Be Perfect, Not a Perfectionist (7th Sunday, Year A)

To listen to this homily, click here.

One of my favorite toys growing up was a simple piece of plastic, or more accurately, a whole bunch of plastic pieces that millions of kids enjoy around the world. They are Legos, those awesome building blocks that provide creative license to construct whatever your mind can come up with. I was not exceptionally gifted in lego-building but I would spend hours making all sorts of things, whether following instructions for a specific kit or turning a pile of plastic into something fun and occasionally dangerous. The only people I know who don’t like Legos are usually parents who are either digging them out of the mouths of toddlers and pets or accidentally stepping on them with bare feet and unintentionally educating their children in the nuances of the English language. 

It’s not surprising then that I was pretty excited to see the new lego movie which came out 5 or 6 years ago. Like many animated family movies, there is something for the little ones to enjoy and another level of humor and teaching for the adults in the audience. Without giving too much away, the movie opens around the boss of the lego worlds. His name is Lord Business and he is a type-A control freak who wants perfect lego worlds. He believes everyone should always follow the directions and he tries to engineer the population to act and think the same; creativity is discouraged. He goes nuts whenever someone veers from his vision of perfection, which is really just uniformity. In order to put an end to people’s creative actions, he comes up with an evil plan to freeze everyone in place so that people can stop messing with his stuff!” I won’t tell you what happens after that but one thing is certain: the vision of perfection that Lord Business has is not very healthy, happy, or fun.

There is another vision of perfection we have been listening to over the past few weeks from an infinitely more benevolent Lord. It is the Sermon on the Mount, which has served as our gospel during this month of February. In this teaching, Jesus is educating his listeners, including you and me, about what it means to be a perfect Christian. He has been showing us it is no longer simply about avoiding sin and trying to keep the commandments. That’s a good first step. But Jesus is telling us we have to go even further than just staying away from evil; we must actively pursue what is good. We must not only eliminate sinful actions from our lives but also the evil feelings, desires and attachments that make them possible in the first place. He tells us we are called to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth. We are meant to be the leaven that builds up everyone around us. In fact, today’s gospel commands us to be perfect, even as our Heavenly Father is perfect. 

Is this a typo? Is Jesus exaggerating? Is he crazy? Is Jesus just another Lord Business who wants the world to look his boring way so he can be happy? The answer to each of these is no, no, no, and no! Our Lord is not exaggerating when he lays down this incredible standard. He knows how weak we are, he knows we often settle for far less than perfection. But he also knows our potential when we cooperate with his grace, especially in the seven sacraments. Because he is willing to work with us every step of the way towards spiritual perfection, he makes it a command. 

God’s perfection does not look like that of the Lego tyrant. Our Lord does not want us all to be the same, like Christian clones or spiritual robots! He gives us certain universal commandments and principles to follow which enhance our freedom and the freedom of others. Even better, Jesus wants every person to leave their unique mark on the world by living these commandments and beatitudes according to the unique gifts and talents they have received. Each of us will make our own contribution to history and to our Catholic faith. Those who follow Christ and his command to be perfect should be among the greatest, most talented, most interesting, most important people in history. God wants you to be creative in your journey to perfection and he wants to have a relationship with you that is unlike the one he has with anyone else. It might seem hard to believe but it’s true!

If we are striving for God’s perfection, we should not be looking around, trying to gain the praise of other people. This Godly goodness will make itself visible in ways like loving our enemies and praying for those who persecute us, we will forgive those who hurt our feelings or talk about us behind our backs. It will enable us to go the extra mile with those who demand something of us and keep us from turning our back on those in need. 

God’s vision of perfection for us is not easy; in fact it is humanely impossible. We cannot accomplish it on our own. It will be messy, we are going to make mistakes, we are going to miss the mark, and sometimes we will fail. Following this command to perfection will be uncomfortable, it has to be. It will require sacrifice and it will mean standing up to people who are doing wrong to us and to others. It will mean defending the truth, which is often unpopular, it will mean that we are sometimes mocked and rejected, even by people who should be supporting and loving us, maybe even family and friends. Growing towards God’s perfection means never settling for being better than most or comparing ourselves to other people. 

In the end, being perfect as our heavenly Father, is not about never making a mistake. It is about loving as He does, seeing others and ourselves with the eyes of God, which are always full of compassion, mercy, and self-sacrifice. This is what we are capable of and this is what we are destined for. So let us commit ourselves completely to this command of Christ, using our gifts and talents to pursue Godly perfection, knowing this is what will bring us to our heart’s desire. And let us thank God for being with us every step of the way to guide and encourage us towards that perfect love of heaven.

Keep the Commandments and You Shall Live (6th Sunday, Year A)

To listen to this homily, click here.

  My parents are incredibly frugal, fiscally responsible, thrifty, cautious, and prudent. I’m sure providing for 14 hungry children will do that. I continue to be amazed that they raised 14 children on my father’s middle class salary. Of course there is no such thing as a free lunch and that rule certainly rang true in our home. My mom had a whole list of house jobs listed on a series of float charts, grids, and venn diagrams. This outline of domestic duties was displayed on the side of the fridge and occupied a major chunk of real estate. These charts, which would have driven Cinderella to despair, were sub-divided according to weekly and daily tasks, many of which were only slightly less-difficult than what you might find in the labor camps of the Siberian Gulag. Each of us had our rotating jobs which were completed only after Mom had inspected our work and given her seal of approval. I was always amazed at her x-ray vision; she knew every time we took a shortcut, cramming stuff under furniture, in drawers, or in closets. Until her approval, all merrymaking, playing outside and other frivolities were on hold. But there was a light at the end of the tunnel, a reward to the hard labor that reduced my tender, young hands to little more than stubs of worn and weary flesh and bone. After the weekly gauntlet of manual labor, my parents would take us to the corner drugstore in Bridgeton and we would receive our allowance of an entire $.50 to spend on a candy bar. Talk about the working poor!  

As you can imagine, this weekly visit to the candy store was quite exciting. For those of us who were steel-willed, we could choose to save several weeks worth of allowance and purchase something more substantial and glorious. I decided to go down this road because I wanted to purchase a box of Cheez-its for myself. Imagine the luxuries of having 16ounces of mature cheddar crackers all to yourself! After a number of weeks, I saved enough for my box of Cheez-its and I had two very difficult choices: 1) I could do the reasonable thing and enjoy a serving of cheese-its several times a day until the box ran out (allowing, of course for the occasional thievery of my marauding siblings) or 2) I could eat the entire box in one sitting and truly enjoy every single one of the cheese-its for myself. Despite the warnings and advice of my parents, I choose the second route and paid dearly for my choice.

The lesson I learned from those cheese-its was very simple and clear: choose the right thing and you will have happiness and more cheese-its for later. Make the wrong choice and you will loose everything you had and more, if you know what I mean.

A similar, more profound lesson is being taught in today’s readings. Listen again to the straightforward message from the Book of Sirach: “If you choose, you can keep the commandments, they will save you; if you trust in God, you too shall live. Before man are life and death, good and evil, whichever he chooses shall be given him.” Jesus confirms this wisdom of Sirach and takes it one step further when he says: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”

You can’t get more simple than this: keep the commandments and you will be saved. Follow the laws of God and the words of Christ and you will be eternal life and happiness. At the heart of our faith, things really are this simple. Obey God and you will enter heaven, disobey God and you will suffer eternal punishment. The choice is completely up to you; God will not force you either way. 

But if heaven and hell are really this simple, who in their right mind would ever choose to go anywhere but heaven? Why do we see so many people, including ourselves, choosing to disobey God’s law and break the commandments? Why do we endanger our immortal souls and our eternal happiness if this is so cut and dry?

The answer can be found in the words of Christ, as he explains the ways he has come to fulfill the law. For Jesus and those who follow him, keeping the law is no longer simply avoiding the big sins like murder, adultery, blasphemy, and frivolous divorce. It is no longer good enough to avoid serious sin while constantly giving in to the desires and motives of the heart which lead us to reject the love of God and our fellow man. What Jesus reveals to us is that truly keeping the law is only done when we get to the root of our sins. And if we want to choose to keep the commandments and gain eternal life, we have to be willing to root out all of those things that lead to sin; no matter how small or insignificant they seem.  

In other words, it is not enough to want heaven; we have to work towards it minute by minute, day by day, year by year, bit by bit. We can’t be ok with simply avoiding the big sins while falling in lesser ways with indifference. If this is our approach, sooner or later we will fall into those bigger sins anyway. Jesus isn’t satisfied with us being good people when we could be saints. That’s why he tells us in the gospel the shocking news that if a hand leads us to sin, cut it off, if an eye tempts us, pluck it out. Does Jesus mean this literally? No, but he does want us to understand we are engaged in a life or death struggle with sin. Keep the commandments and we live; disobey them and spend eternity in misery, separated from all love and friendship.

The truth is, no one starts out saying “I want to go to hell or I want to be a murderer, an adulterer, or a blasphemer.” We get there by fostering anger against others, by holding grudges, gossiping freely, indulging our desires, telling lies and allowing ourselves to become jealous of other people. These inclinations of the heart are the first seeds of violence against others and if we don’t work on them, they will explode into much more serious sins. The same is true about purity, We have to be willing to give up anything that makes it easier to lust after others. That means we might have to cut off the premium cable which offers impure entertainment around the clock. We may need to change the way we joke with our friends or browse the internet. It means we might have to eliminate certain shows from Netflix or Hulu, even though they entertaining. The same is true for the sin of blasphemy. We have to be willing to protect the name of God, using it only in prayer, not in surprise, anger, carelessness, or exasperation. It may make us feel old fashioned or silly, substituting other words, but it keeps us from becoming comfortable sinning in much more serious ways.  

The message of today’s reading is both radically simple and difficult; keep the commandments and you will be given eternal life. But the only way we can do this is to root out those things, those inclinations which lead us to sin. Jesus commands us to get to the bottom of our sinfulness, to the heart of what leads us away from him and to eliminate it completely. Anything less is unacceptable. The good news is that we don’t do this alone. Christ gives us the Church and the sacraments, especially the Eucharist and Reconciliation to assist us in this slow and gradual work. So thank God for the many ways He calls us above our sinfulness and weakness and let’s chose to keep the commandments so we might enjoy life and love forever in Heaven!