3. “Be perfect, even as Your Heavenly Father is perfect.”

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3.  “You therefore are to be perfect, even as your Heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48).

 According to Father Michael Ciccone, OP, in the original language the word which in this verse is translated into English as “perfect” has the meaning of total self- giving love.  This total self-giving love is our vocation as masculine and feminine persons created in God’s image.

To love our enemies is above our nature–it requires grace; but we do not like to be vulnerable and dependent on grace.  And yet we need to receive a continual flow of God’s grace into our souls if we are going to continue to love our enemies.  It’s clear that to be perfect as Our Heavenly Father is perfect requires us to become ever more vulnerable to God’s grace and ever more dependent on His Fatherhood.

Here is where Our Lady can help us.  If we consecrate ourselves to Her Immaculate Heart, then from within this Sanctuary of the Holy Spirit we can pray, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word” (Lk 1:38).  She who was “clothed with power from on high (Lk 24:49) at the Annunciation (Lk 1:35) and again at Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4), like the good Mother who She is, desires to clothe us in Her own vulnerability and receptivity to the Word.

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