‘If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also’
Matthew 5:38-42
The exhortations of Jesus in today’s Gospel passage are so diametrically opposed to contemporary culture, as to sound impossible to practice.
Yet they contain a power greater than warfare, as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King both demonstrated, through their struggles, using nonviolence resistance.
Nonviolence is not just for social movements, it starts within us as individuals. Jesus demonstrated this nonviolence approach to his death on the cross. And St Paul in his letters calls us to live this life ‘in Christ’. It starts with baptism and grows through the regular practice of the sacraments of the Eucharist and Reconciliation.
Dear Jesus, change my heart to be more like yours, transforming my violent responses to nonviolence.