A Map for the Journey

Good Morning Gentle Readers

I am a flawed, weak, person, a person with a bad temper a less than generous heart and all of the human failings that we all have but that being said I am working on that. As a Catholic and as a Christian we are all called to holiness, we are not perfect but we are a people walking on a road, it might be a long road but we are walking on it, and we are not alone in this journey. As well we are blessed; instead of walking blindly on this journey we were given a really good map. We are all God’s chosen people, all chosen to be with him, all chosen to be like him.

Today’s readings explain the basis of Jewish and Christian morality, the holiness of the loving, merciful and compassionate One God. God’s chosen people were, and are, expected to be holy people sharing in God’s holiness by embodying His love, mercy and forgiveness. Hence, the first reading, taken from the book of Leviticus, gives the holiness code: “Be holy, for I the Lord, your God, am holy.” It also gives us the way to share God’s holiness:  “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 

The Responsorial Psalm (Ps 103) challenges us to be like our God – kind, merciful and forgiving. In the second reading St. Paul gives us an additional reason to be holy. We are to keep our bodies holy because we are the temples of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit lives in us. In the Gospel passages taken from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus condemns even the mild form of the “Law of the Talion, ( an Eye for an Eye),” the Babylonian tribal law of restricted retaliation which Moses passed on to Israel. In its place, Jesus gives his new law of love, grace, forgiveness, reconciliation and no retaliation. For Jesus, retaliation, or even limited vengeance, has no place in the Christian life, even though graceful acceptance of an offense requires great strength, discipline of character as well as strengthening by God’s grace. The second part of today’s Gospel passage is the central part of the Sermon on the Mount. It presents the Christian ethic of personal relationships: love one’s neighbors and forgive one’s enemies. It tells us that what makes Christians different is the grace with which they treat others with loving kindness and mercy, even if they don’t deserve it. We are commanded to love our enemies as Jesus loves us, with agápe love, not because our enemies deserve our love, but because Jesus loves them so much that he died for them as He did for us.