I would like to tell a story about Maggy. Maggy is a Burundian woman who lived during the terrible civil war that took place between the two biggest ethnic tribes in her country: Tutsi (her tribe) and Hutu. Those who are not Tutsi or Hutu make up only 1% of the country. During this war over 300,000 people were killed.
Maggy had already adopted seven children, some Hutus and some Tutsis, when the civil war started. People from the Tutsi tribe went to her house and killed her Hutu children right in front of her eyes. They also wanted to kill her because she had helped the enemy’s children. However, since Maggy was Tutsi, they did not kill her.
That day, Maggy realized that her mission in life would be to fight the violence ravaging her country by giving the children an alternative to hatred. In 1993, having survived the massacre, she founded Maison Shalom (House of Peace), and was determined to raise up a new generation of children in a spirit of love beyond the ethnic hatred she had experienced. She said to herself: “I am not able stop the war, but I can stop it in my heart and in the hearts of the children.”
Instead of punishing those who made her suffer or taking revenge against them, Maggy went on to live the way of the Gospel. She tried to imitate Jesus who acted in two specific ways in front of those who attacked him. Frist of all, Jesus never punished or took revenge on those who persecuted Him, slandered Him, hurt Him or killed Him.
The second and most important lesson she learned from Jesus was that she should continue to do good to others, even though she would be attacked for this. This is an important teaching that we must learn and practice in our lives as well. We must never stop doing good to our neighbor no matter what others do, say, or think. We must not respond to evil with more evil, but rather with good, as St. Paul says: Do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil with good (Rom. 12:21).
This is also one of the pillars of the Church: the Church must build the kingdom of God by doing good rather than doing evil. Evil does not build, but rather, destroys good. The mission of the Church is not to destroy evil with evil, but to do good no matter what. If the Church tries to destroy evil with evil it will only be adding more evil to this world. The great mistake of those who have a disordered zeal for the Church, or for themselves, is to fight evil with evil, and this attitude comes from a narrowness of spirt rather than from the Holy Spirit.
