I happened to come across your website when I looked for Sunday Homilies. I was impressed by one of it I read three weeks ago. I wanted to commend you for the job. It is so rewarding to get help especially when you expend most of your time on administration when the heart of the matter is founded on the word and sacramental ministry. Gratefully, Fr. Loyola Amalraj, St. Boniface Church, Milwaukee, WI
Thanks, Loyola. Good to hear of your ministry in Wisconsin! Please do not hesitate to send us a short reflection for Lent, if the Spirit should prompt you. And I’m sure you’ll mention our website to some of your colleagues.
Although I fully understand Jesus’ teaching on non-retaliation and love of one’s enemies, I find it a very difficult one to accept in some of our parishes today, in view of the recent killings of several Christians in some parts of the Catholic Diocese of Kafanchan (Nigeria).
Kindly refer to https://www.google.com.ng/search?q=southern+kaduna+killings&oq=southern+kaduna+killings&aqs=chrome..69i57.11324j0j4&client=ms-android-samsung&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8
I heard a very interesting sermon by a Japanese-American female Anglican priest:
She says this is not “doormat theology”.
1. Hitting the right cheek is done from a position of power, with a down stroke to avoid the nose, but to hit the left cheek you need to hit from below, from a position of equality.
2. Someone who pawned his cloak could shame the judges by taking off his tunic as well, leaving him stark naked. This brought shame to the beholder not to the naked person.
3. Roman soldiers could press you into service for one mile but to make you go further was against regulations and could get them into trouble.
A blow to someone’s right cheek is far more likely to be a backhanded blow with the right hand, a provocation in the case of a Roman soldier setting out to intimidate a Jewish village and assert dominance. This strengthens this priest’s point, however, as to to deliver a blow to the same person’s left cheek this same soldier would have to deliver a slap with the front of the right hand, which would be far more awkward and even look effeminate.
But surely the central point has to do with breaking the instinctual mimetic stimulus / response tendency of all violence. “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” (Victor Frankl) Frankl, the extraordinary survivor of Auschwitz, realised that he didn’t have to accept the Nazi verdict on his people, or respond with either violence or suicide. Instead he spent this time developing a psychotherapeutic model which he went on to apply after that terrible time.
In the current church crisis in Ireland that very same insight needs to be applied by all of us to the insulting backhanded blows that clergy especially can receive from an ignorant media, or from false accusation. Our dignity as Christians is secure in our faith in Christ, from whom nothing can separate us, so we must use our freedom to respond in a totally surprising and non-mimetic way, as Jesus did himself, vocally, when struck at his trial. He called this ‘overcoming the world’ i.e.overcoming the power of a cruel establishment to determine our behaviour, as Frankl did in Auschwitz.
Frankl’s book ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ should be in everyone’s intellectual toolkit these times. Most of the backhanded blows against Christianity in the West are driven by resentment of misuses of power by Christendom (the era of nominally Christian establishment) and the fundamentalist residue of all that. We must seize the opportunity to respond in a surprising, non-mimetic (i.e. non-imitative) way. Resentment over loss of the power that Christendom abused would be the very worst response.
I happened to come across your website when I looked for Sunday Homilies. I was impressed by one of it I read three weeks ago. I wanted to commend you for the job. It is so rewarding to get help especially when you expend most of your time on administration when the heart of the matter is founded on the word and sacramental ministry. Gratefully, Fr. Loyola Amalraj, St. Boniface Church, Milwaukee, WI
Thanks, Loyola. Good to hear of your ministry in Wisconsin! Please do not hesitate to send us a short reflection for Lent, if the Spirit should prompt you. And I’m sure you’ll mention our website to some of your colleagues.
Although I fully understand Jesus’ teaching on non-retaliation and love of one’s enemies, I find it a very difficult one to accept in some of our parishes today, in view of the recent killings of several Christians in some parts of the Catholic Diocese of Kafanchan (Nigeria).
Kindly refer to https://www.google.com.ng/search?q=southern+kaduna+killings&oq=southern+kaduna+killings&aqs=chrome..69i57.11324j0j4&client=ms-android-samsung&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8
I heard a very interesting sermon by a Japanese-American female Anglican priest:
She says this is not “doormat theology”.
1. Hitting the right cheek is done from a position of power, with a down stroke to avoid the nose, but to hit the left cheek you need to hit from below, from a position of equality.
2. Someone who pawned his cloak could shame the judges by taking off his tunic as well, leaving him stark naked. This brought shame to the beholder not to the naked person.
3. Roman soldiers could press you into service for one mile but to make you go further was against regulations and could get them into trouble.
So all three counsels can be read as subversive!
A blow to someone’s right cheek is far more likely to be a backhanded blow with the right hand, a provocation in the case of a Roman soldier setting out to intimidate a Jewish village and assert dominance. This strengthens this priest’s point, however, as to to deliver a blow to the same person’s left cheek this same soldier would have to deliver a slap with the front of the right hand, which would be far more awkward and even look effeminate.
But surely the central point has to do with breaking the instinctual mimetic stimulus / response tendency of all violence. “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” (Victor Frankl) Frankl, the extraordinary survivor of Auschwitz, realised that he didn’t have to accept the Nazi verdict on his people, or respond with either violence or suicide. Instead he spent this time developing a psychotherapeutic model which he went on to apply after that terrible time.
In the current church crisis in Ireland that very same insight needs to be applied by all of us to the insulting backhanded blows that clergy especially can receive from an ignorant media, or from false accusation. Our dignity as Christians is secure in our faith in Christ, from whom nothing can separate us, so we must use our freedom to respond in a totally surprising and non-mimetic way, as Jesus did himself, vocally, when struck at his trial. He called this ‘overcoming the world’ i.e.overcoming the power of a cruel establishment to determine our behaviour, as Frankl did in Auschwitz.
Frankl’s book ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ should be in everyone’s intellectual toolkit these times. Most of the backhanded blows against Christianity in the West are driven by resentment of misuses of power by Christendom (the era of nominally Christian establishment) and the fundamentalist residue of all that. We must seize the opportunity to respond in a surprising, non-mimetic (i.e. non-imitative) way. Resentment over loss of the power that Christendom abused would be the very worst response.
Well said, Sean. non-mimetic response could be a rule of life for us all. It makes the Gospel a joyful adventure.