Tuesday of the 11th Week in Ordinary Time (Year II)
1 Kings 21:17-29 | Psalm 50:3-6,11,16 | Matthew 5:43-48
You must therefore be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:48)
Um, how can Jesus expect us imperfect humans to be perfect like God? After all, everyone sins. At minimum:
Including this guy.
This is yet another passage where nuances were probably lost in translation. The troubling word above was translated from the Greek word τέλειοι (teleioi), which does mean “perfect”, but also has the connotation of “full-grown” or “complete”, specifically from the root word τέλος (telos, “end goal”).
So I think Jesus is actually commanding us to be “complete” or “mature” Christians rather than “sinless”, but what does that entail? Remembering that:
God created man in the image of himself, in the image of God he created him (Genesis 1:27)
it should be clear why Jesus commanded us to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). We are created in the image of God, but so are our enemies – we all spring from the same God-created stock. Seeing that God chose not to curse them with darkness and drought (Matthew 5:45), who are we to do otherwise?
Obviously, loving one’s enemy doesn’t come easily, so Jesus exhorts us to be exceptional, to go beyond the love-those-who-love-you and greetings-for-brothers-only crowd (Matthew 5:46-47). In this way, He wants us to “be perfect”, to be the “complete Christian”, to love each other as He loved us.
✞ ✞ ✞ ✞ ✞
While I was writing this entry, John F. Kennedy’s famous Moon speech suddenly sprang to mind. If he had instead been reflecting on today’s Gospel, I’d like to think he’d have said this instead:
We choose to love others! We choose to love others without expecting returns and do the other Christian things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to catalyze and test our faith in God, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win by the grace of God.
Amen.