a popular TV programme on RTE is ‘Dancing with the Stars’. It is a dancing competition where a number of celebrities are paired with professional dancers and compete against each other. For the amateurs, they all pay tribute to what the professionals have taught them. With the help of their partners, they had to stretch further, reach further and dance in a way that they never imagined they could. None of them could have done this on their own. Based on today’s Gospel, I argue that for us Christians, Jesus Christ must be our professional dance partner who needs to come close to us as we let him stretch us to love and forgive like him and with him.
In us human beings, there is an instinctive part of our nature that says: ‘If you are nice to me, I’ll be nice to you. If you hit me, I’ll hit you back. Give as good as you get. If I work hard, I deserve what I get, etc.’ For the Jews, this way of thinking and acting was normal. The law said ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’; if you kept the law, you deserved God’s love. If you didn’t, you didn’t get it’. For centuries, it was assumed that this was the way life was meant to be.
Jesus’ teaching in today’s Gospel began a revolution because it turned the old way of thinking on its head: ‘Instead of hating enemies, love them’ he says. ‘Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who hurt you’. With this teaching, Jesus was making a big demand of his listeners and he is making a big demand of us now. He says that we must go beyond the mind we have that naturally seeks to get even and to love those who don’t love us.
From a purely natural point of view, this change in us is impossible. It is only with God’s grace can we possibly do what Jesus says. It is only with God’s grace that we can hope to love like God who, as Jesus says, is ‘himself kind to the ungrateful and the wicked’. For us to try this on our own would be like an amateur who tries to teach themselves how to dance from a book. Just like the professional dancers who teach their amateur partners, we need to be grabbed, gotten hold of, stretched and moved to learn the art of loving like God who loves everyone, even if their response is to reject Him.
The image of Jesus as a coach to teach us this art of loving is good but not perfect. Like a dancing coach he grabs us up close by his own forgiveness so that we can stretch and reach to a place where we can forgive and love like that too. But he also invades us or infects us with his Spirit so that he can mould us from the inside. I love the words of C.S. Lewis who points out that Christianity is not a programme of imitation or coaching only. He says: ‘Please put out of your minds that we Christians are to read what Christ said and try to carry it out. A real person, Christ, here and now, is doing things to you, really coming and interfering with your very self, killing the old self in you and replacing it with the kind of self he has (Mere Christianity).
Friends, as you listen to these words at Mass or read them online, this is precisely what Christ is doing to you. Through his Word and sacraments, he is infecting you with himself so that you might love unconditionally like God does. It is Jesus who enables us to love, not just like him, but with him.
I conclude with words of wisdom from someone who was possessed by God’s spirit of mercy and charity. St Teresa of Calcutta taught that:
‘People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centred. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway. If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway. What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway. Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway’.
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