"So, be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect." Matthew 5:48
BECOMING PERFECT -- authenticity in prayer
For a long time, today's Gospel was a stumbling block for me. Then, one day, I suddenly remembered advice I was given many years ago, that a good way to judge the authenticity of prayer was to ask: "Am I paying attention to God or to myself?"
If I pay attention to myself I see someone trying hard to be perfect but becoming trapped in perfectionism. I see someone striving to be good but becoming discouraged and cynical. I see someone whose painful efforts to be charitable yield a pitiful, meager harvest, a few good deeds scattered among a thorny litany of excuses.
But if I pay attention to God I become less interested in myself and my religiosity. I begin to enjoy what Julian of Norwich called the "courteous love" of Jesus. I begin to see how his love sustains all of creation, the just and unjust alike. The longer I look at God, the more I rejoice in the goodness of the Creator, the easier it becomes to pray for my enemy, to greet with joy the brother or sister I do not love. Slowly and hesitantly my tongue is loosed and I begin to sing with the psalmist, "Praise the Lord, my soul!"
We were created to praise, and when we become what we are meant to be, then we will be perfect. It may happen today or at the hour of our death or after the longing of purgatory, but we will become perfect, because that is God's will for us.
(reflection above is by Rachelle Linner and appears on page 201 in the June 2013 issue of GIVE US THIS DAY, a daily missalette from Liturgical Press)
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