“Well it happened. I am approaching my third year anniversary as a deacon, but it happened. Last evening at the 4:30 Mass I read from the wrong Gospel and not just the first sentence or two, but nearly halfway through it. I recognized my error just about the time that Fr. Charles was wondering ‘what Gospel shall I preach from?’ Of course the theme of the Gospel reading, the correct Gospel reading is, ‘Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect.’ When we hear Jesus telling us to be perfect we think this is an unachievable standard because after all, none of us is perfect and none of us will ever be perfect and he’s calling us beyond something beyond our human capacity and therefore it is easy to just dismiss what Jesus is saying like it is some sort of exaggeration, a Jewish hyperbole like when Jesus tells us to gouge out our eyes if our eyes tell cause us to sin, but before we ignore what Jesus is telling us and calling us to do as if he couldn’t have possibly have meant it, let’s take a look at a couple of things. First, the main emphasis of what Jesus is saying is, ‘Be like your Heavenly Father.’ Earlier in the passage he gave us a specific exhortation so that we may be children of our Father in Heaven who makes his son rise on the good and the bad and sends rain on the just and the unjust. Jesus is implying that we may not fully become children of God until we start behaving like God, behaving like Jesus. Just as God loves everyone and does good to everyone including those who curse him including those who make themselves an enemy to him. This is the path to true holiness to love as God loves with Agape love. It’s easy to love from a distance. That famous comicstrip philosopher in Peanuts, Linus, once said, ‘I love mankind. It’s people I can’t stand.’ And G.K. Chesterton put it this way: ‘God commands us to love our neighbors and our enemies and generally they’re the same people.’ Secondly I think to understand what Jesus meant when he calls us to be perfect we need to have a grasp on the Greek word that St. Matthew uses the word that we translate as perfect. It’s an adjective. Teleios in Greek and it comes from the Greek noun Telos which means purpose or end or goal so the word means fit to achieve it’s end or purpose. For example, a hammer is fit for the purpose for driving a nail. It is teleios for pounding a nail. When Jesus tells us in fact when he commands us to be perfect to be teleios as his Heavenly father is teleios. He’s not intending that we engage in some sort of errorless or sinless perfectionistic striving in an unattainable task that will only make us psychologically and spiritually neurotic. Rather, Jesus is summoning us to order our lives for the same purpose of God the father. To Mature to full stature, to achieve the end for which we were created which is to be fully in the image and likeness of God to be Holy as God is Holy to love as God loves to be merciful as God is merciful to behave truly as children of our Father.
Well how are we to do this for it’s not humanly possible? But not for God for through the sanctifying grace that we have received in our baptism and through the sacramental graces that we receive in Holy Eucharist, in confession, through prayer, we can achieve the purpose of our life to be happy forever with God in Heaven. In our first reading from Leviticus God tells Moses to tell the people be Holy as I am Holy. The word there for Holy means to be set apart. To achieve the purpose for which we were created we must set ourselves apart from the world. As Paul exhorts us in his letter to the Corinthians, ‘We must resist that urge to be wise in the ways of the world.’ This holy season of Lent will begin on Wednesday. Lent is a time to give us an opportunity to come closer to God for conversion of heart. Dr. David Anders, a talk show host on EWTN radio, has a program for those who are discerning Catholicism for those who are perhaps looking in to being Catholic and he has this byline, ‘What is keeping you from being Catholic?’ In the next three days as Ash Wednesday approaches let me ask us, ‘What is keeping us from becoming holy?’ Perhaps it’s time for a good confession. What is that sin that dominates our life? What needs to be rooted out? This Lent I exhort you to have a game plan for a real change of heart. Pray about it. You’ve got three days til Ash Wednesday and then upon reflection when you come up with your game plan for your Lent to become closer to God tell your wife about it tell your husband about it tell your family tell your friends. The point is to be accountable. With the help of God’s grace we can all change. With the help of God’s grace we can achieve the purpose for which we were created and with the help of God’s grace we can be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect.”