BE HOLY!

Be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy. 

Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? 

Love your enemies.

In successive readings today, we hear from God, Paul, and Jesus about our calling – BE HOLY! – and how to do so: love our enemies.

We have heard these words nearly all our life. They are inspiring. They are demanding.

What can we do to live them more faithfully? Perhaps it begins with the awareness that to be a person of faith means we believe that we have a dual nature: we are human and divine. The human part is easy. The divine not so easy. 

The beast that undermines our belief is FEAR - fear of dying, fear of not having enough, fear of reaching out, fear of giving too much, and on and on.

We overcome our fear to the degree that we come into a conscious realization of our divine nature as children of God...and open ourselves to the divine indwelling. What a difference that makes! It is this awareness that makes a holy life morally discrete from the life of others. 

That's a mouthful. Allow me to repeat it. We overcome our fear to the degree that...

In other words, if we could remember (especially when tempted) that God is here - with us, we could never sin.

For a true believer, there is a feeling of being in a wider life than that of this world’s selfish little interests...and a deep conviction, not merely intellectual or out of religious tradition, of the existence of God. And that God is here... with us.

There's a little song that says it well:

          Tell my people I love them
          Tell my people I care
          If they feel far away from me
          Tell my people I'm there

God is here. With us. Of course we believe it. That's why we're here. But often, while our words say, yes, our actions say no. Our goal is to not only profess our faith, but to live it. 

We used to say in business, You're more likely to hit the target you aim at. It may help us to see how saints hit the target of holiness. Imagine a target with five rings, each circle with one of the following virtues:

v Detachment from worldly values

v Dedicated to loving, harmonious relations

v A spirit of purity and kindness

v No falsehoods, but a life of sincerity

v No fears or anxieties. Come heaven, come hell, it makes no difference.

And at the center, the bull’s eye, love your enemies.

The holy ones loved friends and enemies alike. They treated loathsome persons as sisters and brothers, with a desire and commitment to sacrifice themselves for the good of others. Mind you, not simply those who were friends or who happened not to be friends, but to ENEMIES, positive and active enemies.

These are not merely laudable, but seemingly impossible, goals. These are the qualities that we want to define us as well. They are not easy. They challenge us. They inspire us. And, yes, like everything we love dearly, they demand total, uncompromising dedication and commitment. 

There's a story, with a bit of hyperbole, of one saint's total commitment: The saint seeing a hungry beggar, turned himself into a rabbit and jumped into the fire to cook himself for a meal for the beggar – having previously shaken himself three times, so that none of the insects in his fur should perhaps perish with him. Well, maybe that's a bit much.

Our holy longing may not be so extreme. But we do want to be holy…for our sake…and God’s. And Jesus tells us how, Love your enemies.

Pope Francis has said, Appearances notwithstanding, every person is immensely holy and deserves our love. 

Equally important, if not more so, we are called to love others not because they merit our love, but because of who we are: beloved children of God, temples of the Holy Spirit, the Body of Christ. 

It is not easy to BE HOLY. It helps us immensely to remember and believe that the source of our holiness is that God is with us. Be still and know...

And let us also remember the sacred words we heard today:

Be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy.

Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?

Love your enemies.