Tuesday in the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time

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.”

Jesus says, “Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  I had an American Literature professor who once stopped class in the middle of a discussion on Nathaniel Hawthorne and asked, “How can an infinite, all-powerful God expect anyone to be perfect as he is perfect?”  The professor looked around the classroom at each face, as though he though someone was hiding the answer from him.  It is a good question.  And if we look at it a certain way, without understanding what the Lord Jesus meant by “perfection”, we could think that it would be impossible.  But let’s look at what precedes this commandment.  Jesus is speaking about the love of our enemies as real love — that is, we gain nothing practical at all from loving our enemies: there is no visible reason to do so.  But when we love when there is no visible reason, that is real love.  That is, in fact, how God loves us.  We provide him no benefit necessary for his existence, and when we sin, as we often do, we detract from his glory.  And yet he loves us.  “He makes his sun shine on the bad and the good” without distinction.  

At the same time, we find this hard to accept.  Why should God love the “bad and the good” without distinction?  It would seem reasonable to expect that he would strike the wicked down right away, at least to the extent of hiding the sun from them.  The answer to this is that we are all sinners to one degree or another, and God, in his mercy, gives us each time to repent.  We ought to never forget this.  It is so easy to look at a person committing a crime and apparently getting away with it and wonder why God does not intervene and punish this person right away.  But how do we compare the sins of a person who does not know God and those of someone who does?  We ought to be careful in our expectations for what we think God should do.

Jesus tells us to love our enemies and to pray for them.  He does not say to invite them over for dinner or to let them harm us or to be friends with them.  The most charitable course of action is probably to avoid our enemies altogether.  But we should pray for them, for their conversion.  It is greater glory for God for a person to be converted than to be punished.  

This whole passage, then, is about love, and that is what Jesus means when he speaks of “perfection” — it is to love to the greatest extent of our ability, just as God does.  He does not mean for us to match God’s love, pound for pound, as it were.  God loves infinitely.  We love to the greatest degree that we can.  Loving our enemies is a difficult work, and we do it only with the grace of God.  Doing this makes us become like God.