How do you treat your neighbor in a worship service? What do you do if you are near someone whom you really do not like, or someone who treats you badly?
More particularly, what do you do at the Eucharist or in another Christian gathering if circumstances would require you to give the “kiss of peace,” or sign of Christian fellowship, to someone with whom you are at painful odds?
Deliberately to avoid the other person is a sin against charity, is it not? Does not Jesus say, “Love your enemy,” and “Pray for those who spitefully use you?” Can a human being, who asks mercy from God, and who seeks to imitate God’s generosity, refuse a sign of charity, such as the kiss of peace, to another human being?
While living in the monastery years ago, we practiced the custom of bowing to one another as we left the church after the Eucharist. Such bowing is a distinctive Benedictine custom. Well, I was often paired up on leaving the church with a brother who clearly disliked me, who wanted nothing to do with me, who would never say a kind or pleasant word to me. And he steadfastly refused to bow to me, hence breaking our tradition. His action forced me to think about what I was doing, and why. I regularly bowed to him, and with the kind of bow customary in our monastery: a full half-bow, showing clear reverence. Why did I bow to someone I found it so difficult to like, who wanted nothing to do with me? I bowed to him because I realized that we are bowing to the Real Presence of Christ in one another, and not merely to the particular human being. Once I realized to Whom I was showing ultimate respect, I never had difficulty offering this gesture of charity, even as the brother would refuse me the same sign of charity.
The same awareness should suffuse our actions in public, and particularly in worship. If you are standing near someone with whom you have real personal difficulties, you still extend the kiss of peace. But again, in the spirit of St. Benedict, one does not “offer a false peace,” such as flashing a fake smile and speaking empty words (Rule of St. Benedict, chapter 4, #25). On the contrary, you and I need to seek and to pray to make our kiss of peace genuine, truly to wish to the other all the blessings of God we want for ourselves, and for our dearest loved ones: “Peace be with you.” In overcoming our own thoughts of dislike and perhaps ill feelings, we are truly dying to ourselves and living to Christ. And surely in such action consists the essence of Christian spiritual life.
Then if the other person does not receive your words graciously, or refuses to offer a charitable greeting to you, you have done your part to fulfill the law of Christ: “Love one another, even as I have loved you,” and “While we were still enemies of God, Christ died for us” (Romans 5). Or again, “Whatsoever you do to the least of my brethren, you do to me.” The other person may have broken his or her communion with the indwelling Christ, but that is all the more reason to show them mercy, and speak to their heart, “The LORD be with you.” Then we are being faithful disciples of our LORD.
