If someone strikes your right cheek, offer him the other also

7. You have learned that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” I am telling you not to resist the evil that others might want to do to you; but if someone strikes your right cheek, offer him the other also; and if someone wants to sue you to take your tunic, leave him your cloak also; and if someone wants to force you to go a thousand  steps with him, go two thousand. Give to him who asks and do not turn away someone who wants to borrow from you. (Mt. 5:38-42)

8.     The      world’s      prejudices    concerning    what    has conventionally been called the  “point of honor” causes that somber susceptibility that is born from pride and the exaltation of the personality, leading people to payback injury for injury, offense for offense, in what seems like justice to those whose moral sense has not risen above the earthly passions. That is why the Mosaic Law stated, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” a law that was in harmony with the time in which Moses lived. Christ came and said, “Repay evil with goodness,” and stated further, “Do not resist the evil that others might want to do to you; if someone  strikes  your  right cheek,  offer him the other also.”  To  the proud,  this maxim seems like cowardice, because they do not understand that there is more courage in bearing an offense than in avenging oneself, and they always base their actions on motives that keep them from seeing beyond

Love your enemies the present. Must one take this maxim literally, however?  No more than the one that says to pluck out an eye if it is a cause of scandal. Taken to the extreme, it would mean condoning all repression – even when legal – and would leave the field free to evil persons by removing all their fear. If a restraint were not put on their aggressions, all good people would soon be their victims. The very instinct for self-preservation, which is a law of nature, states that one should not willingly hold one’s neck out for a murderer. Thus, by these words Jesus did not interdict self-defense, but condemned  vengeance. By saying to offer one’s cheek when the other has been struck, he is saying in another way that one should not repay evil with evil; that people should humbly accept everything that tends to lower their pride; that it is more glorious for one to be wounded than to wound, to bear patiently an injustice than to commit one; that it is worthier to be deceived than to deceive, to be ruined than to ruin others. At the same time, it is the condemnation of dueling29, which is no more than a manifestation of pride. Only faith in the future life and God’s justice – which never leaves injustice unpunished – can provide the strength to bear patiently the blows directed against our interests and self-centeredness. That is why we constantly state: Focus your gaze on the future ahead; the more you lift yourselves above the material life through thought, the less you will be disheartened by things of the earth.