Newsletter — Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year C 23rd February 2025

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Having grown up in the modern world, we may not realise how shocking Jesus’s preaching of mercy and compassion was to his original audience.

Yes, of course ‘love your enemies’ and ‘turn the other cheek’ still sound radical today. But reading further on, we might skip over the instruction ‘Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful’. Mercy, or compassion, may seem obvious to us: difficult in practice but unquestionably necessary.

For most of the ancient Greeks and Romans, however, mercy was seen as a weakness, not a virtue. What changed? Jesus! He changed the whole course of human history. Christ’s passion is the supreme act of compassion – suffering with us. All of the other acts we are commanded to in today’s Gospel hang on this one key phrase, ‘be merciful’. Mercy is not a weakness, but a strength, God’s power working in us. We can be merciful not just in imitation of the Father, but in the Father.

But how to love our enemies? How to be merciful towards them? There is a reason they’re our enemies and not our friends!

Mercy is an expression of love. When we love, mercy follows naturally. But also vice versa – when we show compassion, we take the other person’s suffering into our heart and so we learn to love them by understanding them better. The first step towards loving our enemies is to try to see the world from their point of view. Why does this person hate me? After this, we remember that to love is to will the good of the other person. I can desire and work for someone’s good in many different ways. Sometimes silence, sometimes speaking out. Always listening. Sometimes accepting, sometimes challenging. Always praying. Always blessing. Always hoping.

Ultimately, I hope to see my enemy by my side in Heaven. What can I do to help both of us to receive God’s mercy?

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