“You, therefore, must be perfect,
as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Mt. 5:48)
The first is that your
perfection is not something that you are doing
for God apart from God.
It is His work. God is the
author of our salvation and also the One Who is the primary driver
of it. All of our striving to love God with
our whole lives comes from Him and is
going to be fulfilled by Him. Paul tells
the Church at Phillipi to “work out your
salvation with fear and trembling” but to
remember that “God is at work in you, both
to will and to work for His good pleasure.”
(Phil. 2:13-14)
If it is God working in us, our striving
should involve fear and trembling —but it
should also involve confidence. He is working
in me! Though I might fail in any given battle,
if I stick to Him, He will make sure that I win
the war. For He does not demand anything
without giving us the capacity to do it. Our
task is not simply to work hard for a master
but to accept the love and power of One Who
wants to make us like Him. And, as English
Dominican Simon Tugwell tells us, He cares
about our salvation much more than we do.
Second, not only is God the author and
perfecter of our perfection, but He understands how tough our war against ourselves
for perfection is. Hebrews 4 tells us that
“we have not a high priest who is unable to
sympathize with our weaknesses, but One
Who in every respect has been tempted as
we are, yet without sin.” This fact should,
the Epistle says, give us “confidence” to
“draw near to the throne of grace, that we
may receive mercy and find grace to help
in time of need.” (Heb. 4:15—16)
Though we may be disappointing to ourselves, Christ knows us much better than we
do. He can never be shocked at our weakness
nor will He turn away from us in disgust. Re member that His love reached out to us long
before we had ever done anything in obedience to Him and His love will never fail.
This brings us to a third point. Not only
ought you to be able to relax and strive at
the same time because you know that God
is working in you and understands you, but
you can do both because you understand
that noticing your failures and weaknesses
is really an opportunity God has given you
to turn to Him with that confidence for
help. As Jean-Pierre de Caussade, the seventeenth-century author of Abandonment to
Divine Providence, put it, “Rejoice every
time you discover a new imperfection.”
You can strive, relax, and even celebrate at the same time because God is
working to fill you with His divine life.
When you notice your imperfection, it’s
no surprise to God. It is instead the moment He has been waiting for—for you to
turn to Him and allow Him to complete yet
another part of the work of making you
perfect that He has both commanded and
begun in you in your Baptism.