Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost. Octoechos Tone 2; Our Venerable Mother Pelagia.
2 Corinthians 11:31-12:9; Luke 6:31-36.
Read Luke 6:31-36
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
There is some film footage from World War II that everyone should see. It is of Adolph Hitler, Eva Braun, and a child on a balcony in the Alps. Hitler is being kind and affectionate toward the child – “do(ing) good to those who do good to (him),” as Jesus puts it in today’s gospel reading. Because we can be accustomed to equating niceness with being spiritual, it is a useful startling realization that niceness can even dwell comfortably with the gravest evil.
It’s not that we are not to love and do good to those who love and do good to us, it’s that it is a very low bar for spiritual attainment. In fact, as Jesus points out, it doesn’t require spirituality at all. Instead, it makes things like creature comforts the standard of spirituality, a spirituality that is unable to transcend the hurts, persecutions, injustices, and calamities of this world.
C.S. Lewis wrote, “Most of man’s psychological makeup is probably due to his body: when his body dies all that will fall off him, and the real central man, the thing that chose, that made the best or worst out of this material, will stand naked. All sorts of nice things which we thought our own, but which were really due to good digestion, will fall off some of us: all sorts of nasty things which were due to complexes or bad health will fall off others. We shall then, for the first time, see everyone as he really was. There will be surprises.”
Being merciful, even as our Father is merciful, starts with realizing that, when Jesus says that our Heavenly Father is “kind to the ungrateful and the selfish,” that isn’t only other people, that includes us. We too may be someone’s “enemy.”
Bible References