Jesus said, You Must Be Perfect. What Does He Mean?

Our question should not be -is it possible?. Rather, HOW is it possible?

Jesus has saved us from sin and death - and saved us for a new way of living. We can tend to focus on what we are saved from and forget what we are saved for. We do not yet comprehend who we are to become in Him. We are called to - perfection. What does it mean?

CHESAPEAKE, VA (Catholic Online) - At the end of the chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, which contains the Sermon on the Mount and the admonitions to holy living, these words from Jesus move me to repentance and reflection, "You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matt. 5:48)

It is a call to complete transformation, beginning right now - and right where we are. It is a call to become saints in the stuff of the real world. It is right there where our transformation takes place. It becomes the very real material which is used to recreate us more fully into the Image revealed perfectly in the Sacred Humanity of Jesus.

In its dogmatic constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, the Second Vatican Council in the Catholic Church affirmed the teaching of Jesus Christ, the clear teaching and witness of the early Church and the consistent teaching of Church Councils throughout the ages - holiness of life is not an option, for any member of the Church.

We are all called to Christian perfection, "all the faithful, whatever their condition or state, are called by the Lord, each in his own way, to that perfect holiness whereby the Father Himself is perfect" (Lumen Gentium, Light to the Nations, 11).

The Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us "All Christians in any state or walk of life are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of charity. All are called to holiness: "Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (CCC #2013) Christians are saved from sin, death and separation from God, through Jesus Christ. And, we are called for a new way of living.

We are Called to holy living.

We are to live differently - beginning right now- because we live our lives now in Jesus Christ. We are to love differently, because we are capacitated by grace to love in Jesus Christ, and with His Love. And all of this is made possible, as we cooperate with grace. The character of Jesus Christ is being formed in us. As I age the words, all the words of Jesus in this chapter of the Gospel of Matthew become ever more sobering. For example,

"Jesus said to his disciples: "You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same? So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5: 43-48)

How can we be perfect?

This admonition from Jesus is repeated in other Gospel accounts and developed in the New Testament Epistles. Our question should not be "is it possible?". Rather, it should be "HOW is it possible?"  How do we respond? Perhaps our problem with both understanding the call and responding to it is that we confuse the meaning of the word, "perfect". Filtering this word through our linguistic limitations, we may come up with a false translation and, as a result, not even attempt to respond to the admonition.

However, once again, Jesus has saved us from sin and death - and saved us for a new way of living. We can tend to focus on what we are saved from and forget what we are saved for. We do not yet comprehend who we are to become in Him.

In Greek, the word often translated perfect is telios. It refers to something being completed, brought to its full purpose, potential and intended end and vocation. For example, in the world of objects, a hammer is telios or perfect when it is hammering a nail.

In the world of subjects, things are telios or perfect when they are fulfilling their nature. In our Western minds, we can limit this word "perfect" and thereby fail to grasp its promise and potential. We think of it mathematically rather than relationally. We fail to understand that this call is a work in process. We are works in process.

The God who is Love fashioned us in His Image. We are made to love as He loves. In Jesus Christ, we are now also being capacitated - to use a term frequently used by the early father and Bishop Ireneaus of Lyons - made capable - by the grace of His Redemption - of actually loving with God's love. "God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him" (1 Jn 4:16).

Notice that the concept of being "perfected' is also applied to Jesus by the author of the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews in chapter 5 verses 8-9:

"Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and being made perfect he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him."

Jesus was made perfect through what He suffered? Yet, Jesus was without sin. How then was He perfected? He came into the world to redeem, to transform us by a life, and a death, and a Resurrection of perfect love. He fulfilled His purpose when He presided over the new creation from the Altar of that Cross and robbed death of its victory by bursting forth from a tomb which could not contain Love.

We Live in Him

We live in Him now - as we live our lives in the heart of the Church for the sake of the world. The Church is not so much a Some-Thing as a Some-One. We are being made perfect, holy, as we cooperate with His continual invitations to conversion by living our lives in the Communion of His Body on earth.

We are being capacitated to love as He loved. By doing so we prove ourselves to be Sons and daughters of His Father, who by the power of the Holy Spirit, has become Our Father. When we follow Jesus, a dynamic process happens within us, an ever deepening conversion and transformation, a process which is called Christian perfection.

We "participate in the Divine Nature" the Apostle Peter tells us. (2 Peter 1:4). We are perfected in charity, by grace, and through faith. Every Christian, no matter what our state in life or particular vocation, is called to this holiness. God's Divine Life, and its dynamic work within us, is meant change us into the new men and women that Jesus Christ has capacitated us to become. We walk this way of holiness by living in His Body, the Church, of which we are members.

The Church in which we now live is the seed of the kingdom, making the kingdom present in a world waiting to be born. Only when the King returns will the fullness of the Kingdom be fully established. Then, the entire creation be reconstituted by love, made perfect, and handed back to the Father as a gift of love.

However, the Church is a sign, a sacrament of that Kingdom. We are seeds of that kingdom, scattered into the world as into a furrow. We are called to become saints and refashioned through cooperation with grace.

Called to become Saints, right where we are

The Saints we honor as Christians are given to us as examples to emulate as well as intercessors to assist us in responding to our vocation. They are companions on the journey of life in this world and the world to come; men and women like us who responded to God's invitation to become like Jesus.

They pray for us because we are joined with them in the eternal communion of love. They put legs on the Gospel, showing us what holiness looks like. However, if we stop there, we miss the mark. Missing the mark is the translation of the Hebrew word often translated "sin" in the Old Testament. 

We are called to become saints, to be perfected in charity, to grow in holiness. Not only are we called to that, it is now made possible through Jesus Christ. What we need to remember is that Jesus is revealing who we are called will become as we continue on the road to redemption and follow the way of perfection which will only be complete (perfect) when we too are raised from the dead.

The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council point to this scriptural teaching in their often quoted 22d paragraph found in another of their profound documents On the Church in the Modern world (Guadum et Spes, Joy and Hope, #22) with these words.

"The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come, namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear."

I close with words from St Paul which help to open the meaning of our vocation in Jesus Christ and the call we each have to progress, to be perfected, in Him. They are expounded upon with great beauty and insight in the paragraph from Gaudium et Spes which I quoted above. I urge my readers to go to the source and read it. Here are the words of the Apostle addresses not only to the Collossians, but to you and to me:

"He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities--all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together."

"He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

"And you, who once were estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him, provided that you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which has been preached to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister. (Colossians 1:15-23)

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Deacon Keith A. Fournier is an ordained minister, a Catholic Deacon, who works with other Christian leaders across confessional lines. He is the Founder and Chairman of Common Good Foundation and Common Good Alliance. He and his wife Laurine have five grown children and seven grandchildren. He is a human rights lawyer and public policy advocate who served as the first and founding Executive Director of the American Center for Law and Justice in the nineteen nineties and has long been active at the intersection of faith and culture. He is a senior contributing writer to The Stream.

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