How To Be Perfect

Sometimes God seems to expect the impossible.

Especially when He says: “Be perfect, just as your Heavenly Father is perfect.”

That line from St. Matthew’s Gospel was part of the Mass readings this week. Jesus starts off the Gospel reading by telling His disciples they need to love their enemies – and that, too, seems impossible.

But to be perfect like God? We are creatures with a fallen nature, and we’ll never have God’s power or wisdom. So what does Jesus mean?

He wouldn’t want us to be perfectionists in the earthly sense. “Perfectionism is a disease,” I heard a priest say of that type of compulsion.

Instead, the priest said, we are to have Jesus as our standard, our model, for living. We aren’t called to be like our pope, archbishop or pastor, the priest said. We are to be like Jesus. Each of us, in our own way, can be like Jesus.

The perfection Jesus calls us to is God’s love and mercy, according to commentary from the Navarre Bible.

“It is a difficult commandment to live up to,” the commentary said, “but also with this we must take account of the enormous help grace gives us to go so far as to tend towards divine perfection.”

And if we want the grace to love as God loves, we need to ask for it in prayer, seek it in the sacraments and ponder it in the Scriptures, the priest said. Ask yourself, he said, am I growing daily in faith and moving toward perfection?

“Cleary, the ‘universal call to holiness’ is not a recommendation but a commandment of Jesus Christ,” the Navarre Bible commentary said.

“Your duty is to sanctify yourself.

"Yes, even you."

Inspired by the Year of Faith, Susan Szalewski began writing weekly columns for us. Although that year is over, we liked them so well that we asked her to keep writing. Thankfully, she said yes. So watch for these on Thursdays and see the Year of Faith Blog here.