Perfection Through Merciful Action March 22

Prayer

Jesus, we are so imperfect. At times it seems like your demands on us are impossible to fulfill. How can we be perfect in your eyes?

We are an imperfect people. We fight. We take more than we need. We treat others unfairly. We store up our “treasures” for retirement when the needs around the world are so overwhelming. We waste our talents watching reality television while reality goes by outside our windows. We gossip about each other – those we know as well as those we don’t know. We hold grudges. We get angry and impatient with the ones we love. We feel like we are a burden to you.

You know all this. Remind us that you never forget us and you always forgive us when we seek reconciliation with you.

Help us never to be afraid to call on God for help because you tell us to ask and we will receive. Help each of us today to search after you with our whole heart and soul because you tell us to seek and we will find. Help us to hear your voice because you tell us to knock and the door will be answered.

You respond to us before we even ask. With your active love, we can learn to walk with you and live up to your teachings so that whatever we do to the least, we do to you. Strengthen our spirit so we can live up to your demands and expectations of us and to seek perfection in your mercy and how we extend your mercy to all those we meet. Amen.

Study

http://www.usccb.org/nab/032206.shtml

So how great is this?

In today’s reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, we are reminded that we have a God whom we can call upon at ANY TIME. 24/7. 365. Later on, Moses reminds us and his people, that “When you seek the LORD, your God; and you shall indeed find him when you search after God with your whole heart and your whole soul.”

Since our God is a merciful and loving God, God will not abandon and destroy us, nor will God ever forget us.

I can’t remember where my keys are since I came home last night. I have so many passwords, I can’t remember them all. I meet so many people every month that I have trouble remembering everyone’s name. But not our God. 300 million people in our nation. 6 billion people on earth. God will not forget anyone and everyone can call on God at any time.

Moses reminded his people: “Ask now of the days of old, before your time, ever since God created man upon the earth; ask from one end of the sky to the other: Did anything so great ever happen before? Was it ever heard of?” Whether 5,000 years ago or today, did anything so great ever happen?

Moses was talking about a God who addressed his people. They heard his voice. Did anything so great ever happen? Maybe so…one night in Bethlehem 2006 years ago when God came among us. Not just a voice but God’s son, Jesus. God in our midst.

Today’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel sits right between the Sermon on the Mount (“The Beatitudes”) and the discourse from Jesus when he takes traditional laws and extends the requirements to his disciples and those who are listening to him. Jesus is taking old fashioned law and extending it and our responsibilities. If Moses was so thrilled just to hear God’s voice, now we actually have something that goes beyond that – God is among us talking to each of us about our responsibilities.

On first reading, it sounds like Jesus is saying he will literally fulfill Mosaic law – those commandments that were laid out in Sunday’s reading and are the source of so many secular struggles today. “[U]ntil heaven and earth pass away nothing of the law will pass (Matthew 5:18).

The notes to the NAB explain that the “passing away” of heaven and earth is not necessarily the end of the world understood, as in much apocalyptic literature, as the dissolution of the existing universe. The “turning of the ages” comes with the apocalyptic event of Jesus' death and resurrection, and those to whom this gospel is addressed are living in the new and final age, prophesied by Isaiah as the time of “new heavens and a new earth” (Isaiah 65:17; 66:22).
During Jesus’ “walk-with-us, talk-with-us” ministry, the new kingdom is already breaking in. His mission remains within the framework of the law, and beyond.

This week in Lent, we are being inundated with lessons about Biblical law – what we are supposed to do – because of what God has done for us.

We hear God. How great is that?

We see God in Jesus and everyone we encounter. How great is that?

We can call on God for help and he will hear us before we even ask. How great is that?

For all this greatness, look ahead a little to Jesus’ conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount, we see what he expects of us, his followers. Just like Jesus changes and extends Mosaic law, he expect us to change and extend our behavior beyond that of other people who do good just to help others. Christian do good because of our faith in God. The goal for Matthew is “perfection.” Be merciful to others as God is merciful to us.

Action

As Christians, we know this is not a philosophy that we are reading but a prescription for life. Through our prayer and study we can help support and perfect our faith. But that faith extends from the outstretched hands of Jesus on the cross for us.
St. Teresa reminds us that Christ now has no body but ours. As we receive His body in Eucharist, we have to take his mission from inside the church outside in the world. How merciful can we act in today's world?
· Evacuees lives are still upended seven months after Hurricane Katrina struck.
· Darfur attacks overwhelm the United Nations peace force.
· Despite our up-to-now milder-than-average winter, the local hypothermia shelter has a tough week ahead as unseasonably cold weather this first week of spring affects the homeless among us in affluent Fairfax County and throughout the National Capital Area.
· The poor face rising rents and uncertain employment.
· We are glued to March Madness while the Inuit Tribes thirty miles from the Arctic Circle are retreating as global warming melts the polar ice caps. They see what's happening to the planet, and are trying to give the message to the rest of the world if they can cut through the clatter of Billy Packer and Marv Albert.
· Around the world, 2 billion of the six billion people God never forgets live on less than $2 per day. Less than we spend for a cup of go juice at Starbucks. Less than we spend to rent Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at Blockbuster or Netflix. Less than people spend to buy a Coke when they go to the theatre to see “Larry the Cable Guy” or “The Shaggy Dog.”

What can you do? Are you participating in the Rice Bowl collection? Maybe you have passed by the basket at church where people put contributions in for the poor. Don’t pass it by this week without taking your wallet out and relocating something green from your wallet to that basket.
Do you know the phone number to your local Volunteer Bureau? Looking it up and seeing what organizations need help. Or check in with your social action ministry office for church projects that need help.