Any time someone does wrong, there is a temptation to retaliate. It’s human nature, to return spite with spite, hate with hate. Sin begets sin. On Thursday, in the Dallas Cowboys/Philedelphia Eagles game, Dak Prescott of the Cowboys spit at Jalen Carter and Jalen responded on National Television and got evicted before the first minute transpired for his behavior. Spit for spit led to two people being classless on national television.
No one wants to surrender their right to respond angrily. However, that’s exactly what we are called to do, to embrace the cross and return spit with prayer, rage with kindness, sin with grace. Most of us underestimate how hard this is, because we tend to excuse ourselves from the equation of having to forgive our neighbor, and pray for our enemies, and turn the other cheek.
We don’t get the luxury of responding to the world this way if we would be Christians, if we would be Catholics. We don’t get to justify hating people because they’ve done hateful things. It means there isn’t anyone we should hope dies, at worst we must pray and hope they convert.
So if you hate Trump, you need to stop. You will be poisoned by that hate.
If you hate people who are from other countries and came here illegally, you need to stop. You will likewise be destroyed by that hate.
Before you say, but I don’t hate him, I hate his policies, or I don’t hate them, I hate their behavior, understand, God doesn’t want us to do any less than love. So how do we love someone with whom we disagree? How do we remove the beams from our eyes, the beams that might make us blind to our own failures to love?
We ask the important question. Would we want to have whatever it is, happen to someone we love? If the answer is no, then we can’t wish it, want it, condone it, seek it, cheer it or allow ourselves the dark joy even of fantasizing about it.
This does not mean we condone, we must fight and speak up and out for when people do wrong, say wrong, or revel in wrong. It means we must pray for those we speak out against. In all things, we must be kind, merciful, loving, a source of hope.
It’s hard. I write this because I’d recently thought about quitting playing a particular game. It had just gotten too hard, created bad feeling. But we watched this movie and the words reminded me, be willing to embrace the hard. Love the person. Love when it’s hard, love past the hard, love in the little things.
And I felt it all with Kit, not being able to see past my own feelings in that moment. I know the reality, that when we’re caught up with feeling, we can’t easily see beyond our own shadows.
To quote one of my favorite movies, A League of Her Own, “If it weren’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.” Being Catholic means we embrace the hardness, even after we mess up over and over again. We go back and try again. We begin again.
Heaven we hope, will be bursting with people we didn’t like here. These people, we will be delighted to discover. They, like us, will be surprised by God’s mercy.
Even if they spit first.
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