7th Sunday of Ordinary Time

02-23-2020Weekly ReflectionFr. Will Schmid

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

When I was a young child, at an early age, I struggled with hand-eye coordination, and my parents took me to see a child development specialist to discern how to help me develop these skills. You can imagine how excited I was when my child development specialist recommended that my parents purchase a Nintendo video game system to help me develop these skills. However, as I grew in my hand-eye coordination skills playing video games, my inner perfectionism also grew. Often times, if I made a mistake in a game, I would simply restart the game to correct my mistake so that I could play each level with perfection. Over time, like many other people with perfectionist tendencies, I had to learn to let go of my perfectionism, accepting human errors and embracing the important lesson of continuing on with a task even though it isn’t perfect.

At the very end of our Gospel today, Jesus gives an interesting command that some often try to ignore. Jesus says, “Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” For anyone who has ever struggled with perfectionism, this can appear to be a terrifying statement because of how often we fail in our quest to live perfectly, free of human errors. Yet, when Jesus makes this statement, does He mean that we are to never make any mistakes? Are we never allowed to fall victim to human error? Are we to demand that all Christians be mistake free? In order to answer these questions, let’s take a deeper look at today’s Gospel.

The expression, “Be perfect,” in Biblical Greek is Esesthe teleioi, which literally means, “be of (or possess) the same goal or aim.” This carries with it a much different connotation than the English understanding of perfection as “to be without mistake or human error.” Jesus is not telling us that we can never make a mistake or that we must live a life completely free of human error. Rather, He is commanding us to have the same goal or aim as our heavenly Father. This begs the question, “What is the goal of our heavenly Father?” The verses that precede this one will help us answer this question.

Our Gospel begins with the verse: “You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil.” The command of the Mosaic Law to issue a punishment equal to the offense committed was given by God as a means of limiting retribution. It was designed to prevent people from allowing their unrighteous anger to manifest itself in an unreasonable punishment - one that exceeded the gravity of the crime committed. In other words, it was designed to help soften the human heart. Jesus, as we have seen throughout this chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, desires to transform the human heart on a deeper level. He wants to end the cycle of retribution altogether. At some point, we have to stop the cycle of responding to an action with an identically mirrored reaction, otherwise we end up in an impasse of continuous animosity and violence. To elaborate this point using Jesus’ example, we could say that we must cease plucking out the eyes of those who pluck out ours, otherwise we will end up living in a culture where everyone is blind, because no one has eyes to see - we have plucked them all out!

Do not be mistaken, Jesus is not condoning or encouraging a culture without justice. We must hold this passage in union with everything else that is contained within Sacred Scripture. Rather, Jesus is asking us to surrender the inner desire of self-righteousness that often demands retribution, not for justice’s sake, but for the sake of making myself look better after I have been humiliated. Jesus is inviting us to embrace the higher divine virtue of mercy - forgiveness. Responding with mercy carries with it the potential of surprising our opponent with compassion and love, opening the door for their potential conversion. It is based on the belief that our opponents are never beyond the grace of God and that the possibility of the new life of Christ can be theirs as well as ours. 

In our quest to respond this way, we are seeking to imitate the Lord as He commanded in the Mosaic Law from our first reading: “Be holy, for I, the Lord, am holy.” To be “holy” means to be “set apart.” We are set apart from the world, we live differently, when we give God permission to put an end to the self-righteousness that often festers within us. Our lives are set apart and are lived differently when we choose to love our enemies and not merely our friends.

Such a life of holiness is certainly a lofty aim, but it is the aim of our heavenly Father. This is what Jesus means when He commands us to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. Jesus wants us to shock the world with a compassion and love that inspires conversion. If my enemy has slapped both of my cheeks and has no more cheeks to slap, perhaps he will experience shame and realize how such an action did not give him the satisfaction his heart desired. If my enemy has both my tunic and my cloak, perhaps seeing me in my nakedness will inspire compassion and love to grow within him. If I help carry my enemy’s pack for two miles instead of one, perhaps we might discover the extra time to get to know each another and develop a real friendship. Perhaps the apparent weakness of showing mercy to my enemy might, in the end, become my greatest strength.

The art of love is never an exact science. Each human person is unique and unrepeatable. There is no simple formula for loving another human person. It isn’t like a video game. We will make many mistakes and we can’t restart the level after making them. We must learn to let go of such perfectionism. Instead, we must constantly look to the face of the suffering Jesus and beg for the grace to imitate our Lord in His merciful love. The mission of love always carries with it the consequence of suffering, because love always demands self-sacrifice. Yet, only merciful love can break the perpetual cycle of animosity and violence. To be perfect - to have the same goal (or aim) as our heavenly Father - to be holy (or set apart), we must be willing to be wounded for love. Thankfully, we have a God whose sacred wounds have the power to heal the wounds we incur for love’s sake. We have a God whose aim, mission, and power is to transform sin and death into joy and life.     

Peace in Christ,
Fr. Will

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