Achieving Perfection

Aaargh! Can we do that? Even the saints have their faults (the oft-mentioned St. Jerome's crabbiness comes to mind instantly). However, this excerpt can give us a better focus on just what achieving perfection means.

[Jesus said,] "You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Mt 5:48)

To praise, reverence, and serve God is to achieve our perfection as human beings. Jesus' command is difficult, though: no one is perfect. And so immediately we must recognize that Jesus is not calling us to some antiseptic kind of life, in which we are afraid to do anything by our very humanness, we are capable of being loved by God and thus capable of loving as God loves. The quote above about being perfect comes after Jesus' command to love our enemies, suggesting that our perfection lies precisely in our ability to mirror the kind of love that God has for all of us.

There is nothing we must do in order to be loved by God. There is nothing we must achieve, nothing we must change, nothing we must seek before God loves us; it is already an accomplished fact because God created us in order to love us. Our perfection is simply our desire to respond to this already accomplished fact, to make our lives great because we are capable of it.

The Ignatian Workout: Daily Spiritual Exercises for a Healthy Faith

Tags: Catholicism, Christianity