February 19, 2017
SEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Striving for Perfect Love
Lv 19:1-2, 17-18; 1 Cor 3:16-23; Mt 5:38-48
First Reading: The Code of Holiness presents laws for community life, based on God's command to be holy as God is holy. The directive is short and significant. If we hold onto pain and anger against our neighbor, we will fall deeper into sin.
Second Reading: The Corinthians had strayed from the path of holiness as they chose which preacher to follow, because following human wisdom was foolishness. Paul reminds them of a greater wisdom: They belonged to Christ, and the Spirit of God dwelled in them.
Gospel Reading: Jesus provides several examples to his disciples of
a deeper understanding of the Law. Some were negative injunctions. Others instruct us to "go the extra mile," modeling ourselves on God whose love and beneficence are extended to all.
Homily
God told Moses, "Be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy .... You shall not bear hatred for your brother or sister in your heart" (Lv
19:2, 17). Paul told the Corinthians not to harm others, because they are the temple of God, which is holy. Their directives are the same, in other words: to love others is to be holy, which is to be like God. That is what Jesus calls our "righteousness" — it's our way of life, our spirituality, how we act each day.
Just loving the people who love us is no big deal; anyone can do
that. Then comes Jesus' punchline: "So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Mt 5:48).
This is such a tough Gospel for perfectionists! So let's be clear that it does not mean we are supposed to be perfect! To achieve perfection is an impossible task, doomed to fail, and its fruits are anxiety and guilt.
Leviticus tells us how to be perfect with a command to be holy because God is holy. God's people should strive to be like their God. And it's spelled out for us in the commandment: "love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus stretches that commandment to be much more inclusive: go further than what is expected; give more than what is asked for; don't just love back the people who love you, but love your enemies and your persecutors as well.
Paul hits the nail on the head: That's not the way the world thinks. To act that way makes us fools in the eyes of the world.
The world is more inclined to a way of revenge, sometimes even calling it "justice." We call it "fair" to lash out in anger when we are in pain; to strike out at those who have struck us; to seek more blood when blood has already been spilled. Retribution and paybacks have an emotional appeal, but they are not justice. There is no presence of the Divine when we seek to execute a murderer, cut off the hand of a robber or castrate a rapist.
Rather, Jesus tells us not to perpetuate evil, not to add to the growing pile of violence and death. We are told to take another step and respond to evil with goodness, to introduce justice where it is lacking, to bring to the places of darkness the presence of God "whose sun rises on the bad and the good, whose rain falls on the just and the unjust."
Jesus' preaching is a challenge to learn how to love, to learn how to live. And his command is to love
like God loves. God's "perfection" is completely loving. The goal is not to love some, but to love all, to be wholly loving, to love with an undivided heart. To love perfectly is a self-giving love, a sacrificial love. To be perfect means to love inclusively, to love without discrimination, to love not just some people but all people. It means to love friend and foe.
To be a perfect lover means to love the poor, including the poor we don't think deserve our attention. And it means to love the rich, the ones we envy or who don't spend their money the way we think we would spend our money if we were rich.
It means to love the one who loves us wholeheartedly, and to love the one who will stab us in the back if given half a chance.
As followers of Jesus Christ, we're expected to be different.