Saturday of the First Week of Lent
In today’s Gospel, Jesus calls us to imitate God the Father by being perfect in love. He has given us six examples of what that looks like in this section of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:21-48). Today, we have the sixth imperative, “. . . love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you . . .” This is no easier for us than it was for Jesus’ contemporaries. Let us ask God for the graces we need for a deeper conversion of heart that we might be perfected in God’s love.
Jesus tells us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, “that [we] may be children of [our] heavenly Father . . .” When we respond to ill treatment with love, we demonstrate that like good children, we have taken on the attributes of our Heavenly Father. After all, our loving Abba is not partial – he “makes his sun rise on the bad and the good and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” God loves every single human on the planet equally and unconditionally; God is unceasingly merciful, gracious, and generous. He showers each one of us with his benefits moment by moment. I must pause and consider this question: since God shows no partiality and since God never withholds his love from me, how could I ever justify myself in withholding love from my neighbor, even a neighbor who offends me, even an enemy who wishes or causes harm to me? Jesus died on the Cross for that neighbor out of love for him!
We forget, practically speaking, that we are children of our heavenly Father by virtue of our Baptism. We behave as if we have some other father, a different kind of parent that shows favoritism, is punitive, loves only conditionally, withholds mercy unless some form of restitution is offered, is slow (or unwilling) to forgive, judges and condemns. We relate to one another not as brothers and sisters in one human family, but as ones estranged and opposed. We relate transactionally – I refuse to love you unless you treat me well, your behavior meets my standards, and you come into my camp.
Don’t we each tend to look at one another through lenses of our own making? We don these spectacles and look out at other people through the prism of our own worldview. Our outlook is blurred by our sin. We peer out at the world through a darkened lens, clouded by our prejudice, bigotry, fear, pride, and a critical spirit. Our own inner woundedness, brokenness, and shame also add a layer of film to the lenses. Today, let us ask our heavenly Father to help us see other people as he sees them; let us ask him for the grace of understanding; let us, as an act of our will, remove the worldly lenses of our own making and crush them under our feet. We live in an ever-increasingly polarized world, defined by “us” and “them,” marked by distrust and cruelty. We can be ambassadors for reconciliation, but we desperately need the grace to “be children of our heavenly Father” who view our neighbor through the Father’s lens. Let us put on his glasses today!
All children emulate their parents. In our family of origin, we learn virtues, values, standards, how to treat other people, how to be in relationship, how to be a neighbor. Some of that is holy; some of it is unholy; but a child demonstrates to the world what s/he learns from the parents. Today, let us demonstrate the attributes of our heavenly Father. Let us truly be his children, embracing others as the brother and sister that they are. We need lots of grace to live in this way!
Jesus concludes this section of his Sermon, “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Jesus knows we are imperfect beings. We need not fear failing as we strive to be faithful disciples. His call is to be perfected in love. Jesus calls us to reflect the Father’s perfect, unconditional, selfless, merciful, generous love in our own lives. We reflect and return what we have received! Picture yourself as being held constantly in the loving embrace of our heavenly Father. It’s within the safety and security of those arms of love that we offer love back to him by loving the neighbor (even and most especially) when it’s difficult. Our love for God is perfected as we love our neighbor. Indeed, it is in loving a neighbor that I most perfectly demonstrate my love for God.
One of my favorite Psalm Prayers in the Liturgy of the Hours (often used during the Office of Readings) goes like this:
“Lord God, our strength and salvation, put in us the flame of your love and make our love for you grow to a perfect love which reaches to our neighbor.”
May it be so in us this day. Amen!
I’ll see you in the Eucharist,
Elizabeth Wells