18 June 2024 - Tuesday of the 11th week in Ordinary Time
1 Kings 21:17-29; Matthew 5:43-48
Homily
This Gospel is a continuation of yesterday's, in which Jesus calls us to turn the other cheek when someone hits us. Then he invites us not to divide our fellow human beings into categories, making friends of some and enemies of others.
For all of us, it seems normal to treat those of our own culture and country well, and to keep those of another race or religion at a distance. Is the distinction between nations and countries something essential for human beings, or is it a consequence of human selfishness? Why is it that out of 4 to 5 billion human beings, we consider a few million, or a few hundred million, as our friends, and the others as our enemies, simply because they were born on the other side of a geographical border, on the other side of an ocean or a river, or because they speak another language? Is it utopian to dream of humanity as one big family, with places of communion instead of borders, with meeting points instead of checkpoints, with valentines instead of passports, with new stars instead of offensive or defensive weapons? Yes, it's a utopia, the utopia of Jesus of Nazareth.
To turn such a utopia into reality, we have to start again every day at a very humble and practical level by realising how we can stop this paranoid cycle of insane violence by offering as much love to the brother who never thinks like me as to the one who is intelligent enough to share all my ideas ; by showing the same kindness to the one who has the gift of doing all the things that exasperate me as to the one with whom I always feel on the same wavelength; by refusing to become hostage to a media universe whose primary aim seems to have become to divide and oppose groups of people and countries, and to magnify their divisions and oppositions.
It's all very, very simple! Not easy, though, as we all know. Rather utopian, in fact. It's one of those things that are impossible for human beings, but nothing is impossible for God, and to Him we belong.
Armand Veilleux