Be imitators of God
It is easy to read this command without feelings its impact if we are too used to hearing it. But who are we that we should think to imitate God? Further, wouldn't doing so be prideful, assuming that we could somehow make ourselves like the one who is "the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God" (see First Timothy 1:17), the one "who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see" (see First Timothy 6:16)? Yet it is Jesus himself who calls us to imitate God.
You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect (see Matthew 5:48).
Jesus was confirming and strengthening something that was a common refrain in the Old Testament.
Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy (see Leviticus 19:2).
It isn't prideful to imitate our God, because our God is not like other gods. To be like Zeus or Apollo would indicate only delusions of grandeur. But imitating our God means imitating his compassion, his forgiveness, and his mercy. It is not simply trying to be like a celebrity we respect. Our imitation of God is possible only "as beloved children". We see what this looks like the most perfectly in the life of the only begotten Son, who "loved us and handed himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma." Jesus reveals the Father, and so reveals the way to imitate him. That is why the one who has seen Jesus has seen the Father (see John 14:9), and why Jesus himself is the way, the truth and the life (see John 14:6).
“There are six days when work should be done.
Come on those days to be cured, not on the sabbath day.”
When we aren't sure how to answer a moral question, for instance, how to spend our time on a sabbath, we can imitate Jesus and his heart for others. The leaders of the synagogue thought they were doing God's will, but they did not really know his heart. They criticized Jesus for showing compassion because they were more interested in their own understanding of rules and legalism than in imitating the God of salvation and mercy. We may be similarly tempted to double down on our own understanding of rules rather than looking to Jesus to see how he himself embodies and reveals the Father's love. But we should shift the focus. How did Jesus fulfill the commands? How did he himself imitate his Father's heart? We in turn can imitate him in the specific circumstances of our lives. The rules we have in Scripture and Tradition are right, important, and valuable. But if we do not look to see how Jesus himself lived out the law in his own life and imitate his approach, the rules can become dead letters, snares that make us less like God and not more.
This daughter of Abraham,
whom Satan has bound for eighteen years now,
ought she not to have been set free on the sabbath day
from this bondage?
We are called to live as children of light. John the Baptist insisted that he was not the light (see John 1:8), but Aquinas tells us that we can be light be participation in the light of Christ. Only in this way can we begin to fulfill the call to imitate God. It is only as sons and daughters in the Son that we can live lives that are like that of the Father who himself becomes our source of life.
He is like a tree
planted near running water,
That yields its fruit in due season,
and whose leaves never fade.
Whatever he does, prospers.
No comments:
Post a Comment