Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time | USCCB
“Be perfect, just as
your heavenly Father is perfect.” That’s a pretty tall order. How do we do
that? Practice makes perfect. As the old joke goes: “How do you get to Carnegie
Hall? Practice, practice, practice.”
I was in band when I
was in high school. I played the baritone, a smaller, oval version of a tuba. I
was not particularly fond of that instrument. There were two other baritone
players in the band with me, and they were far better musicians than I was. In
fact, I relied on them to learn the music and I would play by ear. One day the
band director handed us each a portfolio with three different pieces of music
to learn. I just put the portfolio aside; I never even attempted to look at the
music to see if I could learn it. When I was asked to play it, well it wasn’t
pretty. I could have tried to learn even only one piece, but I wasn’t willing
to practice.
Today’s readings are
some of the most challenging any Christian will ever hear. Why? Because they
ask us to do something that is so against our human nature. They ask us to put the
needs of others ahead of our own, they ask us to forgive. It’s as if God has
given us each a portfolio of music to learn. Notes on a page, how can I make
any sense of that? Will I even give it a try? What if I don’t get it perfect?
The truth is we
won’t get it perfect. “[We]
are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” (Mark 8:33) In Paul’s
letter we hear:
“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.”
So what is the wisdom when Jesus says:
“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.”
God obviously looks on the world in a
way we can hardly imagine. God sees the world with love. God sees the world in
its entirety. How can God not love any part of his creation? It is we who have
made distinctions that have caused the animosity and divisions we suffer today.
Dietrich Bonhoffer, German theologian and
outspoken critic of Adolf Hitler wrote: “Judging others makes us blind, whereas
love is illuminating. By judging others,
we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as
entitled to as we are.” Simply put by judging others we make it impossible for
us to see them as God does, and God has an infinitely better vantage point than
we do.
So how do we become perfect as our
heavenly Father is perfect? We practice. We practice prayer; we practice with
acts of charity; we practice by withholding judgement of others. We love our
neighbors as ourselves. And we keep practicing all of this until we get the
music right.
This week we begin the holy season of
Lent. Let this be an opportunity for us to begin practicing the commandment to
love others as we love ourselves, making their needs our needs, and giving up
the urge to judge others, and doing all of this with a prayerful spirit. In
this Eucharist we celebrate let us ask our heavenly Father to enable us to see
God’s image in all mankind and to serve God in them. And let our prayer this
week be: “Perfect us in love, Lord.”
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