Weekend Reflections for 2/21/20

The bible readings for this Sunday offer much to “take home” with us from White House Jesuit Retreats.

In the first reading from Leviticus the Lord makes the simple command: be holy, and then specifies this as removing all hatred from our hearts, running from revenge, refusing to hold grudges, loving our neighbors as ourselves, and even loving strangers as our selves and inviting them into our circle of relationships so that they are no longer strangers. How much hatred seems to be so rampant in our world?

In the second reading St. Paul invites, even admonishes us to the foolish wisdom that Jesus brings to our world, the wisdom that Jesus proclaims and lives in today’s Gospel: we are no longer in an eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth world. No, the wondrous, redemptive, tough love Jesus shows us involves loving our enemies that is the pathway to perfection.

What we try to learn and live in our repeated Spiritual Exercises at White House is the message that God’s wondrous love in Jesus is unconditional, incalculable. Our image of God as a great accountant in the sky is not the God of Jesus, but our own mistaken creation. In today’s gospel Jesus reminds us that we need to throw away our counters, ledgerbooks and sinlists for confession and thereby open ourselves to the infinity of God’s gift of grace, God’s unconditional mercy shown in the compassion, mercy, forgiveness of Jesus, crucified risen to walk the road of life with us.

-Fr. Ted Arroyo, SJ