7^th Sunday of Ordinary time

         Christians all know that the “golden rule” is somehow at the heart of Christian morality. We should do unto others not as they do unto us, but as we would have them do unto us. That is we should treat others as we would have them treat us. 

         The Golden rule was already understood in the covenant of Mount Sinai, and so Jesus was not speaking something entirely new. But there is this difference. The Golden rule was not applied universally, that is, that it only applied to those who were not our enemies. Thus Jesus was expanding this rule in at least one way, that it was now to be a universal norm, governing our relations to all men, even those who despise us, hate us, and harm us, that is, even to our enemies. 

         Now this universalism was something dramatically new to the ears of those who were hearing these words. To be sure, they were not accustomed to applying this rule to the enemies, and found it difficult to apply them to their friends, as do we. But Jesus has come to break down the barriers that separate men from God and from each other. He has come to re-create not only the individual person, but to re-create the lost unity of the human race, lost when man first chose to make himself his own law, by rejecting the law of God. The first consequence of original sin was the broken unity between God and man. But that was not the end of the effects of sin. At the same time, man experienced a loss of unity within himself, and a loss of unity and communion of life with his neighbor. We can see this in the division which manifests itself between Adam and his beloved spouse, Eve. And receive this division even more dramatically when Cain murders his brother Able. The obvious intention of the biblical author is to show how man’s rebellion against the law of God inevitably means that man becomes his own law, which is nowhere more clear that and the case of a murder of brother by brother .

         The truth is that all the divisions of the human race our ultimately the result of human sin and the distrust and enmity caused by man’s sin. Jesus has come not only to restore man’s friendship with God, not only for the good of the individual human person which results from that restored friendship and communion of life, but he is calm also to restore the lost friendship and communion of the human race as a whole. 

         And sold the sermon we just listened to has to do with re-creating the lost unity and communion of the human family. In order for this to be done the Golden rule must be extended to all without exception. And the model for this is God himself and the way God treats the whole human race, showering his blessings on good and bad alike. And Jesus himself will be the ultimate manifestation of this attitude of God toward all, when he dies on the cross for all. If we are to be as followers, then we must adopt this universality of the Golden rule, and imitate the compassion and generosity of God toward all, even toward our enemies.

         In order to be compassionate and generous even toward our enemies, the very first thing we have to do is refuse divide the human race into those worthy of our generosity and compassion, our friends, and those who are not worthy of our generosity and compassion, our enemies. This is what Jesus means when he says, “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven.” This is the rule that will make it possible for us to extend our generosity and compassion toward all. If we do not judge men to be our enemies in the sense that they are unworthy of our compassion and generosity, if we do not condemn them as unworthy of having the golden rule applied to them, and if we are willing to forgive them their injuries to us, then and only then will we be following the Golden rule the way that Jesus does. For he died for all men, and, in fact, all men were his enemies insofar as all men are sinners. Thus we must not judge, condemn, and refused to forgive any man if we are to be his true disciples. 

         Properly understanding this statement about not judging and not condemning, requires that we clearly place it within the context of forgiving. Certainly Jesus is not saying that we must not judge the morality of actions, or that there can be no societal institution of judgment of crimes or wrongdoing, and us that juries for instance would be violating this teaching of Jesus. The church is not violating the teaching of Jesus when she judges certain human actions to be morally condemnable. But even the church yourself does not pass final judgment on any man in the sense of judging that Batman is condemned by God or rejected by God forever. The church only passes judgment in the positive direction, declaring that certain men and women have reached beatification by God, but never in the other direction.

         What Jesus is talking about here, when he says we must not judge or condemn others, has to be understood, then, within the context of a true readiness to forgive, all men, any wrongs they have done to us personally , and not so to judge them, or condemn them, that they are simply our enemies, that is, they remain outside the circle of those we consider worthy of compassion and forgiveness, either by God or by us personally. Thus the Golden rule becomes universal for us just as it is universal for God, as can be seen in the universal love of Jesus for his enemies, that is, for all of us in so far as we are sinners. 

         In the final analysis, the proof that we are sinners is no more clearly testified than in the difficulty we experience in placing the Golden rule into a universal framework. The concrete examples of compassion and generosity that Jesus enumerates are certainly not easy for us to carry out, even toward those whom we consider to be our friends. Nothing more clearly demonstrates our weakness as sinners and are profound need for God’s grace than our incapacity to live the Golden rule toward our friends let alone our enemies.

         If we are to become the image of the man of heaven, the true spiritual man that St. Paul speaks about, the man who is capable of following Jesus in his law of life, in his universal compassion and generosity, we will have to put to death the old man who still lurks within our souls, and makes it so difficult for us to imitate the Lord. This transformation requires not only a constant flow of grace from the Lord, but our own effort to put the old man within to death. The good soldier is constantly training, constantly overcoming the human tendency to let things go, including one’s physical and mental readiness. The good spiritual soldier must do the same.

         The season of Lent begins this Wednesday, and it is a special time of spiritual retraining, of shaping up those flabby muscles, that we call virtues, of putting both the body and the soul to the test by works of self-denial, by works of generosity toward others in our charity, and by expending the effort necessary to really strengthening our prayer life. These are the good works of our Christian training, and only to the degree that we take them seriously will we ever be able, realistically, to fulfill the law of Christ laid down for us in the Gospel today, to become the spiritual or heavenly man God has called us to be.