Two days ago we heard Jesus’ call, “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48).Today’s gospel (Lk 6:36-38) specifies for us what the perfection of God is, after all.“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Lk 6:36).The perfection of God is found in his compassion, his mercy.
“The life of integrity born of fidelity to the dream has a precise meaning in the mind of Christ.It leaves no room for romanticized idealism, condescending pity, or sentimental piety.When a disciple’s every response, work, and decision is motivated by compassion, he has ‘put on Christ’ and walks in the way of integrity.Biblically, compassion means action.Copious Christian tears shed for the dehydrated babies in Juarez is heartfelt emotion; when combined with giving them a cup of water, it is compassion…
“Every time the gospels mention that Jesus was moved with the deepest emotions or felt sorry for people, it led to his doing something—physical or inner healing, deliverance or exorcism, feeding the hungry crowds or intercessory prayer.The good Samaritan was commended precisely because he acted.The priest and Levite, paragons of Jewish virtue, flunked the test because they did not do anything” (Brennan Manning, A Glimpse of Jesus:The Stranger to Self-Hatred, 125-126).
This description of the perfection of the Father as grounded in compassion highlights just why the Christian Tradition has always stressed the centrality of what has been called the “Corporal Works of Mercy.”To feed the hungry, cloth the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned, to shelter the homeless, to bury the dead—is to act as God acts, to be ‘perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.’
The corporal works of mercy paint a broad picture for us of the Lenten practice of almsgiving.
The great fourth century bishop of Constantinople, St. John Chrysostom, is exacting on this.“Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and deprive them of life.The goods we possess are not ours, but theirs” (quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 2446).I am struck by his words “to not enable the poor to share in our goods.”It is not just about a willingness to share, but, again, in the nature of biblical compassion, it is about finding ways to make it happen!
Here, again, we can sense the greatness of the demand of discipleship to which Jesus calls us.In this we simply must see the intrinsic link between the practice of almsgiving and that of prayer.Only in prayer will we receive the Spirit of Jesus, that Spirit that opens our eyes to the possibility of generosity, enkindles the desire to fashion lives of generosity, and the spiritual strength to act generously (to be in fact compassionate as our Father is compassionate) .