(Homily for the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 19, 2023. The readings are Leviticus 19, 1-2 and 17-18, Psalm 103, 1 Corinthians 3:16-23, and Matthew 5:38-48)

He was making such good sense there for a while, but then why did he have to go and say “be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect,” something he knew we could not do? Who’s going to be perfect? The rest of it, of course we can do. We can do everything else Jesus says: We can stop hating our enemies. We can love your neighbor as yourself. It may not be easy, but we certainly can do it. But being perfect? That we can’t do, can we?

Perfect. When Jesus said that word (whatever word he said, it was in Aramaic, not English) he was referring to that same scripture reading we just heard from Leviticus, in today’s first reading. God said to the people, “Be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” A similar passage in Deuteronomy says to be “blameless”. In Luke’s gospel, Jesus says “be merciful,” as God is merciful. “Perfect” is a word that doesn’t pop up in the gospels very often. When Jesus uses the word “perfect”, he’s talking us becoming like God, which is what God made us for. It takes in all those good things: be blameless, be merciful, be holy.

Instead of asking people to think themselves into a better way of living, Jesus is asking people to live themselves into a better way of thinking. By teaching his people this way, Jesus is evolving the law. Thousands of years earlier, the law permitted unlimited revenge against anyone who harmed you. But then came “an eye for an eye,” what Jesus was talking about here – the principle of limited revenge: It meant take only an eye for an eye; it is unjust for the retribution to be greater than the harm. That evolved into “Do to no one what you would not want someone to do to you,” which of course evolved into the golden rule, “Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you.” Then Jesus evolves the law a step further, saying to love your enemies.

I hope that when Jesus says to be perfect, he’s talking about the process and not about the result. What Jesus understood, and what we need to understand, is that following the law isn’t being perfect. It’s the minimum. When God gave the law, that was opening day, not graduation day. If you’re keeping the law, that’s a good start, but it’s not what God designed us for. It’s not what God looks for from us. When Jesus talked with the man who kept all the commandments, he said you’re doing well, but there’s more you need to do.

Do you know what canon law says you have to do to be Catholic? To be a practicing Catholic you have to receive the Eucharist once a year and get to confession once a year. Who does that? Who shows up saying, what are the minimum requirements, because once I’ve done the minimum, that’s when I plan to quit. Introduce me to the worst, most miserable person in the parish, and I’ll be just barely a little better than that person. Who follows Jesus saying, “Let me know how far I have to go before it’s okay to quit.”?

Maybe Jesus had a sense that some of the people of his time were all about doing the minimum, conforming to the letter of the law, but not becoming like God, creative and loving and always more than before. What he’s trying to do here is have people live their way into a better way of thinking and becoming more like God.

How can we live ourselves into a new way of thinking about the law and what it asks of us? Lent is coming this week. You know what the traditions of Lent are, right? Prayer, almsgiving, fasting. (If you have a Jesuit education, the traditions are prayer, almsgiving, fasting and basketball.) Each Lent the Spirit invites us to devote ourselves to prayer, almsgiving and fasting so that we can improve our relationships with God and our neighbor, and live ourselves into a new way of thinking.

I suggest that each of us make a plan for Lent. With our RCIA people – you’re going to be seeing a lot of them in the coming weeks – we’re going to sit down tomorrow morning and make an actual plan for this Lent: What am I going to fast from? What am I going to share with others in need? What can I do intentionally to improve my prayer life, my ongoing conversation with God? How will those three things fit together and bring depth and meaning to each other? Think about these questions this weekend and make a plan.

Failing to plan is planning to fail. When you go home tonight, start to make a plan for the three pillars of Lent, prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Commit yourself to specific things you will actually do. Don’t over-commit; don’t try to plan for something you won’t actually do – just have a prayerful conversation with God, and maybe with someone else, and discern: What is the Holy Spirit telling me about what I ought to be doing this Lent? There are good examples all around us:

Alms. This parish is already good at organizing food for hungry people, and organizing education for people who need to learn. You can do something this Lent to make us even better. “Give some of your bread to the hungry” says the Bible. Give some of your money to The Learning Center. Donate some food, some money, or how about some time, to the food pantry.

Fasting. Think of the people in need when you cook and eat. A lot of us are carrying around a few extra pounds, and we have a tendency to see Lent as an opportunity to do something about that. Nothing is wrong with that, but please don’t see Ash Wednesday as nothing more than a reboot of New Year’s Day and a new shot at keeping some resolutions we didn’t keep after January. See Ash Wednesday and these coming 40 days of Lent as a going deeper, an experience of solidarity with the people who are in need.

Prayer: Consider making a plan, “I’m going to attend morning Mass one weekday each of these six weeks.” Or, “I’m going to stop in at Eucharistic Adoration on Tuesdays after work.” We could take a cue from this gospel: I’m going to pray for the well-being of my enemies, for that jerk at the place where I work who is making me miserable, for that family member from whom I have become estranged.

When you make your plan, also give some thought, some prayerful thought, to how all these practices of Lent go together and give each other meaning. For example: If I give up beer for Lent, that means I save the cost of a few six-packs, and that’s another few bucks that I now can share with the poor, and instead of having a beer while I watch basketball games I can pray for my enemies, and there you go, I have all the practices of Lent working in unison.

So make your plan, and write it down between now and Wednesday; write it down, read it again, and sign it. Then go back to it for the next six Sundays, and check and see, “How am I doing?” It should be a richer experience of Lent this year. It might even be perfect.