Monday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time
In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus draws an important distinction between merely transactional justice (i.e., an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth) and the divine justice prescribed by God. This is a very complex and nuanced topic, but a key takeaway is understanding that true justice is not just about dollars and cents or restoration of physical property. True justice means existing in right relationship with the other. This does not mean that it is not important to appropriately compensate those who have been injured. Rather, it is a call to recognize that transactional justice, merely in and of itself, is not enough because it does not necessarily heal the wounds between persons and bring them into right relationship with one another.
In each of the situations presented by Jesus, we might be tempted to accuse Him of being unfair. After all, why would someone logically show kindness or generosity to another who has mistreated or disrespected them? From a purely transactional standpoint, this does not make sense. Consider, however, how we deserve to be treated by God from a purely transactional perspective versus the way that He actually deals with us. Our lives are pure gift. There is nothing we could ever do to deserve or earn any of the beautiful or marvelous things that we experience in our daily lives. Furthermore, when we consider the myriad of ways that we have been unfaithful to God in moments of personal sinfulness, there is no transactional reason that God should have given His only Son to die for us. An important thing to recognize is that God’s love is not transactional and neither is His justice. It is always principally oriented towards the restoration of right relationship between ourselves and God and one another.