Saturday of the First Week of Lent_Frasatti 2025

How can we possibly be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect? Is this not an impossible task? The quickest glance at our lives proves how far away we are from living up to this command. How can we, who are imperfect, live up to the perfection of God? Even more, how can we live up to his perfection, he who is infinitely perfect? Is God setting us up for failure?

As we say in our first reading for today, the people of Israel were called to be a people holy to the Lord. They were called to be his people by walking in his ways and keeping his statutes. Moreover, they were called to love their neighbor, as we read in the book of Leviticus. By keeping the Lord’s commandments, they were to be holy as God is holy.

Yet in our Gospel reading for today, we see Jesus up the ante. Not only are we to love our neighbors, as the Old Law commanded the Jewish people, but we are also to love our enemies as well. While it comes easily to us to love or neighbor, our friends, this is far from the case when it comes to loving our enemies. Again, is God setting us up for failure? Is he asking us to do something that we cannot possibly do?

The chief different between the life that God called the people of Israel to and the life he calls us to in Christ Jesus lies in “outward” and “inward.” The people of Israel were transformed to be holy as God is holy by their outward observance of the Law. However, the New Law Christ has given us transforms us inwardly. For we read in the Prophet Ezekiel: “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 36:25-26.

Our being made perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect is not our own work. It is God working within us, molding us like a potter molds clay, until he reforms his image within the clay, within us. The Father has sent his Spirit into our hearts at our baptism to mold us into being like him. In other words, he has given us the tools to become like him, not by our own actions, but by him working within us.

What does this mean for our lives? We must first allow the Spirit’s presence in our hearts to be strengthened. We do this in two ways. First, we receive the Sacraments as frequently as possible. By remaining close to the Sacraments, God gives us the grace to allow His Spirit to plant his roots deeper in our hearts. Second, we meditate on his Word. In doing so, we grow in knowledge and love for him, allowing the Spirit to penetrate into every fibre of our being. Lastly, we must act as God acts. Our Lord tells us in our Gospel today that the Father “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” Mt 5:45. God’s actions are not reactive like ours. He does not merely respond to the actions of others, but he always acts in accordance with who he is. So too with us. We must always act and live up to our calling as sons and daughters of God the Father.

By doing so, we become beacons of light and life in the desert. We become signs to others of the garden to which we are all journeying. Let us, then, during our wandering in the desert, “be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect” by allowing his Spirit to plant the seeds of paradise in our hearts.