Re-run. This homily was preached previously in 2017.
Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 6 / Sunday (Anniversary of the Dedication of the Church of St Ignatius)
Readings: Sirach 15.16-21 / Psalm 118.1-2, 4-5, 17-18, 33-34 (R/v 1b) / 1 Corinthians 2.6-10 / Matthew 5.17-37
A perfect day.
Don’t we all hope for that kind of a day? One when everything works out just right. One when all we wish for comes through. One when all that we experience is good and happy. In the words of Lou Reed, have you ever had a perfect day?
We all dream of that perfect day. More than this, so many of us want to be perfect at what we do. All of us struggle with perfectionism, even the most laid back of us who smile and deny it.
Maybe this is why we burden ourselves with many expectations. Maybe this is why some parents weigh down our school children with unrealistic demands: “No, your A is not good; get that A+, or else”. Maybe this is why we as a society have so many rules and regulations on how we should interact. It is true in the church too, isn’t it? We want to have so many ministries, organise so many programmes, do so many things so that we have the perfect parish.
We want all these to achieve perfection because we so often think that it is the mark of distinction. Perfection is what makes one worthy. Perfection is the anti-thesis to sin. Yes, perfect is what we must become.
But it’s hard to be perfect, isn’t it? You and I know our struggles with perfectionism in everyday life. For some of us the price of perfection is too costly: stress, despair, suicide.
We’re not spared this struggle in matters of faith. When we recognise that we are imperfect Christians because we don’t live up to God’s commandments or we fail to observe the Church’s instructions on Christian living, many of us struggle with feelings of unworthiness about coming to Church and the Sacraments, of meaninglessness in religion, and of hopelessness in the faith. These experiences why some choose to leave Catholicism and search for God elsewhere, if not to give up on God altogether.
That is why we must not be so quick to interpret today’s gospel passage as Jesus cranking up the demand that we be perfect. You shall not kill. You shall not be angry with others. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not swear. You shall not. Yes, we hear Jesus teach these.
A cursory glance at these teachings — based on God’s Ten Commandments — might make us think that Jesus is demanding nothing less than perfection from us, if not, even more perfection from those of us who think we are indeed perfect.
But what if Jesus is simply calling us to be realistic and to try to live better? To live better one step at a time? To live better than before in each moment we have, and every day that we live? To live better, and not to be fixated with being perfect all at once?
I believe Jesus is calling us to live better because he knows that no matter how much you and I want to live the perfect Christian life by following God’s commandments, we are human and we will repeatedly sin. We will argue. We will lust. We will gossip. We will get angry. We will lie. We will do all these because we are human.
But didn’t Jesus call us to be perfect like our heavenly father (Matthew 5.48)? Yes, he did. And he did, I believe, knowing that our human tendency is to fail, to sin and to be imperfect. So can we ever be perfect?
I’d like to suggest that we can become perfect by letting Jesus and his teachings shape how we ought to live better, from moment to moment. His teachings are God's compassionate, patient and understanding ways to perfect us by helping us to grow in spiritual maturity.
This kind of growth involves discernment. Discernment is the daily process of faithful conversations with God about how God is labouring in our lives to make us more perfect like Jesus, his son. We discern with Jesus in mind because he is the model of spiritual maturity for the Christian life. He is the only one who has scored 10 out of 10 for living God’s commandments. You and I score much less: some of us score 8 out of 10, many others score 5 out of 10 and still some others score around 2 or 3 out of 10. Whatever our score is, Jesus never gives up on us. He comes, again and again, in God’s love, like he does through today’s gospel, to invite us to improve ourselves. St Paul echoes this call in our second reading: Christians must strive to grow in wisdom to know and live in God’s ways.
As much as discernment is the way for us to grow in spiritual maturity, we must remember that God never intended his commandments to be a checklist for us to tick off like we do a checklist of do’s and don’ts, a checklist that scores how perfect our actions make us out to be.
In our first reading, Sirach reminds us that God's commandments are for us to have life. Discernment helps us to recognise and understand this truth. In fact, Jesus teaches us throughout the Gospels that God's commandments are to empower us to live as spiritually mature Christians. Such a person understands that Jesus’ teachings are much more than the rules, the prescriptions, the regulations we so often think they are. They are more properly statements about the values we need to have to live with God and in God's ways, especially those that ask us to respect, care for and uplift others, and so, save ourselves as we do so.
Today Jesus is teaching us that is it not enough to live by avoiding the technical prohibitions of not committing murder, adultery, swearing and all the “thou shall nots” of the Ten Commandments.* He is challenging us instead to live more pro-actively in God’s ways: to settle our grievances with others, to avoid anger, to be pure of heart, to be trustworthy, and to have integrity. One needs values to live like this. Jesus clearly summarises this other, Christ-like way of living with values when he commands us to turn our cheek and to love the enemy who hurts us (Matthew 5.39), as well as to forgive our enemies not seven times but seventy-seven times (Matthew 18.22).
This is why the Christian life cannot be about living God’s ways in terms of compliance and reward. It must be about living with God’s values of mercy and compassion, of love and tenderness — values that God uses to perfect us for Christian life. The goal of Jesus’ teaching is to help us imbibe these values to become a spiritually mature person who lives with God by living for others. For St Paul, such a person is blessed with true wisdom that comes from God to live in this way
Our Baptism calls us to become such persons too. We would be wise then to make today’s psalm our daily prayer to ask God to enable us to become spiritually mature Christians:
Instruct me, O LORD, in the way of your statutes,that I may exactly observe them.Give me discernment, that I may observe your law and keep it with all my heart.Blessed are we then who follow your law, Lord. (Psalm 118.33-34)
I believe praying this psalm often opens us up to God. This is how we let God into our lives to perfect us. Perfected in God's ways is how we can live each moment, each day better.
Today we celebrate the dedication of our parish church. St Ignatius is our patronal saint. He lived in God’s ways by discerning God’s will constantly. He practiced the Examen to do this. We know the Examen. Quite a number of us practice it. The Examen helps us to become aware of God in our lives and to be thankful for God.
The Examen is therefore a way to cultivate constant mindfulness of God and God’s good labour of perfecting us to live meaningful Christian lives and to be happy. “Cultivating such mindfulness requires attentiveness and availability. Indeed our whole day, all that we do, all that we think and speak must make our hearts, our minds totally available for God. God longs to give Himself to us; our work is availability”.** Attentiveness and availability are also what we need as the parish community of St Ignatius to let God perfect us as a church.
Maybe when we can become more attentive and available — individually and as a church — to God like Ignatius did, then God can truly perfect us better. When we recognise this, do not be surprised that God is always blessings us with so much more than than the perfect day we hope for each morning.
* Tom Purcell, Creighton Daily Reflections
** Trappist Monks at Spencer Abbey, MA.
Preached at St Ignatius Parish, Singapore
photo: a summer day by adrian danker, sj ( in new york city, november, 2012)
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