HOMILY FOR MONDAY OF 11TH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME.
THEME: A HEART FOR AN EYE – Christ’s doctrine of theological pacifism!
BY: Benedict Agbo (Rev Fr)
* 2 Cor 6: 1 – 10, Matt 5: 38 – 42.
I once saw a sticker on my Professor’s car with the inscription ‘DON’T GET MAD; CALL A LAWYER’ and I couldn’t but stop to reason at the sagacity of that inscription. Then I asked myself: ‘Will Christ say exactly the same thing to us?’ The answer is obviously ‘No’. I could almost hear Christ rephrasing the statement as follows : ‘DON’T GET MAD, TALK TO ME!’ As in, ‘Leave all vengeance for God. Bring all provocations to my table and leave it there!’ Moses said ‘An eye for an eye’ but Christ says: ‘ A heart for an eye’. Vima Dasan says : ‘Though the mills of God’s justice grind slowly, yet they grind more thoroughly’. Do you believe that? Few years ago we had threatening declarations from the MASOB, AREWA YOUTHS, ODUDUWA, AFENIFERE, MBYC, RONDEL, etc, It was a concatenation of reactionary behaviours that are ontologically unchristian. Christ does not want our behaviours to be reactionary. In today’s gospel, we see that he doesn’t want us to give the enemy the power to determine when we will get angry and when we will not. ‘Echo Spirituality’ is a level of spirituality where we rebound like sounds (echoes) that hit a wall and have no option than to rebound.
RELATED: HOMILY FOR MONDAY OF 11TH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME
Just look at Nigeria now and see sad history trying to repeat itself. If the AREWA YOUTHS fulfilled their threats and began killing Igbos then we would be having a repeat of what happened exactly in 1966. The Fulanis, for example, are known from time immemorial, as a tribe of vengeance. One of their prominent politicians in power is quoted to have said that every blood of any Fulani shed today is an investment that must yield a 7 fold dividend of vengeance in the future. This is a devilish Ideology and most secret cults operate on that ideological framework.
Christ says: ‘Do not resist one who is evil’. He is not actually advocating for an irrational kind of pacifism but wants to give us the highest ethical dossier which will enable us overcome the kind of crises that is snowballing in countries like Nigeria today. How can Christians stay peacefully with Muslims in one country when the former learns to love their enemies while the latter learns to crush the opponents of their religion. What I am saying is that since we are already in a democracy where the rule of law has been enthroned, Christians must never allow the Muslim fanatics to take us to their own level of violence. We have all it takes to ‘bring the ball down’ and force everybody to approach matters by the head and not by the guts. Jesus not only preached this doctrine of theological pacifism but lived it out on the cross. St Paul says in today’s 1st reading that as servants of Christ we commend ourselves in every way through great endurance – leaving all vengeance and justice to God and making recourse to him in all circumstances by constant prayer. May God bless you today!
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