Saturday of the First Week of Lent
Today’s Gospel is challenging, especially the last line, “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” I’m reminded of when I was growing up, my parents told me to not just get good grades or even all As but perfect grades with no wrong answers. Even if extra credit was offered, those answers had to be correct too.
As I grew older, I realized that perfection wasn’t everything. However, I was interpreting perfection as doing everything correctly on my own or other people’s terms. What did Jesus mean? Reading earlier in that Gospel passage gives us an idea. Jesus said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” God loves all people even when we’re not perfect. As those who claim to be God’s children we are called to love others as God loves them. We are loved by God most visibly seen in God incarnate in Jesus Christ, his death on the cross, and resurrection. The late Pope Benedict XVI in his first encyclical Deus Caritas Est expresses this idea well, “In God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know. This can only take place on the basis of an intimate encounter with God, an encounter which has become a communion of will, even affecting my feelings. Then I learn to look on this other person not simply with my eyes and my feelings, but from the perspective of Jesus Christ,” (18). In a way, that is repentance. We return back to God who loves us so much that we cannot keep this love to ourselves. We must share it with other people. Through the Lenten practices of prayer, almsgiving, and fasting, how will you love others (including your enemies) this Lenten season?
-Sr. Emily Sandavol, FMI