Be perfect????

In Nelson’s Mandela autobiography Long walk to freedom he says this “I knew that people expected me to harbor anger against whites. But I had none. In prison, my anger towards the whites decreased, but my hatred for the system grew. I wanted South Africa to see that I loved even my enemies while I hated the system that turned against one another. I saw my mission as one preaching reconciliation, of healing the old wounds and building a new South Africa.”

In this phrase nelson had taken the essence of today’s readings to his heart. He saw that hatred brought about destruction and was a barrier to peace and reconciliation. What he showed on a national level is something that we must strive on a local level in our own community and our own families. So let us unpick the readings.

In the first reading the first thing that we hear is that they are told that the Lord is holy and because the Lord is holy therefore they should also be holy. The next part shows us the extent of this holiness by loving our neighbour as ourselves. What it does not show us is the way that we should do this.  We get clues to this in the Gospel. When the people of Israel heard this law from the book of Leviticus it was taken as meaning that the word neighbour meant just your fellow Israelite. Jesus broadens this and states that it is just not your neighbour that you should love but your enemy too. We are therefore to love as God loves and that is with compassion for absolutely everyone. So we are holy because we are trying our best to imitate God. And we can learn from this holiness from the person if Jesus and his example.

So let us look at what Jesus has to say: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” I have to say this is a very difficult statement. Jesus is asking us to walk the extra mile. To love our enemies goes against our natural instinct. When Jesus talks about enemy he is not talking about an enemy in war he means anyone who is close to us who makes life difficult. The enemy can arouse and awaken in us our capacity to hate and sometimes harm. This harm may not necessarily be by physical means. So often it is by the way we act in front of people. By our words: gossip by our actions in walking across the other side of the street. Loving our enemy is therefore a radical in today’s society it goes against what the world wants. We only have to look at Jeremy Kyle in the morning to see how people are fed by hatred of another person who has done them wrong. No we should be better than this.

The other curious phrase is “Offer no resistance.” Often we can misinterpret this small phrase to say that we should be passive in the face of physical danger. No what it means is that violence breads violence. We should not allow to have hatred in our hearts for anyone.

The last phrase of the Gospel today is something that through all of this we should try and become “you must therefore be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

We know that largely this is unatonable.  But, what we should do is try our very best to strive to be like Jesus and therefore try and be perfect. We know we are not perfect so we must always ask the Lord for help. And when we have done things we are not proud of turn to the Lord for help especially in the sacrament of reconciliation. Coming to the Lord and asking him is very important and something we should strive to do. The Lord knows that loving your enemy is very difficult that not seeking revenge is a hard task but we should always ask the Lord for help in prayer to help us love our enemy and also love ourselves.