CONQUER EVIL WITH GOOD

Homily for Monday of the 11th Week in Ordinary Time, 15 June 2020, Mt 5:38-42

We heard from today’s first reading about a murder most foul and a grave abuse of authority committed by the King of Israel, with his scheming wife as a partner in crime. We heard how they got false witnesses to accuse Naboth of a crime he did not commit. How they manipulated the justice system and managed to get him sentenced to death and his vineyard sequestered. It all seems so familiar, don’t you think so? It’s hard to believe that it happened 2,900 years ago.

We are no strangers to people in power who have no respect for the law; people who use the law as a weapon in order to intimidate, persecute, or get rid of their perceived enemies. And these could include anyone who dares to speak out against them.

Imagine for a while that you are the son of Naboth, the victim. In your desire for justice for your father, you join a resistance movement and attempt to overthrow the corrupt and murderous reign of King Ahab. Imagine that the resistance movement is successful, the support for the tyrant gets weaker and weaker until he falls. You pursue him because of what he did to your father. You have him cornered, you raise your sword to strike him dead, and then, you stop and realize you cannot do it. You put down your sword and walk away feeling finally liberated.

I have seen many scenes like these in movies. Dramatic scenes where the hero, just at that point when he is about to exact his revenge, just when he is about to pull the trigger, decides to drop his weapon and turn over the villain to the justice system for due process.

Let us now turn to the Gospel. But let me begin by noting that I am honestly not pleased with that part of the text that says, “Offer no resistance to one who is evil.” Really? Is Jesus teaching us to just submit ourselves to evil? This reminds me of that saying often attributed to Edmund Burke, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

I think St. Paul expresses the same thought a bit more clearly in Romans 12,17ff. He says, “Repay no one evil for evil, but be concerned for what is noble in the sight of all… do not look for revenge, but leave room for the wrath; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”

In the Gospel, Jesus gives his critique of what the Jewish Law calls the Law of Proportionate or Commensurate Justice. People nowadays call it the Law of Retaliation. They even named a fraternity after it, LEX TALIONIS. I wonder if they know that it is actually wrong to refer to it as that, as a law of retaliation. Because the objective is not the endorsement of retaliation as such, but rather its regulation. Namely, the demand for fairness in the act of retaliating: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, life for life.

But there lies precisely the catch, and the reason why Jesus is against this barbaric principle. When people are fueled by anger, resentment, or a burning desire to exact revenge or to get even, they tend to behave irrationally. They will find it least among their concerns to be fair.

Besides, you cannot build a just society on anger and resentment and the desire for revenge. And so, Jesus proposes something better: to conquer evil with good. This presupposes the readiness for sacrifice, the willingness to take the blow when necessary, to give up not just one’s cloak but one’s tunic as well, to take and extra mile when asked for a mile. St Ignatius of Loyola invented a term this. He calls it AGERE CONTRA. The same principle applies when we consciously avoid the temptation to resist evil with evil, and we choose, rather, to oppose evil with good:

Here’s the continuation of St. Paul’s elaboration in Romans 12: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Evil is a trying hard third rate copycat. He mimics God by wanting you to imitate him, to behave like him. He also wants you to be his image and likeness. And so, evil succeeds when we are consumed by the desire to retaliate, to return evil for evil.

I hope you see now what I mean when I say our faith does not teach us to just submit ourselves to evil. On the contrary, it demands that we reject evil. That is the very first one among our baptismal promises: that we reject Satan, and all his works, and all his empty promises. But how we resist evil is defined by our act of faith in God, especially in his Son Jesus Christ who teaches us to Love even our enemies. This is the way of Jesus who desires, not just the salvation of the good and the deserving but the redemption of sinners as well. It is on account of this that he took the blow and never gave in to the impulse to return violence for violence. For Jesus, that amounts to a defeat.

His formula is simple. You are to regard only Satan as your enemy, not people. You are to presuppose the basic goodness of people because we are creatures in the image and likeness of God. But like any human being, we are all vulnerable. There are circumstances that make us susceptible to the spell of evil, or times when are overpowered and lose ourselves or forget who we are.

Think about this: if you learn that your child is being bullied in school, will you buy him a gun? Or let’s say your son is mentally deranged. He can be dangerous or violent when you feed him. When he hurts you, will you hurt him back? No, you don’t even take offense. You are ready to take the blow because you have made the option to love him, not just when he is well, but also when he is unwell.