God’s Desire to Bring Us to Fulfillment, Seventh Sunday (A), February 19, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
February 19, 2023
Lev 19:1-2.17-18, Ps 103, 1 Cor 3:16-23, Mt 5:38-48

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• The main point of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is that he is calling us, as his disciples, to live by his standards, not by the standards of others. Last week, he told us that our relationship with God must surpass that of the scribes and the Pharisees, who were the most religiously observant Jews. Today he tells us that we need to do better than the tax collectors who love those who love them, than the upright Gentiles who greet and do good to those who greet and do good to them. He calls us to live by God the Father’s standards, which he personifies. Today’s readings make this point emphatically.
• In today’s first reading from the Book of Leviticus, we see what God commanded Moses to say to all the Israelites: “You shall be holy, for I, the Lord, your God am holy.” He tells them both what standard he’s calling them to — not just to be a “good person” but to “be holy” — as well as the reason why: “because I, the Lord, your God, am holy.” He is calling us, in short, to be like him, to live as his image and likeness.
• In the second reading, St. Paul indicates to the Corinthians and how we’re called to become holy like him. He says, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? … God’s temple is holy and you are that temple.” Our holiness means allowing God who is “holy, holy, holy” to dwell within us, to grow within us, to love within us, to reign within us. Sometimes we’re tempted to think that the essence of holiness involves thousands of good deeds on our part; rather, holiness means allowing God truly to abide in us, transforming us more and more according to the image in which he created us and for which he redeemed us.
• In the Gospel today, Jesus puts an exclamation point on this primary Christian vocation. He tells us, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Very often when we hear this summons, we’re thrown off by the word “perfect” and think that this is an unachievable standard, because after all, none of us is perfect, none of us will ever be perfect, and if God is calling us never to make a mistake, then he’s calling us to something beyond human capacity. Therefore, we can feel somewhat justified in dismissing what Jesus says as if it’s a clearly unattainable goal. But before we ignore what Jesus is calling us to, as if he couldn’t possibly have meant it, we should focus on a few things:
• First, the main emphasis of what Jesus is saying is “Be like your heavenly Father.” He was specifically calling us to be like him in special, challenging ways in today’s Gospel, so that we “may be children of [our] Father in heaven, who makes his sun rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” Jesus implies that we will not really become children of God until we start behaving like God, that he can be our Father — through creation, most especially Baptism — without our being his children, unless we experience the inner revolution to which Jesus is calling us. That means seeking to act as his children, to behave like Jesus who shows us how to live as a Son of God. Just as God the Father loves everyone and does good to everyone, including those who curse him, including those who make themselves his enemy through sin and an evil life, including those who try to use him whenever they need him, Jesus calls us to do the same, to love our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us, to walk the second mile, to give our cloak as well as our tunic, to respond generously to all those who need to borrow. We’re called to be good — to let our sun or life-giving rain fall — not just on those who are good to us but even on those who are not good to us, just like God the Father does. This is the path to true holiness. This is the means by which we become, in action, sons and daughters of our heavenly Father, by behaving as God the Father behaves. On the other hand, we cannot be like God the Father when we don’t love others enough to forgive them when they hurt us, to pray for them when they persecute us, to sacrifice for them when they’re in need, to avoid all vengeance against them when they strike us on our cheek or otherwise hurt or offend us.
• Second, to understand what Jesus means when he calls us to be “perfect” like our Father in heaven, we have to grasp the Greek word St. Matthew employs. That word is “teleios,” which is the adjective that comes from the noun “telos,” which means “end” or “goal.” Teleios refers to something fit to achieve its end or purpose. A hammer, for example, is teleios for pounding in a nail. A student is teleios when he has mastered the material, lives it and can teach it to others. When Jesus calls us — in fact commands us —to be “teleios” as our heavenly Father is “teleios,” he’s not intending that we engage in a type of errorless and sinless perfectionistic striving for the unattainable that may end up destroying our spiritual, psychological and physical lives. Rather, he is summoning us to order our lives to the same purpose and same goal as God the Father, to mature to full stature, to achieve the end for which we were made, which is to be fully in the image and likeness of God, to be holy as God is holy, to love like God loves, to be merciful as he is merciful, to behave truly as children of our Father.
• In order to achieve this Christian perfection, God doesn’t leave us on our own but gives us all the help he knows we need. Everything in our Christian life is meant to help us to become
  • Prayer is meant to help us to become teleios like God, by helping us to think as God thinks rather than the way everyone else thinks, to help us say and desire that God’s will be done rather than our own.
  • The Word of God is meant to help us to become teleios like God, by imparting to us God’s wisdom and showing us the true path to love like he loves.
  • The sacraments are meant to help us come to become teleios like God, by assisting us from within to become more and more like the one we encounter in the Sacraments, Jesus Christ, who feeds us with himself, who forgives us our sins, who fills us with his Holy Spirit, who conforms men to himself in holy orders, who joins a man and woman in one flesh to become a true loving communion of persons in marriage resembling the Trinitarian interpersonal communion, and who helps unite our sufferings and even our death to his.
  • Our daily life, including everything we have to endure, is meant to help us to become teleios like God. This means that when someone slaps us on the cheek, or begs from us, or hates or persecute us, all of it can be used by God to bring us to perfection. This was the path God the Father used to perfect Jesus according to his humanity. The Letter to the Hebrews says, “Although he was Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered and, being perfected, became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him.” Jesus was perfected according to his human nature, precisely through his suffering. He was perfected when he didn’t retaliate against the brutal Roman soldiers who slapped him, mocked him and put a crown of thorns on his head. When they took his tunic in order to scourge and crucify him, he allowed them to take his cloak as well. When they compelled him to walk a mile with the Cross on his shoulders, he continued two miles, helped by Simon of Cyrene. When he was being crucified, he cried out with love for his enemies and prayer for his persecutors, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.” And by his horrendous but salvific death, Jesus made salvation and sanctification possible. Through his apparent defeat, Jesus gained for us the graces to be able to love as he loves, to become not just in name but in action children of the Father, living in his image and likeness.
• That’s why, to become perfected, to become holy, to become a true temple of God, we need to follow Jesus Christ not just partially, not just at a distance, not just picking-and-choosing the parts of his teaching that don’t require a radical change on our part, but up close, fully, totally. The whole Sermon on the Mount, like we see in the Beatitudes, is meant to lead us to true happiness, to true spiritual perfection as sons and daughters of God. We need, however, not just to hear Jesus’ message, but to believe it, embrace it and put it into practice. We need to give God permission to do in us what he wishes to do in order to sculpt us in his holy image. Just like any father or mother wants to raise a child to fulfill all of his or her potential, God wants to raise us to fulfill all the potential with which he has created us, to be holy like he is holy, perfect as he is perfect, fully human and more and more divine.
• There are some Christians who want to pretend that there has to another way, that we can still please God, live a good Christian life, and get to heaven without taking Jesus’ words seriously and literally. Some want to believe that as long as we do a few good deeds, come to Mass, pray a little each day, give something to the poor, that that’s all that God wants and demands of us, that we can live by the same standards by which everyone else lives; that we can, to quote Leviticus today, continue to “hate our kin in our heart,” to “reprove our neighbor,” and to “take vengeance.” Rather than striving for sanctity, we believe that if someone takes an eye or a tooth from us, we’re justified in taking his eye or her tooth, that we’re perfectly okay in slapping someone back who slaps us first, that we’re fine in loving only those whom we think deserve our love, being generous only to those whom we trust, and vanquishing our enemy before our enemy gets a chance to attack or eliminate us. Today is the day in which Jesus wants us to recognize that this is not the way to human fulfillment. It’s not the way to happiness. It’s not the way to heaven.
• Paul warns us against this fiction in today’s second reading. He says: “Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.” To those who are wise in this age, the whole Sermon on the Mount — from the beatitudes to turning the other cheek and loving (having unconquerable benevolence) even toward our enemies — is total lunacy, just like they believe that the Cross is utter folly. But those who are truly wise recognize that Jesus’ words alone are the path to eternal life and, with St. Paul, that the Cross is the true power and the wisdom of God. Those who are truly wise see that they must become fools in the eyes of the world in order to become like the Heavenly Father and his Beloved Son. It’s only those who are foolish in the eyes of the world and wise in what pertains to God who will come to this perfection, who will recognize as St. Paul finishes the second reading today, that “everything belongs to you” — the Church, the world, life, death, the present and the future — all things are give to you for your sanctification, indeed, “all belong to you, and [or better because] you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.”
• As we prepare for the beginning of Lent in three days, we can focus on how Lent is meant to help us to bring us to become more like God, to live by God’s wisdom, to become It’s meant to unite us to Jesus in his 40 days in the desert, in his prayer, in his fasting, in his almsgiving so that we can become, together with him, the image of the Father. Jesus will tell us on Ash Wednesday, “When you pray, … when you give alms… [and] when you fast,” to do so not for the crowds but for the Father who sees in secret and will always reward. Lent is about making us ever more children of the Father, who live for the Father, for the Father’s name to be hallowed, for his kingdom to come, for his will to be done. Lent is ultimately about holiness, as we turn away from everything by which we do not live as beloved children of the Father and begin to believe and live the Gospel. As we prepare, with God’s help, to live the best Lent of our life this year, we rejoice to have another chance to pray that we might live up to the reality of our having become God’s beloved sons and daughters through baptism, to fast so that we may hunger for what God hungers, and to give of ourselves and our gifts not only to those who do good to us, but, like God, even to those who do not. The holy season of Lent and the whole Christian life are a school in which God tries to help us, day by day, become like him, to become perfect, fit, apt ultimately to share eternal communion with him and all the saints.
• The greatest means by which Jesus helps us to become teleios is through Holy Communion, by which we poor and humble servants eat the Lord and enter into holy communion with Him who is Holy, Holy, Holy. This is an indication of just how much God desires us to be like him. As we prepare to receive him today and become, truly, a temple of God, we ask for the grace to cooperate with the Holy Spirit as he seeks to make us one Body, one Spirit in Christ, and fulfill God’s will for us, our sanctification and spiritual perfection.

The readings for this Mass were: 

“You shall not bear hatred for your brother or sister in your heart.
Though you may have to reprove your fellow citizen,
do not incur sin because of him.
Take no revenge and cherish no grudge against any of your people.
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
I am the LORD.”

Let no one deceive himself.
If any one among you considers himself wise in this age,
let him become a fool, so as to become wise.
For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of God,
for it is written:
God catches the wise in their own ruses,
and again:
The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise,
that they are vain.

So let no one boast about human beings, for everything belongs to you,
Paul or Apollos or Cephas,
or the world or life or death,
or the present or the future:
all belong to you, and you to Christ, and Christ to God.

“You have heard that it was said,
You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I say to you, love your enemies
and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your heavenly Father,
for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,
and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have?
Do not the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet your brothers only,
what is unusual about that?
Do not the pagans do the same?
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

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