Tuesday of the 12th
Week in Ordinary Time
June 23, 2015 6:30am
“Do to others whatever you would have them do to you.”
We can say that this one sentence
summarizes all the moral teachings that Jesus has given in the Sermon on the
Mount.
And I find it so important to
note that Jesus states this positively.
He does not say, “Don’t do to others what you don’t want them
to do to you.”
Instead, he says – “Do to others whatever you would have them
do to you.”
Maybe this summary command is
another way of saying, “Love your
neighbor as yourself.”
So, don’t just avoid sins of
commission, like doing harm to someone.
Also, avoid sins of omission.
In other words, do not miss
opportunities, and even look for opportunities to be empathetic, just,
thoughtful, caring, and generous.
Jesus’ command is that positive
and that open-ended, without limits in terms of what we are to do to or for one
another.
Saint Matthew’s Gospel places
this command in the Sermon on the Mount, and in another place in this Sermon
Jesus gives us the ultimate motive for “Do
to others whatever you would have them do to you.”
Jesus gives a divine or
supernatural motive for this.
He has been teaching about love
of enemies, and he concludes by saying, “So
be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
One Scripture scholar says that
the real impact of this sentence is, “There
must be no limits to your goodness, as your heavenly Father’s goodness knows no
bounds.”
That then becomes the ultimate
moral norm – acting toward one another as God acts toward us.
And that, of course, is also the
way we want others to act toward us.
