“Perfect” is a tricky word, even a dangerous one. It seems to imply a static state, a point of arrival, and yet as a goal it is elusive. If a person wants to be the perfect athlete, for example, they are bound to be continually disappointed, because there is always another area, another metric, in which they could improve. The goal always recedes before them.
How, then, should we interpret today’s Gospel, in which Jesus tells us, Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect? If perfection in a human pursuit like athletics is never fully attainable, then how much more is God’s perfection unattainable by us, finite human beings that we are?
Thankfully, Jesus offers us a different way of thinking. Before he gives us the command to be perfect, he tells us, Love your enemies … that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good. It is by loving others, and in particular those whom we find difficult to love, that we come to be “perfect” like God. And even then, this perfection is not some static state, but really an ever-deepening process of conversion in which we are continually growing in our capacity to love.
Let us pray, then, today, for the grace to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, for the gift of continually growing in love, particularly for those it is most difficult for us to love.