Tuesday in the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time, June 20, 2023

Matthew 5, 43-48

Jesus said to his disciples: “You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same? So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

When cornered regarding an error, a miscalculation, or a sin, people often excuse themselves by saying, “Nobody’s perfect.”  But that is not true.  Besides the Lord Jesus himself, there is Blessed Mother.  She is not perfect through a magic spell but because she cooperated with the will of God in all the moments of her life.  Grace certainly aided her, but it only made what she accomplished achievable.  At any time she could have chosen to deviate from his will but she did not.  There are all the saints, as well.  These men, women, and children may have sinned and even have lives of debauchery, but by the time of their deaths, through lives spent in penance and selfless devotion to the Lord, they became perfect.  We can think of St. Mary of Egypt, a courtesan for much of her life whose heart was changed by a few lines from the Gospel which she heard one day while passing a church.  She repented in the wilderness, living in a cave on bread and water, praying for forgiveness.  Or St. John of God, who hired himself out as a mercenary during the sixteenth century, living a thoroughly ungodly life, until he converted, did penance, and served the poor for the rest of his life.  He died while trying to save a youth from drowning.

“So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  These words may seem impossible to fulfill.  It may seem one thing to become as perfect as a human saint but quite another to be perfect as God himself is perfect.  We think this because we fail to understand what Jesus means.  He is not telling us to become infinite as God is, or as fully actuated as God is (for, as St. Thomas Aquinas tells us, God is pure act).  God is perfect in the ways that God can be perfect, and we are called to be perfect in the ways that a human can be perfect, and for us that principally means having no attachment to sin and loving, believing, and hoping to the full extent of our ability.  And, as we see in the saints, this is quite possible for us.  We may gaze upon St. Therese or St. Anthony and think that we have so far to go that we will never succeed.  It is like a child beginning to learn to play the piano and struggling with a simple tune, thinking she will never be able to perform the Beethoven piano sonatas.  It takes work, hard work, accepting the assistance of the grace God provides, but it can be done.  In our case, it must be done, for only the pure of heart shall see God.