Plus what a Jesuit poet did to handle the challenge . . .

In Luke 6:27-38, today’s gospel reading, leaving about as much room as a “shalt not kill”:

To you who hear, I say love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. To the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other one as well, and from the person who takes your cloak, do not withhold even your tunic. Give to everyone who asks of you, and from the one who takes what is yours do not demand it back.

Hard words. He continues:

Do to others as you would have them do to you.
For if you love those who love you,
what credit is that to you?
Even sinners love those who love them.
And if you do good to those who do good to you,
what credit is that to you?
Even sinners do the same.

He further explains, sounding more like a Sunday preacher.

Samples:

If you lend money to those from whom you expect repayment,
what credit is that to you?

Happens every day, of course! Sinners do it, right? “Lend expecting nothing back?” Not quite . . .

But rather, love your enemies and do good to them,
and ;
then your reward will be great
and you will be children of the Most High,
for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.
Be merciful, just as also your Father is merciful.

Glory be to God Ah, of course. Yet more as the speaking continues . . .

“Stop judging and you will not be judged.
Stop condemning and you will not be condemned.
Forgive and you will be forgiven.

Sweet Jesus! Reward on the spot, yes.

Give and gifts will be given to you;

Thank God!

a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing,
will be poured into your lap.
For the measure with which you measure
will in return be measured out to you.”

Oh my, what a message. If not here on earth, then in heaven. The essence of God being in heaven and, yes! All being right with the world!

Speaking of which, we might turn to the 19th-century Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins with cause to resent that he did not allow to take charge and found God already manifesting Himself in “dappled things” and “skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow.”

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him.

Wandered a bit there . . .