SOCL, 7C
- Admin
- Feb 21
- 2 min read
Updated: Mar 15
Sunday February 23, 2025
(Sexagesima)
See
There exists a fundamental paradox in our relationships: we meticulously calculate our emotional investments seeking equivalent returns. This emotional accounting seems sensible, but reveals our profound insecurity: we fear unilateral generosity because we intuit its destabilizing power. The extraordinary doesn't dwell in reciprocity but in apparent waste.
Turning the other cheek constitutes not weakness: but radical subversion. What appears as submission paradoxically represents freedom—it interrupts the predictable narrative, bewilders the aggressor and exposes a power that needs not impose itself to manifest. True strength emerges precisely where we anticipate vulnerability.
Forgiveness operates as counterintuitive investment: not because it primarily benefits the forgiven, but because it liberates the forgiver. Overflowing abundance doesn't arrive as external reward: it springs from the very act of giving without calculation, revealing that our restrictive economies were always defenses against available fullness.
Listen
Reflect
(Luke 6:27-38)
-Examine where you calculate your generosity as a transaction: a friendship, family relationship, or community commitment where you measure what's given against what's received. What fruit does this emotional accounting produce?
-Remember a moment when you responded to offense with offense, perpetuating destructive cycles. Imagine how an unexpectedly generous response would transform that conflict. What prevents you from choosing this subversive path?
-Identify three people you judge harshly and reflect on what these judgments reveal about your own unrecognized wounds. What would change in you if you practiced mercy toward them?
Final Prayer
God of radical abundance, free us from our petty calculations to love without guarantees, forgive without conditions, and give without fear, reflecting your boundless mercy in every encounter with friends and enemies.
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