{"id":3984,"date":"2017-02-20T12:46:24","date_gmt":"2017-02-20T12:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/?p=3984"},"modified":"2017-02-20T14:01:02","modified_gmt":"2017-02-20T14:01:02","slug":"commentary-on-7th-sunday-of-the-year-a-19-02-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/commentary-on-7th-sunday-of-the-year-a-19-02-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Commentary on 7th Sunday of the year (A) 19.02.2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

Commentary by Donagh O\u2019Shea OP<\/strong>, www.goodnews.ie<\/a><\/p>\n

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’\u00a0 But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also;\u00a0 and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well;\u00a0 and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.\u00a0 Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.\u00a0 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’\u00a0 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,\u00a0 so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.\u00a0 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?\u00a0 And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?\u00a0 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is <\/em>perfect.<\/p>\n

Would you like to read a poem today?\u00a0 Try this one, or rather these lines from a poem.\u00a0 It was written in 1948 by an American poet named Jessica Powers.\u00a0 It takes its title from the first words: “My heart ran forth.”\u00a0 It ran forth propagating a wonderful ideal of love for everybody to follow.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2026But wisdom halted it, out far afield,<\/em>
\n asked: did you sow this seed<\/em>
\n around your house, or in the neighbour’s garden<\/em>
\n or any nearby acreage of need?<\/em>
\n No? then it will not grow in outer places.<\/em>
\n Love has its proper soil, its native land;<\/em>
\n Its first roots fasten on the near-at-hand.<\/em><\/p>\n

Back toward the house from which I deftly fled,<\/em>
\n down neighbours’ lanes, across my father’s barley<\/em>
\n my heart brought home its charity.\u00a0 It said:<\/em>
\n love is a simple plant like a Creeping Charlie;<\/em>
\n Once it takes root its talent is to spread. <\/em><\/p>\n

She captured the tendency in all of us to place love (and all the things that challenge us) at a distance.\u00a0 We place them at a distance (1) in time, or (2) in place.\u00a0
\n 1. We are always willing to postpone good things, someone said, but bad things we do right away.\u00a0 We would like to postpone faith, hope and love: to put them over the horizon and into the future.\u00a0 But fear, greed and anger we attend to immediately.\u00a0 Love is one of the good things\u00a0 –\u00a0 the very best, St Paul said (“the greatest of these is love” 1 Cor. 13:13) – so we tend to postpone it.\u00a0 But somewhere deep in us there is the wisdom to know that love is for now or never.\u00a0
\n 2.\u00a0 And we wouldn\u2019t mind loving people who are at a safe distance, as Jessica Powers let us see in that poem.\u00a0 When I love I make myself vulnerable.\u00a0 But if I am afraid of that I won’t love.<\/p>\n

If only we could do the good things now, and postpone the bad things!\u00a0 What a world it would be if our love were as quick and as warm and as long-lasting as our hate!\u00a0 A wise man said a startling thing to me once: “There’s no future!” I thought he was expressing despair about the country or the modern world\u2026. But he didn\u2019t seem at all a despairing kind of person.\u00a0 Quite the contrary.\u00a0 “There’s no future,” he repeated cheerfully.\u00a0 “The future exists only in your head, nowhere else.\u00a0 It is only an idea.\u00a0 So don\u2019t tell me what you’re going to do in the future!\u00a0 Tell me what you’re doing now!”\u00a0 I’ve had plenty of time since then to think about it.\u00a0 How right he was!\u00a0 Who am I?\u00a0 What am I?\u00a0 I am what I’m doing now.\u00a0 If I don\u2019t love the people and the things around me now I am not a loving person and I can have nothing to say about love.\u00a0 We don\u2019t say, “Give us tomorrow our daily bread.”\u00a0 We want real bread, not an idea of bread.\u00a0 Real things are for now.\u00a0 And God, too, is for now.\u00a0 If I don\u2019t love now I know nothing about God.\u00a0 “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love,” wrote St John (1 John 4:8).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jessica Powers didn\u2019t compare love to a dainty plant but to a common weed, a Creeping Charlie.\u00a0 We might say, Dandelions.\u00a0 It should be as ordinary as that, and as familiar, and as irrepressible!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Commentary by Donagh O\u2019Shea OP, www.goodnews.ie “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’\u00a0 But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also;\u00a0 and if anyone wants to sue you and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3985,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3984"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3986,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3984\/revisions\/3986"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}