TO BE IMITATORS OF GOD.

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February 23 2020: Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time - A




 

READINGS: Lv 19:1-2, 17-18; Ps 103:1-2, 3-4, 8, 10, 12-13; 1 Cor 3:16-23; Mt 5:38-48
A Kikuyu proverb says, “A son as cunning as his father knows the arrows like father.” And another well-known traditional proverb adds, “Like grape, like bud. Like father, like son.”
A son has the moral, as well as biological obligation to incarnate some, if not all of his father’s provenances. When a son behaves so much differently from his father, that raises questions on the genuineness of his filiation and their relationship. What is said on moral and biological aspects, could also apply to the spiritual attainments and attitudes.  
Today’s liturgy is a call on each one of us to incarnate God, because, we all are his children. All could be summed up in two excerpts. The first, from the first reading where we read, “Be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy.” And the second from the Gospel, with Jesus exhorting, “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father…”
God, we know, is fount of all kindness, holiness and love. To be Godlike, will mean to imitate and incarnate his virtues of kindness and love, till, the love for those who hate you. May we say it straight forward, we are in front of one of the most difficult biblical requirements. It is one of the hardest things the Lord could ask, that is to love beyond human capacities and nature. To love one’s enemies.
Humanly, it is already hard to truly love those who are kind to us. How much more, when it comes to those who hate us! It will actually be a big hypocrisy for one to pretend to love everyone the same way. Aware of that hypocrisy, the Lord challenges us to love our enemies. As to say, first do what is hard to do, and then you will learn from it to do what is easier. If it was easier to love, it won’t be given as a commandment. Moreover, Jesus does not call us for a life of mediocrity. Therefore, he always asks from his followers what seems to be hard, but not the impossible.
Is it easy to forgive to one who offends you? Is it easy to love when you know that the subject of that love won’t reciprocate what you give him, and not only so, he will instead hurt you in response? Obviously, we all know the answer: No, it is not easy! It has never been, and it will never be easy to love or to forgive to those who do not love you or harm you consciously. The beautiful here, is that, the Lord asking us to love and to forgive, will never ask the impossible from us. He only asks what we think is beyond our capacities until we have tried.
Today’s call is for us to be like God: kindness, forgiveness, love, self-sacrifice, etc. We are actually called to kill from ourselves all that are human limitations and embrace the divine attitudes. Mankind is made of hatred, while God is made of love. Mankind is prompted to vengeance and to retaliation. God instead, is filled with forgiveness and compassion. Mankind is bursting with sinfulness. God in the other hand is fount of all holiness. Thereof, being his children, we are called to undress ourselves from all human wickedness and limitations and to take on the habits of God; be invested in divine traits.
Paul, in the second reading, with insistence, will remind us that we belong to Christ. Consequently, we must incarnate Christ in our being. We have, therefore, to go beyond our ‘humanlikeness’ made of hatred, selfishness, enmities, jealousy… and be clothed with love of the enemies, forgiveness to those who harm us, prayer for those who persecute us. That is what it costs to be truly Christians. Until we are able to accomplish these things, or show them in our daily lives, we are just church goers and good communion eaters, but not yet true Christ followers.

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