Tuesday of the 11th
Week in Ordinary Time
June 16, 2015 6:30am
The very last words Jesus says in
today’s gospel are: “Be perfect, just as
your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Now that is challenging.
Will we ever get to that point?
Of course not.
At least not in the way that we
usually think of perfection – as having no defect, as being sinless, as being
completely good.
One of our Catholic theologians,
Father Richard Rohr, gives us an insight that may lead us to think about Jesus’
words here a bit differently.
Father Rohr says this:
“If there is such a thing as human perfection, it seems to emerge
precisely from how we handle the imperfection that is everywhere, especially
our own.
A ‘perfect’ person ends up being one who can consciously forgive and
include imperfection (like God does), rather than one who thinks he or she is
totally above and beyond any imperfection.”
Father Rohr’s insight is that
Jesus calls us to holiness, to goodness.
And Jesus’ call to perfection
actually gets fulfilled in our humble acceptance of imperfection within
ourselves, in others and in the world around us.
This humble acceptance of
imperfection leads us to a right relationship with God, a healthy and realistic
sense of ourselves, and, amazingly, the love of others that Jesus talks about
in this passage.
So, a different, and I think
insightful twist on this passage today.
