Becoming the Word made flesh in Mary

 A recording of today's gospel and blog can be accessed here.

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Today's gospel (Matthew 5: 38-42) comes again from the Lord’s sermon on the mount. Like other extracts from this sermon which we read at this time of year, it contains a series of injunctions to the disciples concerning their behaviour. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. These words of the Lord have inspired both heroic lives among the saints, and sometimes ill-conceived attempts at carrying them out. Like any words of scripture, they need to be read not simply according to the letter but according to the spirit, and to be placed back in the context of the whole Christian life. There are times when Jesus turns the other cheek, but there are also times when He speaks truth to authority. There are times when He overturns tables in just anger, and times when He meekly suffers the violence of scoundrels. What is the spiritual reality at the heart of these words?

For COLW, the answer to that question lies simply in recalling the words of St Elizabeth of the Trinity according to whom we are called to become another humanity for Christ in which He can renew His whole mystery. The spirit behind the words of the Lord in this extract is captured in fact later in this chapter when Jesus says: be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. For if our lives reflect the goodness of God our Father, then we will be reshaped in the image of Christ who is Himself the image of the Father. And if the perfection of the Father is too great for us to imagine, we can find the perfect image of Jesus captured in the example of Mary, our mother and our model.

If we look then again at today's gospel extract, we can see other demands moving beneath its surface. In refusing to seek revenge for slights, in setting aside our claims to justice, in opening our hands and letting our goods flow freely through them into the hands of others, we are called to turn ourselves with greater freedom and greater obedience to surrender to the Father’s forming action. Our problem is that we cling on to the things of this world as if we did not seek another Kingdom. We wish to keep a tight grip on our tinsel crown whereas the Lord wishes to give us a golden one. But if we can just open our fingers, return good for evil, and live for a moment in the shoes of others, we are more likely to escape from the narrowness that our selfishness demands and embrace the open heartedness that enables us to say our fiat to the Lord.

And if all these things seem very difficult, the truth is that we need not plan to do them for the day ahead, nor indeed for the hour ahead, but simply for the moment in which we live - the only moment which God gives us to live in. This conversion is of course beyond our power to bring about on our own, but through Mary's intercession and the grace of Christ and through humble perseverance, it lies within the realm of possibility that we may yet become in a more perfect way the Word made flesh in Mary.