The Holiness of making a difference (HOMILY FOR 7TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

Homily for 7th Sunday in ordinary time year A

Lev.19:1-2.17-18; Ps.103; 1Cor.3:16-23; Matt.5:38-48

“ _Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect_ ” (Matt.5:48)

The Holiness of making a difference

By nature, the human person abhors stagnation. We are either struggling to be better than our yesterday or struggling to be better than others. For some, they are struggling with both. This has made the world quite a competitive place. The liturgy of today, while taking a clue from this reality, wants us to prudently apply it in our spiritual life. The liturgy of today calls us to abhor stagnation is our spirituality. We should seek to grow and get better. In fact, we may even seek to get better than others by way of outdoing one another in showing love.

The point is, if we are competing in love, then it is a welcome competition. The first reading tells us to grow towards holiness like God; the second reading teaches us to struggle to be better than our very selves by respecting our bodies as the temple of the Lord. The gospel reading shows us how we can outdo one another in love by loving our enemies. When we bring their three admonition into focus, we arrive a spiritual growth process that is orderly and purposeful.

The first reading talks about being holy like God. To be holy means to keep away from sin. Last Sunday, the first reading mentioned that God has not given any one permission to sin. But today, our attention is particularly drawn to a type of sin that has become rampart through acts of negligence. The first reading categorically states that we should not hate one another in our hearts, but we should talk things over with one another. We cannot deny that the rate at which we harbor reservations against one another can be alarming. Many persons seem to be very skillful in the art of apparently laughing, eating and jollying with another whom they are not really happy with. The reason(s) for such attitude varies just as personal justification also differ.

In most cases, we end up saying behind people what we have not and will not say before them. It may be something negative they have done to us, it may even be a weakness of theirs that affects every level of their relationship. The fact is, it is becoming increasingly difficult and rare to have people tell you the truth about yourself. Maybe we have portrayed ourselves in a manner that does not welcome correction. The result is, we talk about people but never to the people themselves. From the first reading of today, we understand that this is a sin; gossiping is a sin; overlooking someone’s misdeed is a sin; relating with people just to gain from them without helping them grow is a sin. If we want to be holy like the Lord, we must courageously and charitably speak the truth face-to-face to each other. It is better to quarrel on account of a spoken truth than to tangle with grudges.

The second reading is St. Paul’s message on how we can improve our very selves. This time, it is about telling yourself the truth. Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Whatever we do to the body has a moral implication. I cannot say: is it my body, because, I did not create it. I dare not abuse it because having been made in God’s image and likeness, the body is not intrinsically mine. I am a caretaker that will give account of my care to the body. In as much as we must acknowledge the many and tense temptations to abuse the body under the guise of enjoyment, we must never give in to licentiousness.

We must be careful with getting involved with what is invoke as regards treating the body. We must mind the clothes we put on, the body language we speak, the alterations we make on the body. We must equally be mindful of bad/sinful habits. We must desist from a mindset/spirituality that either neglects medical attention or medical advice for our bodies. We must also keep away from whatever in inimical to our emotional and psychological wellbeing. An upright soul cannot exist in a sinful body.

In the gospel reading of today, Jesus shows us how we can legitimately struggle to be better than others, especially those whom we may not be in cool terms with. He says that if we do good only to those who do good to us, we are not doing anything special to make us better than others. In sum, if we want to be better, we must be ready to pay evil with good. This is something that very many will not be willing or find easy to do. The Lord wants us to rather compete in outdoing one another in showing love.

Beloved, only God qualifies as our model in this regard. He makes the rain fall on both the good and the bad. Only from Him can we get a sustainable motivation to be consistent in doing good. We cannot even rely on our strength; we are bound to run out of patience at any point in time. Thus, Jesus ask that we perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. See, for every good you want to do, let us motivation be “because of God”. The recipient of your good deeds may forget your goodness tomorrow, or worse still, even try to manipulate or run you down. Others observers may impute negative motives into your good acts. At the end, you may have no reason, humanly speaking, to remain good. But when out strength comes from the Lord, He will console us and reward us; that is why the psalmist says that the Lord is compassionate and gracious. 

Happy Sunday to you all