Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Today’s readings seem simple on first glance, but in fact they are hard. In Leviticus, the book of the law, God gives Moses what is perhaps the most terrifying, impossible injunction in all the scriptures “Be holy, for I the Lord your God, am Holy”. In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus echos and intensifies that same instruction in the passage’s final, even frustrating line: “Be perfect, just as your heavenly father is perfect.” As if that were possible. Holy and perfect.  I think not.

Every time we gather for the Liturgy, we echo here and now the song of the flaming Seraphim, ablaze with love of God:  “HOLY HOLY HOLY is the Lord, God of hosts.” When Isaiah the prophet heard that hymn in a soul-shattering vision of the glory of God, he quaked in his sandals. In the Book of Revelations describing the end of days, John sees the elect gathered around the awesome throne of God, the elders and angels singing together: “HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.”

The ancient church sang, and the Eastern churches still sing the Trishagion, the thrice-holy hymn:  “Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal, Have mercy on us.” Lord, have mercy indeed.          This is hard, because I know that I am not holy; I’m more like a sock with a hole in its toe, more like a piece of Swiss cheese than I’m like the pure seraphs afire with the love of God, or the sainted elders who surround the Throne. That’s the kind of holey-ness I understand. I’m full of empty spaces, voids that constantly yearn to be filled: an empty stomach that growls to reminds me daily that I am not entirely self-sufficient; an empty mind that wants to be filled with meaning; an empty heart that longs for the illusive fullness that only love can bring it.

And that’s why I’m here, and you’re here. I want to be holy. I want to be perfect. I know I’m not. Maybe I can fill my stomach with a sandwich, but I know that alone I can’t fill the empty space in my heart. I know at some deep level that the junk food of our consumer culture won’t satisfy the deepest emptiness I feel, the need we all share to make sense of our experience, to find what will fill those gaping voids of mind and heart. And I believe, we believe, that perhaps we can learn what we need to learn, learn to love what is worthy of our love, learn to share by sharing at this table of mercy.

So what do we learn?  The message is simple, but far from easy:  If you and I want to be holy, “you shall not bear hatred for your brother or sister in your heart; take no revenge, bear no grudge. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” So simple. So difficult.

Jesus teaches his friends: “Offer no resistance to evil; turn the other cheek; go the extra mile; give to the one in need and do not turn your back. Love your enemies, pray for those who trouble you, that you may be children of your heavenly father, who makes the sun to rise and the rain to fall on the bad and the good, on the just and the unjust alike. So simple to hear, so hard to put into practice.  Be holy, as I the Lord and Holy, Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.

Perhaps our language can help us out here. The ancient Indo-European root for our modern English word “Holy“ literally means “whole” or “complete.” Wanting to be holy thus means wanting to be whole; wanting to be perfect means wanting to be complete. That’s simple. And maybe that’s even possible.

Jesus shows us the way to find wholeness, how to fill the holes in our lives: the way of generosity and mercy, the foolish way of God’s wisdom that assures us that the more we give, the more we will get, so we can give it the more. Jesus emptied himself out so that we can be filled with life and grace; we are invited to do the same for our brothers and sisters, and so come to the wholeness of life. 

We come to this word praying that it will fill the emptiness of our hearts and heads; we come to this table to be sustained by the body and blood of the lord. And even to dare to ask “make us perfect, make us holy, make us whole.”

Fr. Tom Lucas, S.J.