Agreements always sound easier when you first make them. Terms and Conditions? You’re probably not missing anything if you skip them and just check the box at the bottom to complete registration. Making plans with a friend? You can probably say “yes” now and back out later. But in today’s readings, our “agreement with the LORD” sounds perhaps more challenging than we first anticipated. We are called to “be perfect just as [our] heavenly Father is perfect,” to “love [our] enemies,/and pray for those who persecute” us; we sing that “[b]lessed are they whose way is blameless.” Reading this passage might make us wonder what we’ve signed up for, especially during Lent, when the road to Easter is obscured in terms and conditions that we don’t always feel capable of upholding. What have we gotten ourselves into?
In rising to the challenges presented to us, we note that today’s readings don’t address us individually; instead, we are addressed in the collective, and we are reminded that our commitment to God is a two-way street. Living our agreement to follow God truly does require all of our hearts and souls, as a community, even when our hearts and souls feel like muscles that need a good deal of strengthening. But, for lack of a better phrase, no pain, no gain. And lifting what feels heavy and pushing ourselves forward to uphold our agreement—especially during these forty days—is always easier with extra hands, with extra hearts, with extra souls.
Mackenzie Faber, ’18
Gospel: Matthew 5:43-48
Daily Scripture readings can be found online at the USCCB website
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