The theme of the readings today is charity, love for neighbor.
We include love for God, too, the virtue of charity, to love neighbor and to love God.
And this is perfection.
This is holiness.
It says, Book of Leviticus, be holy for I, the Lord, your God, am holy.
And then right after that, it says, you shall not bear hatred for your brother or sister in your heart.
And in the gospel, our Lord gives these teachings on charity.
And then he says, so be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect.
And he's not really, you know, specifically using the word perfect.
You know, be perfect in this way or that way.
Just be charitable.
You know, do these, you know, love your neighbor.
And then at the end, so be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.
You know, sort of expecting us to understand that charity is perfection.
The perfection of charity is perfection.
So if we're striving to be perfect, as our Lord is calling us to be, we have to focus on charity.
Charity for our neighbor.
And charity for our God.
Our duties to our neighbor and our duties to God.
This is our major focus in life.
Our Christian duty.
Our Christian focus.
And, you know, we're striving to become holy, to be saints, to be perfect.
And charity is the pinnacle, the guidepost, so to speak.
This is the major focus in our entire life.
It's to practice charity, to love our neighbor and to love God.
And love is, you know, today love is not really fully understood.
And love is a real balance, a real medium to reach.
You know, we can think of love in the worldly sense.
We can think of love even in a, you know, a kind sense,
which may not always be right.
You know, we can be too much focused on compassion
and then lose the sight of truth and correction and standing against evil.
Or we can focus too much on compassion and becoming a pushover,
losing sight of the truth.
Or being misguided in our relations with others,
not confronting them if they do something wrong,
not correcting them because we don't want to hurt them.
We don't want to hurt their feelings.
And that's not a true love.
Love corrects.
Love disciplines, as Scripture says.
God loves us as children.
He will discipline every child he has.
And we, too, we're all in roles of helping our neighbor,
which involves correction and involves,
but it also involves those, you know, sweet and gentle things, too,
like compassion and forgiveness and kindness and smiles and, you know,
tenderness and all that.
That's part of love, too, but it's only one side.
The other side is standing strong for the truth,
standing against evil, fighting against wrongs in society.
And...
What is the standard for charity?
You know, what is this perfect medium?
It is Jesus Christ.
It is what he did, what he said, how he lived,
what eventually he did.
You know, he died for us.
We can look at modern examples, too.
Look at St. Pio.
You know, all of his sufferings,
he offered up for the salvation of souls,
all his prayers, praying the rosary around the clock,
all his life for the salvation of souls,
for the conversion of sinners,
and yet he was still the priest that was in the confessionals,
you know, very, very firm against sin and against evil
and against those who were insistent on living in sin.
And he would, you know, say, you're going to hell.
He would say, you're...
Get out of this confessional because you're not coming here for,
you know, you're not truly sorry for your sins.
You know, he wouldn't even do that to bishops and cardinals and priests,
and he made a lot of enemies, as we know.
But that's part of charity.
That's part of charity, to stand against evil,
to defend what is right and good,
and to seek the good of our neighbor.
If I am firm and if I am strong and harsh to someone,
it's for the love of that soul,
because I want him to change his life,
as a father would do to their child,
to be stern sometimes,
so that the child will grow up to be good,
and happy, and holy, and save his soul.
And that's good for that person,
as well as it is for God and society,
that somebody be good and holy,
and good for everyone.
So we look at Jesus, and that's the way he was, we know.
He said, woe to you, Pharisees.
And he went into the temple,
and he made the whip and scattered the tables
and sold it to everyone,
not to make his father's house a den of thieves,
for their correction, for their good,
for, in the example of the people,
for the love of the people who need to see
the temple held out as a house of prayer.
And that is what was good for the people
and good for those who were doing the evil.
They needed to be stunned and needed to be shocked
out of the evil that they were doing.
And that's all part of charity.
It's all part of charity.
And our Lord gives us some other sort
of more detailed lessons in here, saying,
you have heard that it was said,
an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,
but I say to you, offer no resistance to evil.
He uses hyperbole here.
Offer no resistance to evil.
When someone strikes you on the right cheek,
turn the other as one as well.
Not to be taken literally, but what he's saying
is not to take resistance to evil,
but to turn the other as one as well.
That's revenge, not to retaliate
if somebody injures you and hurts you.
And that's another way of saying don't retaliate.
Turn the other cheek as well to him.
If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic,
hand over your cloak as well.
Do more.
Charity does more.
It is generous.
It gives.
And charity recognizes the weaknesses of other people too.
Other people are attached to material things,
and they'll fight you for it.
If they think you're taking anything that is theirs,
or if they covet your property,
they may try to steal it or take it
or sue you for it or whatever.
We can't be attached to things.
Attachment to things makes us selfish.
It makes us fight.
It makes us uncharitable to our neighbor.
So get rid of your attachments.
Cut your losses.
Give it away rather than fight and have wars
and fight over things which have so little value.
Should anyone press you into service for one mile,
go for two miles.
Do more.
When you see very charitable people,
they'll do not the minimum.
They'll do as much as they can.
They'll do more than you can think that they could physically do.
This is the love of God,
the love of Jesus Christ who came.
He could have redeemed us by a drop of his blood,
says St. Thomas,
but he chose to shed every single drop of his blood.
He wanted to do more.
He wanted to be overflowing in charity and love for all of us
because that's the way he is.
He is love itself, infinite love.
And we share in that too.
We have the ability to love our neighbor,
and we must express that love,
not in the minimum, the duty,
but in true, generous love,
which spills out, is overflowing,
like St. Mary Magdalene when she broke the costly ointment
and poured it over our Lord's head,
which could have fed a hundred poor people,
perhaps, whatever it was.
She was generous, and she saw the value of Jesus.
She loved him with all her heart.
It was an overflowing love for God, deep.
And so she showed it in that overflowing way,
and our love must do that too.
It must be giving,
giving to the point of great sacrifice,
and love is so strong that it can do that.
It can give and give to a point where you,
you know, you would think that someone didn't have
that physical strength to do it,
and yet love is that powerful.
Love is strong, strong as death.
Love is very generous,
and we must be that way too.
Love is self-effacing, self-forgetful.
We must forget ourselves.
Anyone who is self-focused,
or whenever we are self-focused,
we're not charitable, we can't be,
because we're thinking of ourselves.
We're not thinking of our neighbor,
so we have to be in the habit of self-forgetfulness
and self-focus,
other person-focused,
truly charitable people
are other person-focused,
as we saw in our Lord
when he was multiplying the loaves,
or, you know, doing,
healing and preaching,
and then he told his disciples
to go across the water
and rest a while,
and he went with them,
and they got to the other side of the lake,
and he saw a crowd already waiting for him.
They ran ahead,
and he felt pity for them.
He was tired,
and didn't even eat with his apostles,
and yet he felt pity for them.
We must be like that.
We must be focused on our neighbor
like our Lord was,
being self-forgetful,
generous,
and sacrificing.
Self-sacrifice charity
involves that,
as Mother Teresa would say.
Give, give until it hurts.
Give until it hurts.
Give even your life.
Give your life.
If you have that as your end goal,
I'm ready to sacrifice my life
for my family,
for my neighbor,
for my God,
for anyone.
I'm ready to sacrifice my life.
Then I will do anything.
I will sacrifice anything.
I will give anything.
I will be as charitable
as I can possibly be,
and God will give me the strength.
So this is our Christian vocation.
Our Lady,
perfect models of charity,
self-effacement,
and self-sacrifice.
So let's turn to them
and pray to them
to give us that,
that kind of true,
real,
authentic charity.
.
.
.
.