From Bishop Robert Barron:

“There are two classical responses to violence: fight or flight. Faced with a threat, we typically either fight back or run away—and sometimes this is all we reasonably can do. However, we also know that neither of these strategies is particularly efficacious in the long run. Fighting fire with fire usually just exacerbates the problem (as Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye, making the whole world blind”); and acquiescing to violence confirms the perpetrator’s injustice.

What Jesus proposed was a third way: “If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn and give him the other.” No one in Jesus’ time would have used the unclean left hand for any kind of social interaction. Therefore, to strike someone on the right cheek was to hit him with the back of the hand, and this was a gesture of contempt, reserved for slaves and social inferiors. Faced with this kind of aggression, Jesus says, one should neither fight back nor flee; rather one should stand one’s ground and turn the other cheek. He thereby signals to the aggressor that he refuses to live in that person’s spiritual and psychological space. And he mirrors back the aggressor’s aggression, shaming him into self-awareness and prompting conversion…