Be Holy, Be Perfect, (Be Merciful)

While this Sunday's Gospel passage simply continues with the same kind of dissertation as we heard last Sunday, the accompanying readings help us to shift our focus just a bit. The reading from the Book of Leviticus charges the people of Israel with the imperative to be "holy." St. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians reminds us that our holiness is a result of being God's dwelling place. St. Matthew tells us to be "perfect." How are we to understand these admonitions?

Let us again remind ourselves that the Sundays of Ordinary Time ask us to reflect on the "cost of discipleship." In this context, the admonitions we hear in the readings can be best understood by reminding ourselves of the universal call to holiness. When we consider what it means to be holy, our minds usually begin to think of the fruits of holiness. What does a holy person do? However, holiness is not the result of deeds. Rather deeds are the expression of the state of holiness. The Hebrew Scriptures constantly remind us that being holy means that we are separate from or different than. We learn this from the nature of God who is the epitome of holiness. God is "totally other than." Nothing else is like God; from this fact we learn that holiness is about being different than. God's people are to be the exception, to act as God acts. Rather than to act as the world would have us act, we are to be set apart from the world by actions that identify us as God's people. Leviticus describes this in various ways. Today's reading tells us that the holy person loves his neighbor, his kinsman, as himself.

St. Matthew picks up this thread and tells us that Jesus would have us go beyond what was said in Leviticus. First of all, I want to point out that while Matthew says that we have been told to love our neighbor and hate our enemy, there is no passage in the Hebrew Scriptures which says that we can hate our enemy. The fact that Matthew says this probably indicates that the various commentaries written by the rabbis and the scribes on the Hebrew Scriptures have added this gloss. Jesus then goes on to ask us to good to those who hate us, to act as God acts, the God who loves even those who reject God and God's will, the God who answers sin with mercy and forgiveness. We are to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect.

When we hear the word "perfect," our first reaction might be that this is an impossible goal. We know, even though we are hesitant to admit it, that we are not perfect, that we are limited and frail, that we possess various faults and failings. However, the word "perfect" in this passage does not mean that we are to be without flaw. It means that we are to be complete, the way that English grammar speaks of the "perfect tense" as the tense we use to indicate that an action is complete. We get a better sense of this when we compare the same discourse in St. Luke's Gospel where he renders the saying just a bit differently: Be compassionate (merciful) as your Heavenly Father is compassionate (merciful). God's is different than, is holy, because God is merciful. Made in God's image, we are called to this same kind of mercy. Rather than seeking the vengeance that so often characterizes the human attitude, we are to "turn the other cheek."

St. Paul reminds us that we are all Temples of the Holy Spirit because God dwells within us. Just as God's presence made first the meeting tent and then the Temple holy, so too we are holy because we carry within ourselves the very presence of God. Just as the beauty of the Temple impressed those who entered it, so too, we are called to impress the world by the beauty of our lives.

As we celebrate the Eucharist this weekend, we eat and drink that which nourishes our life of holiness. We seek and find communion with the God who is holy, and we aspire to that same holiness so that we can make God's presence in this world ever more evident by our actions, the fruits of holiness. For it is by our fruits that all will come to realize that we are God's holy people.

Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator