Daily Gospel Reflection
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March 12, 2022
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 and sisters only,
what is unusual about that?
Do not the pagans do the same?
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
While Christ urged his followers to love their enemies, I seem to have a hard enough time being civil to my own family. I know that I am hardly alone. As a priest in confession recently reminded me, we condition ourselves to be on our best behavior for strangers but not for those in our own homes. It seems all too acceptable to lash out or brood over some unintended action by a member of our own house.
“Jesus, how am I to achieve perfection, as you demand, when I find it so hard to always act with love to my loved ones? How is it possible to be perfect, just as my heavenly Father is perfect?”
It’s easy to misunderstand what God means by perfection. Thankfully, God does not demand perfection in our appearances or abilities, but perfection in our love because God is love. So, to be perfect as the Heavenly Father means as Mother Teresa once said to, “do small things with great love.”
Christ not only encourages us but also provides us with his example. He was first a servant to his apostles and then to the world. I can be a servant too.
I can scrub the stubborn pot with love. I can neatly arrange the shoes again with love. I can find that missing object in plain sight … with love instead of with a snarky comment. I can kiss a head freshly thwacked by a sister with love and then administer the necessary timeout with patience and again, with love. God gifts me all of these opportunities to cultivate God’s loving perfection within me.
Perhaps someday, I will be able to make dinner for my enemy with a smile on my face and a song on my tongue. But today, let me practice with my family. Let me be perfect in my love.
Prayer
Heavenly Father, your Word is active and alive, effective and enlivening. It achieves the end for which you send it. Transformed by your Word and filled with your Spirit, may our words not be empty, but may we imitate you by speaking true words of forgiveness from the heart to those who sin against us. Amen.
Saint of the Day
St. Seraphina, also known as Fina, is venerated for the courage with which she endured the suffering of illness.
Fina was born to a poor family in the town of San Gimignano, in the Tuscan region of Italy, in the 13th century. She was a beautiful child and had a strong devotion to prayer and to serving others. Even though her family was poor, she always kept half of her food to give to those who were also hungry. She helped her mother with chores and sewing during the day.
Her father died when she was still young, and at about that same time, she was struck with a mysterious disease that deformed her head, hands, eyes, and feet. Her physical appearance changed drastically and she eventually suffered paralysis and had to be carried around on a plank. The slightest movement caused great pain.
Though her mother had to leave her for hours on end to work or beg, Seraphina never complained. She strove for peace in her terrible pain by identifying her own suffering with Jesus’, saying, “It is not my wounds but thine, O Christ, that hurt me.”
When her mother died suddenly, she was left in utter poverty, reliant on other neighbors who were poor and who did not want to be exposed to her sores. She learned about St. Gregory the Great, who also suffered from a debilitating illness, and she developed a devotion to him, asking him for prayer that God might grant her patience in her suffering.
St. Gregory appeared to her to foretell the day she would die, which came to pass on this day in 1253. When her body was removed from the plank on which it rested, the wood was found to be covered with white flowers. Her relics rest in the reliquary chapel of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on Notre Dame's campus.
St. Seraphina, who even in weakness became a strong sign of hope to the town of San Gimignano—pray for us!
Image Credit: Our featured image of St. Seraphina is in the public domain. Last accessed February 6, 2025 on Wikimedia Commons.
