My dear friends, we conclude the first week of Lent by reflecting on the Book of Deuteronomy and the Gospel of Matthew. These two readings c...
My dear friends, we conclude the first week of Lent by reflecting on the Book of Deuteronomy and the Gospel of Matthew. These two readings contrast beautifully in their scope while sharing a unified purpose. In Deuteronomy, Moses reminds the Israelites of their covenant: they are to be a people peculiarly His own, sacred and set apart, observing God's statutes with all their heart and soul. In Matthew, Jesus redefines what it means to be set apart. He challenges His followers not just to love their neighbors, but to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them. The connection is a call to a higher standard of living. Deuteronomy establishes the foundation of being a holy people, but Jesus expands the boundaries of that holiness to an unprecedented level. The combined gist is staggering: to be God's chosen people means we must love with the same indiscriminate, limitless love that God Himself possesses. We can summarize this profound call using three words: Call, Challenge, and Charity.
We first recognize the Call. Moses tells the people, "Today you are making this agreement with the Lord." We, too, through our baptism, have made an agreement with God. We are called to be a people sacred to the Lord. This call is a tremendous privilege. It means our lives have a divine purpose. We are not meant to blend in with the moral mediocrity of the world; we are called to stand out, radiating the light and truth of our Creator in everything we do.
But with this call comes a tremendous Challenge. Jesus delivers perhaps the most difficult teaching in all the Gospels: love your enemies. It is easy to love those who love us; even the tax collectors do that. The true challenge of the Christian life is to break the cycle of retaliation and hatred. When someone hurts us, our natural instinct is to hurt them back or to cut them off. Jesus challenges us to defy gravity, to rise above our human nature, and to pray for those who cause us pain.
Meeting this challenge is only possible through Charity—a divine love that flows from God. Jesus tells us to be perfect, just as our Heavenly Father is perfect. This perfection is not about never making a mistake; it is the perfection of charity. It is loving completely, like the sun that rises on the bad and the good, and the rain that falls on the just and the unjust. Let us ask for the grace to live up to our call, to embrace the challenge of forgiveness, and to overflow with God's perfect charity today and always. Amen.
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