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21

Living the Gospel – February 23, 2020

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At the end of today’s gospel, Matthew 5:38-48, we read… “ be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” When I read this, I feel that there is no way I can ever be as perfect as God the Father. So how am I to deal with this?? First of all, we are created in the image of God, but we are not God. We are to mirror God’s moral excellence and holiness. “Be ye holy as I am holy,” but we can’t be as perfect as God. When Jesus tells us to be perfect, we have to realize that He would not ask us to do something that is impossible for us to achieve. Through-out history, the greatest saints have confessed that they struggled with sin their whole lives, St. Paul being a good example. So the question is what are we to do? With every temptation we meet, God gives us a way to escape it. Sin is inevitable but not necessary. Theoretically, we could be perfect, but none of us are. We just have to try and be the best that we can be, realizing that we always will need God’s help to achieve this.

The Corinthians were known for their beautiful clay pots. But in the firing process, some of the pots came out of the kiln with cracks in them. People soon realized that these made wonderful light diffusers with the light of the candle inside the pot appearing through the cracks and making the soft light visible to all. In 2 Corinthians 4, St. Paul mentions that our cracked exterior imperfections like the pots are necessary to allow the light that is within us to shine God’s light in this world.

Thanks be to God

Lloyd Lapierre