Be compassionate as your heavenly Father is compassionate

Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect,” we read in today’s Gospel, Mt. 5: 43-48.  We see God’s perfection at work in His forgiveness of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel.   That forgiveness included the acknowledgement and condemnation of Ahab and Jezebel’s sin, not Ahab and Jezebel themselves who contrived Naboth’s murder and then took possession of his vineyard.

“Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” means forgiving those who harm us, treat us unfairly, put our dreams to death and usurp that which we treasure.   To forgive, one needs to recognize and acknowledge that wrong has occurred. It also means letting go of the human tendency to strike back, inflict pain on the “enemy” in whatever way possible, hold on to grudges, and/or carry resentments around as excuses to continue acting angrily throughout our lifetimes.  Examples of the kind of generosity God shows the sinner abound in both the Old and New Testaments, all the way to Jesus forgiving the woman caught in adultery, the persons ready to stone her, Peter in his threefold denial and the good thief on the cross and you and I in all of our sinful behaviors and attitudes.  You and I are called to the same heroic deeds done in Jesus’ name and through the graces of redemption

Choosing loyalty to higher values

 

In today’s readings, 1 Kgs. 21: 1-16 and Mt 5: 38-42 we are challenged in many ways. Naboth’s family owned a vineyard next to Ahab, King of Samaria. It was his family’s inheritance, which could not be permanently alienated from its ancestral owners, a long-held religious tradition (Stuelmueller, Carroll, C.P., Biblical Meditations for Ordinary Time,--Weeks 10-22, Paulist Press, N.Y., pp. 28-29). Loyal to his family, Naboth denies King Ahab’s request to purchase the land. His wife, Queen Jezebel, distraught over King Ahab’s pouting and refusal to eat—an adult temper tantrum—promises her husband that she will take care of things. She contrives Naboth’s demise, having evil men unjustly accuse him, a righteous man, of blaspheming God, as happened to Jesus Himself, when He, too, is accused of blasphemy, his death plotted and executed. Naboth is put to death and Ahab seizes his property. Jesus is put to death and freely shares His inheritance with us!

The kind of behavior we see in King Ahab and Queen Jezebel is not uncommon today. Rich nations, wealthy corporations, powerful persons exploit the poor over and over and over again.Mass murders and assassinations are pre-arranged. The “strong” overpower the “weak" in so many other ways as well: adults abuse children, men abuse women, boys abuse girls, bullies and cowards of either sex take unfair advantage of those they deem weaker than themselves.

God rains down justice. Naboth and Jezebel are confronted with the truth of their sinfulness. Naboth, we learn, repents. In previous O.T. stories we read of other key persons in our salvation history who also fell from grace and repented. It is salvation history that continues to this very day in your life and mine. I pray that today when Jesus gives me the opportunity to “turn the other cheek” (Mt. 5:39) that I will have the courage to choose righteousness and cling to my inner truth versus engaging in fleeting pleasures at another’s expense.

Following God's promptings

Today’s Gospel, Lk 2: 41-51, tells the story of Jesus being lost in the Temple.  When Mary asked her son why he had done this to them and that his father and she were in anguish looking for him, his response was: Did you not know that I had to be about my Father’s business? We have the typical teenager—Jesus 12 years of age—acting independently of his parents and the parents distraught over his behaviour, his not telling them that he was staying behind to talk with the rabbis. In you and me is also this rebellious drive for independence when, at times, we are not upfront with one another in our marriage or in religious life or even at our place of employment.  Furthermore, we can be that way with God, hiding from Him, not being open with Him about what we are thinking, deciding or desiring and frustrating the Lord who desires that kind of transparency and intimacy with Him.

As I reflected further upon this Scripture, the Lord pointed out to me the importance of being about My Father’s business and that, doing so, at times means going against what others may expect of me, speaking my truth calmly, putting myself in a vulnerable position as I need to explain why I did what I did or why I am planning to do that to what I believe God is calling me to accomplish. It is so easy to assume a laidback position and simply not take the initiative, not assume responsibility, ignore the small inner voice calling me to accomplish a certain task such as, for instance, reconciling, challenging, or asking forgiveness of someone or suggesting a change in behaviors or attitudes that are inappropriate or offensive or non-life-giving in the family or in the community, or whatever!

How does this Scripture passage speak to you? To what on-going conversion is God calling you?

God: our mother, foster parent, guardian, savior

Today’s readings abound with statements of God’s love, a love that is eternal and is practical. God’s love brought us into existence, put us together in our mother’s womb, taught us to walk and talk, to think and understand, to feel and respond with compassion.  “I fostered [you] like one who raised an infant to his cheeks; …though I stooped to feed [you, you] did not know that I was [your] healer’( Hosea 11: 1, 3-4, 8c-9).  God goes on to say “My heart is overwhelmed, my pity stirred…I will not give vent to my blazing anger” when I see you walk away from Me, the Source of your life. I will not blaze out in anger toward you when I see you worshipping false gods, looking for fullness of life in empty cisterns; mocking Me, beating me, abusing Me, cursing Me,” as you do whenever you do these things to your family members, loved ones, strangers, your neighbour, persons different from you because of race, gender, or culture (cf. Mt. 25: 40). God seems to be reminding us that He is as hidden in the other person as He is in the Sacred Host.   My faith tells me that every human being, all of creation, is a sacrament, a sign of God’s  love for me, of  God’s Presence, of God’s life-giving Spirit, for in God,  “we live and move and have out being” (Acts 17:28). What does your faith tell you?

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the feast of God’s love. The second person of the Blessed Trinity, God the Son, in total obedience to the Father assumed human nature to show us the way back to the Father, that is, the way of obedience to our God.  In total self-giving, Jesus becomes the unblemished Lamb sacrificed to redeem all of humankind and so we pray at every Mass, the Lamb’s Supper, when the heavens open up and the Son of God comes down upon our altars:  “Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.”  Such love! What sacrifices am I willing to make in return for this love?

God's miracles; God's revelations; God's transforming power

Yesterday we reflected on the test Elijah put to the prophets of Baal.  Through Elijah, Yahweh revealed that the only true God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God who created heaven and earth, the God who freed the people from slavery in Egypt, and who covenanted with Israel, His Chosen Ones: “…of all the peoples on earth, you have been chosen by Yahweh, your God, to be his own people “(Dt. 7:6).  Yahweh alone is [your] guide; no alien god for him” (Dt. 32: 11). 

The miracle on Mt. Carmel—Yahweh sent down fire to consume Elijah’s sacrifice whereas the prayer of the god of the 450 prophets of Baal did not respond to their same request—is followed by the miracle revealed in today’s first reading:  the drought is lifted over the land and its fertility restored. In the N. T., we meet Jesus giving the sermon on the Mount and sharing with us ways in which each of us will be transformed and made more fertile: don’t even use abusive language with others, don’t enter into communion with the Lord in the Eucharist when your communion with others is severed by anger, resentment, and/or revenge. Go first to your brothers or sisters to seek reconciliation and forgiveness. Then return to the altar of God. 

Jesus raises the bar for His followers and challenges us to be compassionate, understanding, and forgiving; in short, to love others in the way the Father loves us.

Do my behaviors, I need to ask myself, reflect this covenant? Is my life being transformed by the sacrifices I am giving to God through the way I relate to others and to myself? Do others see this transformation taking place in me, as they witness the way I love and respect others and myself, forgiving myself and others when we offend each other? Do others say: look how that family loves one another? Look how those women/men religious respect one another and seek reconciliation with each other?

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"They will respect my Son,"  Jesus says to us in today's Gospel, Mk. 12: 1-12.   Respecting Your Son, O God, is respecting you, Father God.  Respecting you, O God, is respecting the Son.  Respecting you means wanting You, wanting to be imitators of You, living from love, acting lovingly and respectfully with all persons today, every day.

Sometimes, when facing difficult situations or trying circumstances that offer me the opportunity to choose life--being patient, humble, loving--I reject You, O God, who are pure love, infinite patience and gracious humility.  When I choose selfishness, wanting what I want, I am acting as did the tenants in today's Gospel .  By my impatience, pride, and lack of kindness, I "beat" those You send to collect the "produce" of self-sacrifice, patient endurance, and loving kindness.   The tenants choose their will, not Yours.  Whose will will I choose today?

The deeper purposes of life

The opening line of today’s first reading, 1 Peter 4: 7-13, is “Beloved: The end of all things is at hand.” Keeping our end in mind, knowing that the day of our rebirth into eternal life could be any day, would we, I wonder, live today differently? Believing the end time was imminent, St. Peter instructs us to “love intensely”, to “be hospitable to others without complaining,” and to use the gifts we have been given “to serve one another.” 

Wow! What a message for all of us awaiting, if you will, our end time here on this earth. We are here for one thing and one thing only, to love intensely, not half-heartedly or lukewarmly. What happens to a person on this journey of love and transformation by Love when a person’s innate ability to love as God loves, to forgive as God forgives, to make whole as God makes whole, to serve others as God serves us, when a person has been taught that life is solely about filling it with material things, about never saying “no” to oneself, about using sex as an experiment, a thing of pleasure and instant gratification with no commitment or responsibility, with little or no love for self or others. What if one has been taught to perceive life from purely a narcissistic, consumeristic, materialistic, pragmatic, scientific end and only for personal aggrandizement and glorification of the self with the deeper purposes of existence being ignored, avoided and untaught.

 

Seeing us misunderstanding and abusing the end for which we have been put here on this earth—to love as God loves—would Jesus not do for us what He did when, in today’s Gospel, He saw how the Temple was converted into a “den of thieves”? Would he not teach us the real purpose of life on this earth, its sacredness, its holiness, as He taught the moneychangers the real purpose of the Temple?