ADOPTING THE SPIRIT OF THE GOLDEN RULE

ADOPTING THE SPIRIT OF THE GOLDEN RULE

Fr Luke A Veronis

Several weeks ago during a visit to the nursing homes, I began telling one of our older parishioners that we had our annual Greek Festival coming up. As we talked about the festive spirit, the Greek dancers, and all the delicious food and pastries, she mentioned how she hoped that someone would bring her. So, I asked her, “What are you looking forward to most at the Festival? What Greek food or pastry do you really miss?”

She looked at me with these sad eyes and simply responded, “I don’t miss the food. I miss being around people. It’s the people I want to see!”

Wow! What a statement! “I don’t miss the food. I miss being around people. It’s the people I want to see!”

How do we respond to such people? Are we even aware of them? And will we reach out?

In today’s Gospel reading, we heard Jesus say, “Do unto others as you want them to do unto you..” This is one of the simplest, yet most challenging teachings of our Lord — the Golden Rule.

This is not just a nice moral saying. It is the foundation of an authentic life in Christ. Yet, notice how Jesus doesn’t phrase it in a negative way. He doesn’t say, “Do not harm others or don’t do to other what you don’t want them to do to you.” It’s not enough to NOT to do evil toward others. Some of us can manage not to do harm to others.

Jesus, however, calls us to loving action. He wants us to take initiative. “Do good to others as you would want them to do for you.” This means stepping outside of ourselves, going beyond our ego, and thinking first of the other. How can we love others? How should we treat them? How can we reveal the love that God has showered upon us onto others?

Christ calls us to imitate His Divine Love. In today’s Gospel reading, He tells us to love our enemies, to do good others, to generously lend, to show kindness without expecting anything back. And then concludes with the most important challenge: “Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.”

Here lies the heart of God. Mercy is offering undeserved grace. Someone doesn’t deserve mercy. It is a gift freely given. Mercy is not weakness but strength, because it imitates the very love of our Heavenly Father.

As St. Isaac the Syrian explains, “A merciful heart is a heart that burns with love for the whole creation—for people, for birds, for animals, for demons, and for every creature. … From the memory of them, and the sight of them, the eyes of a merciful man pour forth abundant tears.”

To be merciful means to feel with the other, to enter into their suffering, and to treat them as God has treated us — with compassion, forgiveness, and generosity.

Think of the elderly people in the nursing homes or who are homebound and who long to see people. Think of the isolated person who is getting sucked up into the internet’s divisiveness and anger over our country’s political division. Think of the confused soul who has gotten lost in our society’s delusions.

Are we treating them as we want to be treated? Are we reaching out to them with divine love and mercy?

There is a beautiful story of St. Seraphim of Sarov that shows what mercy and love look like. One day, some monks caught a thief stealing potatoes from the monastery garden. They dragged him before St. Seraphim, expecting him to punish the man. Instead, the saint looked at him gently and said: “Brother, you must have been very hungry to risk such shame. Please, next time, don’t steal — come and ask, and we will gladly give you what you need.”

Then he ordered the monks to fill the man’s sack with potatoes and bread, and he blessed him to go in peace. The thief was so stunned by this unexpected act of mercy that he repented and began to faithfully follow Christ.

This is the power of mercy and love: it doesn’t just avoid harm — it heals, restores, and transforms.

Now, how do we put this commandment into practice?

Within our family, sometimes the people closest to us are often the hardest to be patient with and to treat with mercy. We can be more patient with strangers than with our own spouse, children, or parents. There is a rise in the estrangement of family members in our society. I remember a recent funeral where the child would not even come to the funeral of their parent. Yet the Golden Rule applies first in the home. Mercy begins not in some abstract world, but in the daily challenges of family life.

What about at work or school? How often do we face competition, criticism, and unfairness in the workplace or classroom? Our instinct is to respond in kind: to gossip about the coworker who gossips about us, to cut down the person who cut us down.

Yet, the Lord says: “As you want others to do to you, you also do to them likewise.” Imagine if, instead of joining the cycle of negativity, we became known as people of encouragement — people who build others up, who listen, who forgive. That is mercy in practice.

Then we must think about society. We live in a deeply divided world. Politics, social issues, even opinions about the Church can set people against each other. Social media’s echo chambers exasperate this situation and lead us to a place of judgment, division, and anger. Yet the Golden Rule teaches us that before posting, before speaking, before condemning, we should ask ourselves: “How would I want someone to treat me if they disagreed with me?”

Remember why we show mercy. Because this is how God has treated us. As St. Paul says, “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” God loved us when we did not deserve it. He forgave us when we had nothing to give Him back. He continues to bless us even when we are ungrateful.

If this is how God has acted toward us, how can we do any less toward others?

The Golden Rule is not just for children’s classrooms — it is the rule of life for us who strive to live under the reign of God. Christ expects us to be merciful, to love when it costs us something, to give without expecting in return, to forgive even when wronged.

Think again of St. Seraphim and the thief. Think of the times when someone showed you unexpected kindness and how it changed your heart. Remember the elderly woman in the nursing home. Now imagine what would happen if each of us was determined to live by the words of Christ - “As you want others to do to you, you also do to them likewise. … Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.”

If we live this way, then love and mercy will not only transform others — it will transform us, and it will help us begin now living in the Kingdom of Heaven.