Daily Reflections

Reflection

The Sermon on the Mount is often included in anthologies of world literature because of its ambitious sentiments and the fact that it details a kind of grammar for human achievement. Its moral and ethical teachings challenge us to strive toward human perfection, not unlike what some of the great epic poems in European literature do.

However, the brief excerpt we’re given in today’s Gospel reading which comes immediately after the Beatitudes doesn’t just call us forth toward a higher standard; it instead affirms who we already are: ‘You are salt of the earth’ and ‘You are light of the world’.

Jesus reminds us that we do not need to strife for perfection to follow him. We come as we are, broken, vulnerable and with all our fears and feelings of inadequacy.

God waits for us. Time (in God) was made for waiting.

Through the story of Elijah and the widow in the first reading, we are again confronted with the unexpected nature of God’s actions; God subverts expectations, in this case, using an impoverished widow to provide for Elijah! The lesson is clear: true generosity is not measured by the abundance of what we give, but by the trust with which we give it.

If we can only trust that the light we shine (good works) actually gives praise to God, then who we are as we are will radiate the presence of God to others.

This is a monumental belief if only we can accept it through faith.

Jesus constantly affirms that our brokenness, our essential human nature, is the doorway through which we must walk. But we need the strength of the Spirit, for it is a fine balancing act. The great Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn reminds us that ‘…the line separating good and evil passes…right through every human heart’ (The Gulag Archipelago).

The great American poet/essayist Walt Whitman had, a century before Solzhenitsyn, celebrated the fluid nature of being human and made a beautiful triumphant declaration of the human capacity to hold complex, contradictory and multifaceted identities: ‘Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes) (‘Song of Myself’ in Leaves of Grass).

And St Paul, even much earlier, had alerted us to this inner conflict in his Letter to the Romans (7:15), articulating the frustrating human struggle between wanting to do what is right and habitually doing the opposite.

God is infinitely patient with us. God will call us forth when God knows we are ready.

In this regard, like every great work of literature, The Sermon on the Mount reads us better than we can ever read it. In this case, it is because behind The Sermon lies the Word – Jesus himself – who can read us better than we can read ourselves.

Kelvin Rodrigues is a parishioner at St. Paul of the Cross, Glen Osmond, SA.