Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”

Both the content and the manner in which it is given bother us or even offend. Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, among many other equally disturbing things: “You must be made perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). The manner: a command! The content: to be perfect!

We have a hard time picturing ourselves as perfect; we're so aware of our irritability, self-seeking, wrong desires, rash judgments. In the context of earlier words about loving not just friends but enemies, what Jesus is saying makes a bit more sense. He has asked that we be like the rain and sun which do not distinguish among human beings. Our love, too, should be all-embracing, extending way beyond the people we naturally like or who are close to us.

This is a bit more specific than being perfect like God is perfect, though it certainly isn't any easier! Our love and good will are so easily drawn by certain kinds of people, by such externals as their appearance, their smiles, their personalities and, let's admit it, their class and customs, their manners.

Jesus asks us to do so much more than that: to love the unlovely, the unattractive, the downright painful, the irritating, the uncongenial, the ones who don't seem to care a bit about us. We would be doing well if we simply tried today and then the day after and so on to show some genuine kindness to someone for whom we have no natural attraction. By such small steps we might work toward this steep ideal of loving everyone.

Psalm 27: “I believe I shall see the Lord’s goodness / in the land of the living.

Wait for the Lord; be strong; / be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord!”

Reply to Fr. Don at: DTalafous@csbsju.edu

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