Seventh Sunday of the Year, C -- February 22, 2004

            In the last few Sundays we have been looking at the three great virtues given to us in our baptism:  faith, the virtue enabling us to know God and His will for us; hope, the virtue empowering us to keep our hearts fixed upon this God we know; and love, the greatest of virtues, capacitating us for union with God whom we know and have made the goal of our lives. 

            One thing has become clear about these virtues, if we pay close attention to what they are all about, and that is their utter God-directedness.  Faith, hope and love make no sense severed from their end – God.   In other words the object of our faith, our hope and our love is God Himself and the eternal life He promises us who follow after His will.  

            Only in the context of correctly understanding these virtues can all that our Savior is commanding us to do and be seem even remotely possible.  For what Jesus is telling us to do and to be like is awesomely challenging, the high call to perfection itself.  Jesus is saying to us that we must be like God in His goodness.  Once that is clear can we then begin to rid ourselves of those false interpretations of this and other Gospel passages, which try to reduce Jesus’ words to a call to be merely nice to people, an encouragement to be what today is called tolerant; or that these admonitions are just that, admonitions to try to do, well, the best we can.  The goal of doing and being all that Jesus tells us to do and be, according to this explanation, is way too high for us, but we are to sort of generally aim at it but shouldn’t take it all too seriously.  With that kind of idea in our heads, we may hear ourselves saying things like, “Well, I am just as good as the next guy.”  But that is what Jesus is saying just will not do; it will not suffice.  The next guy is not the standard.  God is. 

            And Godliness is what Jesus is calling us to in today’s Gospel reading:  to do good even to those who hate you, to bless, to not be revengeful, to give to those who ask of you, to lend freely, be compassionate as God our Father is compassionate.  Jesus commands us not to judge others or condemn them, lest we be judged and condemned.  Freely forgive and be generous and so on.  Be like God in His goodness, Jesus is saying.  Be like Jesus who is God’s revelation of Himself to us. 

            And we have very real motivation to seek to be like all this with our neighbor, since this is exactly how God has treated us:  with generosity, without revenge, with goodness and mercy, with patience, without condemnation.  God has given everything to us, because He gave Himself to us fully in Christ. 

            But what do people often do?  They forget God’s mercy to them when they observe the failings, the sins, of others, especially if those sins happen to injure them.  They see or experience the mistakes or sins of others and react with an indignation that will show no mercy.  And when they do the same kind of things -- the same kinds of sins or shortcomings -- they comfort themselves that God will understand and that their neighbors should be patient with them.  

            Of course, this is not to say that we ignore the evil that is committed; or, God forbid, call evil good.   And when we are called upon to discern between good and evil in someone’s actions, we cannot say, we must not say, as so many do these days, “Who am I to judge?”  To refuse to judge someone and condemn him is a virtuous act; to refuse to judge or discern the morality of someone’s act is a vice, a cop out, a sign of weakness that can lead -- as it is in our own culture -- to a real proliferation of unchecked evil.

            We are called upon to love, like God loves.  Which means we seek the good of the other.  Which means we hate – yes, hate – those things, those immoral actions, those malicious attitudes, that destroy human souls, the souls of our neighbors, our own soul if we are not careful.  We are called upon, by Jesus Himself, to love like God loves.  And God does not hesitate to warn us of sinful ways.  God hates sin, not simply because it is against His law, but because sin destroys what He loves -- His people, His creation. 

            Still, though, all this is a high calling -- to love, to be compassionate, generous like God.  Yes, it is.  It is not only a high calling but also an impossible one....if we are left to ourselves.  But of course we are not.  As we have already seen, God has given us the means of living and acting as Jesus would have us do.  God has, beginning with our baptism, given us the life of grace, the foundation for the faith, the hope and the love that are to grow continually in our hearts, so that we will become like the God of grace.  God has given us the Church, in which through the Sacraments, our faith, hope and love are nourished and strengthened and sometimes restored.  

            Faith -- to know God personally and intimately and His will for us and His presence with us to help and console us; hope -- to keep our hearts set on things above, on God so that we know what our end is, what the goal of our life is; and love -- to draw ever more near to God -- and to others in God -- in the bond of friendship and communion.  Faith, hope, and love.  Without them, our religion becomes an exercise in going through motions.  Without them, our religion will wither away and die.  With them, we, over time, grow to be more like the God we know, in whom we have placed our hope, and whom we are learning to love.  With faith, hope and love we become more and more like Christ, and as we seek by God’s ever-present grace to live out these virtues, we will find ourselves transformed.  We discover that in learning to give, to do good to even our enemies, to be compassionate as God is compassionate, we really are the ones who receive, “Good measure pressed down, shaken together, running over.... For the measure you measure with will be measured back to you.”