7th Sunday OT, A February 19, 2023
Fr. Alexander Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
I’m not what I could be… I’m not who I could be. Has any honest person not thought this to themselves? We imperfect human beings have an innate awareness that there’s something more to life that what we currently experience: some greater pleasure, some better situation. Imagining ourselves as better looking, smarter, stronger, more skilled, more well-connected… anything. There’s an innate desire for perfection.
At the same time, who hasn’t also felt like that better situation is not actually possible? “I’m not perfect” is a very common thing for people to say. So, even as this closing line of the Gospel – be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect – taps into that deeper desire to be perfect, it also leaves us feeling incapable of actually accomplishing it.
All this is bound up with what we start this Wednesday: Lent. Like New Year’s resolutions, most people instinctively grab onto the idea that this creates the right time to be better, to be more, to grow towards perfection. The sacrifices of Lent, even as we dread them, strike us with a hope that, actually, we can make a sacrifice and be better.
That’s great. Don’t squander that inertia, that motivational power that comes from knowing we’re all about to dive into these 40 days of challenge and growth together. At the same time, we have to realize what they’re really for, what perfection actually means.
As with Christmas, the world around us is trying to turn Easter into a “party first” experience, offering “Easter” events and commercialized experiences well before the day actually arrives. So, yes, an essential part of preparing for Easter is properly observing Lent and the sacrifices and self-denial. It means no meat on Fridays. It means fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. And just so we’re clear – a crawfish boil on Good Friday is absolutely unacceptable. Remember that there are no loopholes! You can’t sincerely claim to be fasting when you’re eating for 3 hours, drinking beer, and celebrating all while you’re supposed to be meditating on the brutal torture and death of Jesus Christ caused by your sins. Don’t do it. Yes, it is a sin. Save it for Easter Sunday or any of the 7 weeks of celebration after Easter! If you’ve already planned one, cancel it. If you know people planning on it, challenge them to stop it.
Still, all of that is minimums and rules – important and necessary, but not the real point. The point is that Lent really is about growing in the perfection of God. And that means knowing what perfection is. It’s not a contest to make yourself miserable and it’s not using Lenten penance as a personal diet plan. Perfection means “to make complete.” Complete in what? In love of course. Denying yourself chocolate or alcohol might help you be more detached and more focused on God, but it’s far from the most divine thing we could do.
The most divine thing is to love your enemy… to forgive those who’ve hurt you, to be generous to those trying to take advantage of you. It’s divine because it’s what God does. Human history is one long story of God generously creating us, giving us free will, offering us his love, and us repeatedly rejecting him and abusing his gifts. We quite literally destroy creation and each other on a regular basis, yet God keeps us in existence, keeps offering forgiveness, keeps proclaiming the possibility of new life, grace, and our own perfection. “Not according to our sins does he deal with us” our psalm proclaims, “nor does he requite us according to our crimes.” Yes, “the Lord is kind and merciful.”
And not in a manipulative way either. Some people, when they offer forgiveness, are doing it to get a response. They don’t actually want what’s good for the person they forgive, they want the offer to guilt them into anguish and remorse so they can enjoy watching the person break down. Sometimes it even works.
Genuine forgiveness is offered not to solicit an emotionally satisfying response, but as a genuine act of love towards the other person. God needs nothing from us, so his offer is purely for our benefit. As human beings we do need things from others – and emotional catharsis can be good for us – but we nonetheless are called to emulate the love, the intention to do good for the other person, whether or not it benefits us. This is the perfection of our heavenly father.
But how? How does a mere human being get to the point where they can sincerely turn the other cheek? Pray for their enemies? Help their own oppressors? Remember, when Jesus gives the example of helping someone carry a burden for two miles instead of one, he’s referring to the practice of Roman soldiers who had the right to make people carry their stuff for a mile. These are the soldiers that conquered them, instruments of a pagan empire that was only barely allowing them to continue living as Jews. So, it’s not a simple act of generosity for Jesus’ disciples to go for two miles, but a choice to serve their own oppressors. How can he ask that of them? How can they do it?
The only answer is grace. The grace of faith and hope to see that God’s wisdom of redemption is more powerful than man’s wisdom of rebellion and revenge. The grace of charity to actually love your greatest enemies. That’s what Lent is – what our whole life of faith is – a time of growing in grace. Self-denial – sacrificial acts – are good because they create room for grace. But to fill that room with grace? That’s the effect of the sacraments received with faith, the byproduct of the choice to be generous to those who don’t deserve it. As grace increases, each grace-powered act of love draws down more grace. The choice to forgive an enemy or help an oppressor is often a process, a gradual accumulation of grace. It’s starts with making the choice to try. It grows by making that choice again and again and again when you don’t feel like it. In time, your desires and feelings do change. Like all of life, the journey towards perfection begins with imperfect steps. But you do need to at least know what direction to go and then make the choice to start. Start now. Whom do you hate? Who is your greatest enemy? Who hurt you the most? A former friend, a family member, this or that political leader? Pray to God now, “Lord I want to love them, forgive them, help them, help me start right now.” Then try it one day, one painful memory at a time.
I am not perfect and neither or you, but together with the grace of God, one day, we will be if only we’re willing to try.