The young David that we encounter today is not the mighty king of Judah, but a man on the run from a tyrant. The prophet Samuel had anointed David after Saul turned away from the Lord. He fought battles and conquered nations alongside Saul. Saul, for no apparent reason other than jealousy, turns against David and seeks to kill him. By any human measure, David would be within his right to kill Saul to defend himself. But David refuses to lay a hand on Saul, saying “who can lay hands on the Lord’s anointed and remain unpunished?” David’s insistence upon respecting the Lord’s anointed served him well. While he failed in many ways as king, he never lost the Lord’s favor. He lived until an old age, and the Catholic Church considers him a saint. (The Roman Martyrology, the Church’s official list of saints, lists King David on December 29.)
St. Luke brings similar themes before us in today’s Gospel. Christ reminds us to love our enemies, to do good to those who hate us, to bless those who curse us, to pray for those who mistreat us. He ends with, “the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.” If we take Christ seriously, and we Christians must take him seriously, this is one of the most challenging passages in all of scripture. Christ tells us to “forgive and you will be forgiven,” and it strikes at that same very human sense of justice offended when David lets Saul go free. This command, though, is perfectly in line with everything else Christ taught us. Christ tells us we are to “love on another as I have loved you,” and he was willing to sacrifice his life on this earth to grant us salvation. Many Catholics–many Christians–do not think of our faith in Christ as something dangerous or that makes claims upon our behavior, but the radical demand of Christ in the Gospel today does exactly that. Christ calls us to love our enemies, to stop condemning and judging them, and to forgive them. He even calls us to lay our lives on the line to save the souls of those who hate us, just as He did.
When we look at the world around us, living these teachings appears impossible. Within our cities, states, and nations we encounter those who seek to harm us. (Or at least they seem to!) We might even feel this within our church, at the parish, diocesan, and global levels. Whether or not this is the intention of the other parties involved, it does not matter. The call from Christ is the same: “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” Christ’s message is not to be merciful to those with whom I share political views, nor is it to love those who love the same music at Mass as I do. It is to love your enemies and do good to those who hurt you. The spiritual works of mercy teach us to “instruct the ignorant” and “admonish sinners,” but also to “forgive injuries” and “bear wrongs patiently.” Forgiveness and mercy are not signs of weakness, but of strength. David showed strength by sparing Saul. He knew that God, the almighty creator, would protect him and save him; so, he had nothing to fear from Saul. (That does not mean David escaped suffering!) When we forgive and show mercy, we follow David in placing our trust in God and his strength, secure in the knowledge that our “reward will be great” and we “will be children of the Most High.”
St. Paul writes that we are born into life as the “first man,” an earthly creature. This earthly man is subject to the whims of the world. Vengeance, disguised as justice, and other evils lurk behind basic human emotions and desires. But through our baptisms, we Christians were reborn into a new man, the “second man,” from heaven, and given his image to bear. We must choose which man we will allow to grow within us, that is, we must choose which image we will bear: the earthly or the heavenly. This is not a choice to make lightly. If we conform our lives to the earthly man, we shall return to dust as the first Adam did. If we conform our lives to the heavenly man, then we shall rise to eternal life with Christ, the new Adam.