Be Holy and Perfect
Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time (A), the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, Quinquagesima Sunday (Lectionary 79)
The bookends for today’s readings are challenging.
Be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy.
…be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Sure, God. No problem. I’ll get right on that being holy and perfect thing.
I definitely want to let others do wrong and take no revenge. I am enthusiastic about offering the other cheek when I am struck. I can’t wait to give more than is asked when someone sues me, and give the government more than they can legally require. I certainly want to give money to every crackhead I meet so they can go buy more drugs, and lend money to people who can’t pay it back. I’ll definitely love my enemies.
I can’t even say these things out loud without it being clear from my face and my tone that I don’t really mean them. I know that this is the path to holiness and God. I know that God is perfect, and I should desire holiness, and that these exhortations describe that perfection and holiness, but, I can just barely even say the words, much less sincerely desire them or begin to live up to them. That is because… I am not perfect.
Saint Thomas teaches us that only God is absolutely perfect, and God is love, therefore perfection is found in having perfection in our charity. That is, perfection in the spiritual life is to have perfect love of God and neighbor. He also teaches that this perfection only occurs in heaven; even the saints are incapable of being absolutely perfect. So there is hope for us. We should not despair that our Lord’s description of perfection is so challenging. Like Saint Paul wrote to the Philippians (3:12) – we have not yet attained perfection, but we press on and strive towards heaven.
That process begins by seeing perfection in the work of God, and in contemplation of God. Having seen that perfection, and seen that it is good, the next step in this process is to ask for and nurture within ourselves the desire to grow towards perfect love of God and neighbor.
God has an infinite capacity for love. God knows every star by name and how many hairs are on our heads. God’s eye is on the sparrow, and knows when one of them falls to the ground. God is impassible, and has no neediness. God needs no comfort. God is not swayed by biochemistry. God chooses to love, always and perfectly.
We, though, are limited. How can we grow towards perfect love?
To a large degree, our capacity for love is approximately equal to our capacity for suffering. This is why Saints respond to their own limited capacity for love by seeking out suffering. They especially desire and seek out hidden sufferings – private mortifications not presented to others for admiration or comfort, but to God alone. In the little Lents of every Friday, we take on some small sacrifice in order to increase our capacity for love. And now, we face the big Lent.
Mechanically, of course, everyone who is 14 to 59 years of age and medically capable of doing so is obliged to fast and abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday, the Fridays of Lent, and Good Friday. We are also encouraged to make this a season of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving. We fast to discipline ourselves and decrease the inordinate love of self that causes us to give in to sin and to our weaknesses. We pray in order to see God more clearly, to love God more deeply, and to understand the God whom we are created to know, love, and imitate. We give alms to take our eyes off of ourselves, and grow in love of neighbor.
Bishop Baron puts it thus in the introduction to the Word on Fire Lenten meditations, “The Paschal Mystery” –
During Lent, we apprentice to Jesus in his forty-day sojourn in the desert. We stubbornly stay with him, doing what he did there, facing what he faced there. The desert is the place of clarification. When we have been stripped of the relatively trivial desires that preoccupy us, we can see with a somewhat disturbing clarity, who we essentially are and what most pressingly matters.
Blaise Pascal said that most of us spend our lives seeking divertissements (distractions), for we cannot bear the weight of the great questions. We play, gossip, eat and drink, and seek the most banal entertainment so that we don’t have to face the truth about ourselves, the reality of death, and the demands of God. The Spirit drives holy people into the desert because it is a place where the divertissements disappear: “He fasted fourty days and forty nights” (Matt 4:2). At the end of the Lord’s fast, the tempter arrives – because decision follows clarification. How often in Scripture the theme of decision arises. Jesus himself provokes the stark choice: “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters” (Matt 12:30). And then Jesus is ready for mission; immediately after the temptations, he gathers his disciples around him and commences the ministry that will reach its culmination only on the cross.
So, this Lent, let us resolve to rid ourselves of divertissements, going a bit hungry and thirsty, purposely running on empty, so that the great questions may be asked with clarity. Let us get back to spiritual basics, focusing on Christ’s suffering and uniting our own suffering – through fasting, prayer, and almsgiving – with the suffering members of the Church. Let us allow the devil to come, tempting us with the love of pleasure, power, and honor – for in temptation comes decision. Pleasure, power, and honor are in themselves good, but they are not the ultimate good; they are not God. “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him” (Matt 4:8). And in the desert with Jesus the Master, let us realize that we, too, are people on mission – because in decision comes identity.
This whole Lenten journey is meant to prepare us to embrace the Good News of Easter – the Resurrection of our Lord from the dead. In John’s magnificent account of the Resurrection, he says that it was early in the morning on the first day of the week. It was still dark – just the way it was at the beginning of time before God said, “Let there be light” (Gen 1:3). But a light was about to shine, and a new creation was about to appear. The stone had been rolled away. What was dreamed about, what endured as a hope against hope, has become a reality. God has opened the grave of his Son, and the bonds of death have been shattered forever. The Resurrection is the clearest indication of the lordship of Jesus. It is the fulcrum on which all of Christian faith turns. And it is a breakthrough even now in the midst of history of what God intends for his creation – both spiritual and material – at the end of time.
With our eyes fixed on this coming glory of Easter, let us together enter into this desert time of self-denial, ready to break out of the darkness of sin and death and into the light of the risen Christ.
Bp Robert Barron – The Paschal Mystery (Introduction)
Lord, grant that we individually, and as a parish, may grow in love of you and of our neighbor, and become holy and perfect, even as you are holy and perfect.
