God Slot: So you want to be perfect – get real!

By Father Declan Boland

One of the most commonly misunderstood lines in scripture is that of Matthew 5:48 where we hear Jesus say, “Therefore you must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

We must understand this as an invitation, a process on the spiritual path knowing that this side of the grave we will never reach it. Why? Because we are flawed human beings, who will remain permanently imperfect and will pass into eternity imperfect. Even though our spirits are willing our flesh remains incurably weak.

This is not a recipe for doing nothing to better ourselves but rather an invitation to depend solely on the grace and mercy of God in all things. No guru, prayer programme, retreat, tapes, scripture reading, books, our own innate strength, or anything else will deliver us from the fact that we are flesh and our journey in spirituality will be dogged by many difficulties. The DIY model – if I try hard enough I will get there – is a myth and will never deliver. Thank God for this, for if we could save ourselves by our own efforts we would not need a saviour!

Despite the fact that we should know better most of us are troubled by the delusion of human perfectibility. We may not know what exactly it means to be perfect, but we feel secretly annoyed because whatever perfection is, we are far from it. We have not given our humanity its rightful place in our spiritual lives. The only process of self-improvement that works is one that does not reject what we are to begin with. If we do not accept our own concrete humanity we will be less capable of appreciating the humanity of Christ.

So get used to being imperfect! It is often pride and an exaggerated sense of our own strength that keeps us from being at home in weakness. Our only hope is to rely on the mercy of God. It is only through the door of mercy that we find access to the heart of God. In a sense this necessary transition from self-reliance to ultimate dependence on God’s mercy is the meaning and purpose of the spiritual journey.

Victory over our vices is an illusory ideal. The most that can be hope for are occasional brief truces or breathing spaces. If our sins are the only things that make us rely on God then it seems unwise to get rid of them too quickly. It is hard for us to admit that our flawed humanity is the nearest thing to God on earth and that what gives humanity its special character is precisely its possibility and desire to become even more like God.

To believe that we are without sin (or at least without really shameful sins) is to falsify our relationship with God. Somehow in a manner we cannot fully understand, it is the awareness of our concrete need for forgiveness that provides us with access to the mercy of God. This is a long and humbling journey – to stand in our own weakness and therefore in temptation. Since Jesus suffered and endured our weakness and died on account of it in order to rise from it, the power of God lies deeply in every human weakness like a seed that will germinate in faith and surrender. The fact is that we have to suffer shipwreck on the shore of good intentions in order to tune into the wavelength of grace.

We naturally imagine that holiness is somewhere to be found beyond sin, and we count on God to demonstrate his love by keeping us from weakness and sin thus to make our holiness possible. But that is not how God operates. Holiness does not lie on the other side of temptation; it is to be found in the midst of temptation. It does not sit waiting for us on a level above our weakness, or else we would elude the power of God that operates only in our weakness.

Rather we must learn to ‘abide’ in weakness, and to do so full of faith, open to the weakness and in utter surrender to God’s mercy. It is only in our weakness that we are vulnerable to his love and power.

Accordingly, to continue in the situation of temptation and weakness is the only way for us to connect with grace, the only way we can become miracles of God’s mercy.

The above may sound strange to you but it is pure Gospel. Read it over several times, even cut it out and refer to it often in the times ahead. I only wish I had been able to read something like this 50 years ago!

So now relax, put on the coffee and smile!