Last Sunday, the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, the lectionary presented us with two scripture readings which are closely related. The first was an extract from the so-called 'Holiness Code' of the book of Leviticus, which represents a landmark in the development of Jewish thought. There is an analogical relationship between the character of the obedient Israelite and God's own nature: Israel is called not simply to 'do this' or 'avoid that', but rather to reflect in its own collective life the pattern of God's holiness. 'Be holy', says the Lord, 'for I, the Lord your God, am holy'. Then, in the reading from St Matthew's Gospel, the themes are pressed further: Jesus tells the disciples that they are to 'be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect'. Those who follow Jesus are called to embrace an ethic that goes way beyond the call to love one's neighbour; they are to love their enemies, too. In striving to do this, they reflect God's nature, albeit to a limited degree.
On the face of it, the call to perfection seems unrealistic and impossible. But Christian salvation, in all its fullness, means to share the very life of God. The Christian belief in the possibility of eternal life is a belief that our true and final destiny is perfect communion with God for all eternity. Christians believe that they participate in this gift, to a limited degree, here and now, through baptism, eucharist and in the sacramental life generally. Even more fundamentally, since not all people avail themselves of the sacraments, humans and creatures generally participate in the life of God through our very being, since we cannot bring ourselves to life and to birth. Our very life is a participation in the life of the God who alone can give life. The sacramental life of the Church builds up and nourishes this supernatural life in us. There is a very real sense in which we already reflect something of God. So, for example, when a human being shows genuine compassion, something of God's compassion is revealed. Of course, God's compassion is of a higher order altogether, but the point is that our compassion is not wholly unrelated to that of God. There is an analogical relationship between God's compassion and our own.
The two biblical passages are set firmly in the moral arena, though this arena should not be thought of as an enclosed realm, somehow separated from the generality of life. One of the reasons we find the call to perfection conceptually difficult is that, in the West since the Enlightenment, morality has come to be seen as being to do with right and wrong action. So our focus tends to be on what people do, or don't do, in a given situation. From this, we see a convenient separation made all the time between the public and the private, as if the living of a kind of schizophrenic life is somehow normal. This is evidenced by the argument prevalent today about how it doesn't matter what a public person is like in their so-called private life, so long as they do their job properly. It's as if there is never, and can never be, any meaningful connection between these two apparently separate realms; there is an apparently wholly-acceptable caesura interposed by modernity right down the middle of the individual moral life. So, on this basis, an acceptable public life could simply amount to a carefully-cultivated public life lived by someone whose so-called private behaviour is completely reprehensible.
Ancient Greek ethics was completely unlike this. Rather than focussing on action, right and wrong, the focus was on the development of a person's character. This character was built up patiently by the practice of the so-called virtues, such as bravery, self-control, gentleness, friendliness, truthfulness, justice and so on. Practising these qualities, or excellences, would build up a person's character so that they would live (and act) virtuously because of the sort of person they were, or had become, or were becoming.
Christian morality has a similar background, except that it is recognised that we do not possess, in and of ourselves, the capacity to be good, unequivocally. We are indeed, as humans, basically good (because we have been created by God), but we have marred his image in us through sin. So, as St Thomas Aquinas taught, in the thirteenth century, we need grace in order that our nature may be perfected, by God.
So, through God's grace, we participate in God's life which, in turn, means that we participate in his perfection. The call to perfection that Jesus issues is, then, not unreasonable and unrealistic, since it is clear that we cannot perfect ourselves, any more than we were able to bring ourselves into being in the first place. It is a work of God in us.
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