“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
Most of us are familiar with these words from Robert Frost, which have been used countless times in graduation and commencement addresses and other inspirational talks as a challenge to not just follow the crowd, but rather to risk carrying yourself and your solitude at a higher level. Well, Jesus offers us that same invitation daily as we stand looking at two very different roads.
In the “Sermon on the Mount,” Jesus summarizes many of his key teachings. However, they are easy to misunderstand and rationalize. Mostly though we don’t pick up on what lies front and center in those teachings, that is, how our virtue must go deeper than that of the scribes and the Pharisees. What’s at issue here?
Most of the scribes and Pharisees were good, sincere, committed, religious people with a high virtue. They kept the Ten Commandments and were women and men who practiced a strict justice. They were fair to everyone and indeed were extra gracious and generous to strangers. So, what’s lacking in this? Well, good as this is, it doesn’t go far enough. Why not?
Because you can be a person of moral integrity, fully just and generous, and still be hateful, vengeful, and violent because these can still be done in justice. In strict justice you may hate someone who hates you, you may exact revenge when you are wronged, and you may practice capital punishment. An eye for an eye!
But, in doing that you are still doing what comes naturally. It is natural to love those who love you, just as it is natural to hate those who hate you. Real virtue asks more than this. Jesus invites us to something higher. He invites us to love those who hate us, to bless those who curse us, to never seek revenge, and to forgive those who kill us — even mass murderers.
Admittedly, that isn’t an easy road to take. Almost every natural instinct inside us resists this. What’s our spontaneous reaction when we are wronged? We feel vengeful. What’s our natural reaction when we hear that the gunman at a mass killing was killed? We feel relieved. What’s our natural reaction when an unrepentant murderer is executed? We feel happy he died; and we cannot help ourselves in that reaction. There’s the sense that justice has been served. Something has been righted in the universe. Our moral indignation has been assuaged. There’s closure.
Or is there? Not really. What we feel rather is emotional release, catharsis; but there’s a huge difference between catharsis and real closure. While the emotional release may even be healthy psychologically, we are invited (by Jesus and by all that’s highest inside us) to something else, to a road beyond feeling emotional release, namely, the less traveled road toward wide compassion, understanding, and forgiveness.
In assessing this, it can be helpful to look at how St. Pope John Paul II addressed the question of capital punishment. He was the first pope in the Church’s 2,000-year history to speak out against capital punishment. Interestingly, he didn’t say it was wrong. Indeed, in strict justice it may be done. What he said was simply that we shouldn’t do it because Jesus invites us to something else, namely, to forgive murderers.
Easier said than done! When I hear of a mass shooting, my thoughts and feelings don’t naturally turn toward understanding and empathy for the shooter. I don’t agonize about how he must have suffered to bring himself to do something like this. I don’t naturally feel sympathy for those who, because of fragile or broken mental health, might do something like that. Rather, my emotions naturally put me on the road more traveled, telling me that this is a terrible human being who deserves to die! Empathy and forgiveness aren’t the first things that find me in these situations. Hateful and vengeful feelings do.
However, that is the road of our emotions, the road more taken. Understandable. Who wants to feel sympathy for a killer, an abuser, a bully?
But that’s only our emotions venting. Something else inside us is forever calling us to what’s higher, namely, to the empathy and understanding to which Jesus invites us in the “Sermon on the Mount.” Love those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Forgive those who murder you.
Moreover, such virtue is not something we ever achieve once and for all. No. Faith works this way: Some days we walk on water and some days we sink like a stone.
So, like Robert Frost, on any given day I find myself standing where two roads diverge. One, the road more traveled, invites me to walk the road of hate, vengeance, and feeling I am a victim; the other, the road less taken, invites me to walk the road of wider compassion, empathy, and forgiveness.
Which one do I take? Sometimes one, sometimes the other; though always I know the one to which Jesus is inviting me.
