Last month I was doing some research in Rome. In the place where I stayed the only daily English paper was New York Times. However there was no page in the paper without articles about a certain American president. Looks like Mr President is a must-be-topic of all conversations. So let me start with Mr President of United States. Abraham Lincoln was not in favour of religion for most of his life. He died at the age of 56. When he was in his forties he started changing his attitude. The horrors of war impacted him badly. There were fifty hospitals for wounded soldiers in Washington. Every day 50 men died there. However it was the factor that drew Lincoln deeper into the providence of God. He would say: “We cannot but believe, that He who made the world still governs it.” Around that time his 11-year-old son Willie died. Lincoln turned to a Presbyterian pastor Phineas Gurley then. He revealed that he was “driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I have nowhere else to go.”
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! Lincoln’s experience wasn’t unusual. The First Reading taken from the Prophet Isaiah comes from the time when the People of God lost everything. They were driven out of their homeland. They were exiles. However from this confronting situation come the words of God which they welcomed treasured and passed on to the next generations: “Does a woman forget her baby at the breast, or fail to cherish the son of her womb? Yet even if these forget, I will never forget you.” God who created the world did not withdraw himself from the world but he is ever present. St John Chrysostom put it this way: “He provides and upholds all that he made.” “Look at the birds in the sky. They do not sow or reap or gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. - says Jesus in the Gospel – Are you not worth much more than they are?”
            “But why did God not create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it? With infinite power God could always create something better.” The doubts and confusion which can be found in people’s hearts and minds have made their way into the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Catechism quotes those doubts and confusion not only to answer them but also to acknowledge them and to send a message to the people who probe these questions, that their struggles are heard and respected. “With infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world ‘in a state of journeying’ towards its ultimate perfection. In God's plan this process of becoming involves the appearance of certain beings and the disappearance of others, the existence of the more perfect alongside the less perfect, both constructive and destructive forces of nature. With physical good there exists also physical evil as long as creation has not reached perfection.”
           My Dear Friends in Christ! May the Holy Spirt enlighten us to be “Stewards entrusted with the mysteries of God,” mysteries which bring light into the experiences of those whom we meet in this state of journeying so that they “must think of us as Christ’s servants.” As those who like the Pastor Lincoln went to can see the active presence of Christ, even where the prevailing thought is that God is an absentee. “We cannot but believe, that He who made the world still governs it.”

            Once a little boy told me: “One day I will be like my Dad!” I presume that lots of us could recall similar statements. Maybe we made them at some stage of our life too. It is always a profound expression that, we not only admire what we see in our parents, but we also desire to copy it.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! Our first reading from the Book of Leviticus offers us a similar desire, but this time from the other side of this parent-child relationship. This time it is our Heavenly Father who says: “Be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.” Can we, weak and fragile humans, ascend to the holiness which the mysterious powers of heaven proclaimed in the great vision of the Prophet Isaiah as they sang in the presence of the Almighty: “Holy, holy, holy”? Even if it may look easier to reach the summit of the Mount Everest than to reach the holiness of our God we are assured in faith that “God, infinitely perfect and blessed, - as we read in the Catechism of the Catholic Church – in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man.” Our Blessed Lord, who has drawn to us as close as possible by becoming one of us, encourages us again when he says: “You must therefore be perfect just as your heavenly father is perfect.”
            I hope you have noticed that those two sentences: “Be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy” and “You must therefore be perfect just as your heavenly father is perfect” are placed in the context of a particular expression of love: FORGIVNESS. “You must not bear hatred for your brother in your heart” we heard in the First Reading. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” were the words of Jesus Christ from the Gospel for this Sunday.
How do you find that “Your Father in heaven causes his sun to rise on bad men as well as good, and his rain to fall on honest and dishonest men alike”? Do you admire and desire to copy it by giving the warmth of your heart to those who hurt you? Do you admire and desire to copy it by giving your tears of pain caused by others as your blessing for them rather than a call demanding a revenge?
            My Dear Friends! During the horrible domestic war in Spain at the beginning of the twenties century, men and women inspired by secular revolutionary movement hunted down and slaughtered thousands of priests, brothers and nuns only because those religious were people of God. Those revolutionaries were driven by a conviction that to build a new Spain they had to eradicate people who looked up to God for a direction and guidance. Some could ask where God was during that time of terror…. God was reaching to his children on both sides. There is a testimony regarding a revolutionary who while dying asked for a priest to hear his confession. A priest came. He heard his confession. He gave him an absolution. He gave him Holy Communion, anointed him and quietly left. After the priest left the dying man started shouting at the top of his voice. “He has forgiven me! He has forgiven me!” Why was he so moved by the absolution? Well, some time earlier the revolutionary was searching for the priest to kill him. He came to the parish house. The priest was away but his parents and some friends were there. They were all killed in an act of rage. However the grace of repentance which eventually reached the murderer was moistened by the forgiveness received from the victim.
            I don’t know if that priest as a little boy said: “One day I will be like my heavenly Father” but I know that he was. He was like his forgiving Heavenly Father because his Heavenly Father was there, right in the midst of terror reaching to his children on both sides. Some to draw to repentance. Some to draw to forgiveness. It is not simply a war story. It is our story too.

                Do you know what drink driving is? Do you think that it is a problem? How about this solution of the problem? Let’s have a lane which could be designated for drink driving users of our roads. How many of you would support this solution?
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! What can be done with expectations which are found challenging and difficult? They can be dismissed as unreal. It then create an illusion that the problem has been solved. However it hasn’t been solved it has been only declared solved. The problem still exists like the drink driving problem would still exist on the lane designated for drink driving people.
            The Gospel passage for this Sunday offers us a solution as Our Blessed Lord says: “I have come not to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have come to complete them.” How did he want to complete them? By lovingly, patently but also firmly teaching us about the truth. In 1993 Saint John Paul II in his Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor (The Splendour of truth) wrote: “People today need to turn to Christ once again in order to receive from him the answer to their questions about what is good and what is evil.”
It doesn’t deserve a Noble Price to state that we are weak as humans. But it deserve God’s grace when we state that we are weak as we stand in the presence of God. Jesus, as we can see him conversing with his disciples in the Gospel this Sunday, is setting the evangelical standards high. Is he unrealistic? He would be if he didn’t see these standards in the light of God’s tender mercy. The part of the Sermon on the Mount we have today moves the discussions on whether it is realistic to follow those high standards or not from the legalistic and purely human argumentation to the deeper level, in fact it goes right to the heart. Someone has counted that the word heart occurs 600 times in the Old Testament and more than 210 times in the New Testament. A popular word, isn’t it? The New Testament shaped by life, death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ never uses the word heart to describe the physical organ. A theologian offers this insight: “The heart is the center of everything. The heart is the central altar and the body is the outer court. What we offer on the altar of the heart will tell ultimately through the extremities of the body.” “Go deeper” said Jesus, if you are shocked by the teaching on the seriousness of anger, lustful looks, divorce and the sacredness of human word. The same theologian Oswald Chambers wrote: “Thinking takes place in the heart, not in the brain. The real spiritual powers of a person reside in the heart, which is the centre of the physical life, of the soul life, and of the spiritual life. The expression of thinking is referred to the brain and the lips because through these organs thinking becomes articulate.” That’s why Saint Alphonsus Maria Liguori, who died 230 years ago exhausted from helping ordinary people to live a Godly life, said: "God does not refuse anyone the grace of prayer through which one can obtain the help to overcome every concupiscence and every temptation. And I declare and repeat, and will always repeat as long as I live, that all our welfare is to be found in prayer". He also declared: "The one who prays will be saved, the one who does not pray will be lost."
My Dear Friends in Christ! If you find that some teachings of Christ are unrealistic or impossible to follow don’t pray to Christ to change them. Instead pray so that your heart could be changed. May the words of the great prophet Isaiah spoken in the name of God: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways” stimulate us to “go deeper”, right to the heart, as only God can change it. Then God’s thoughts will be our thoughts too and we too, like our Blessed Lord, will walk in the ways of God with our problems solved not simply declared that they are not problems any more.
I would like to finish with the prayer with which Saint John Paul II finished his Encyclical Veritatis Splendor: ”O Mary, Mother of Mercy, watch over all people, that the Cross of Christ may not be emptied of its power, that man may not stray from the path of the good or become blind to sin, but may put his hope ever more fully in God who is "rich in mercy.” May he carry out the good works prepared by God beforehand and so live completely "for the praise of his glory.”

            Once St Paul the Apostle visited the Areopagus, a prominent place of worship and philosophical discussion in the ancient city of Athens. In that place, where the Greek civilization exhibited its achievements, the disciple of the Lord Jesus was looking for ways to connect with the Greeks. Originally St Paul, an eloquent preacher and writer, wanted to speak in an impressive and inclusive manner. Pointing to the altar dedicated to an unknown god, erected on the hill, he attempted to draw Greeks to Christianity by indicating that they were already religiously open minded, that they were tolerant. As long as he was engaged in the philosophical argumentation Greeks listened to him. However when he started talking about the Lord Jesus, the crucified and Risen Messiah, his listeners told him off. Although rejected, St Paul didn’t return to the “safe” philosophical discussion about religion. Today’s Second Reading from the First Letter to the Corinthians is the outcome of that lesson the Apostle of the nations learned in Athens. He wrote to the Corinthians: “When I came to you, brothers, it was not with any show of oratory or philosophy, but simply to tell you what God had guaranteed. During my stay with you, the only knowledge I claimed to have was about Jesus, and only him as the crucified Christ.”
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! We could talk about social and humanitarian usefulness of our faith. We could point to schools, hospitals, hospices, nursing homes, orphanages etc. to prove our usefulness to the society. It is the safe argumentation like that St Paul had at the Areopagus, but as St Paul was called to proclaim more as we are called to proclaim more than our social usefulness. “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world” said our Blessed Lord in the Gospel. The saltiness and brightness come to us as a gift of the Beatitudes we heard last Sunday. Those eight blessings turn upside down the image of religion. “Blessed the poor in spirit. Blessed the gentle. Blessed who morn. Blessed who hunger and thirst for what is right. Blessed the merciful. Blessed the peacemakers.  Blessed persecuted in the cause of right.” Read and contemplate in the light of the cross and Resurrection, accepted in faith and trust, these words form a new community of women and men who see in the situations which are understood by many as disaster, failure, tragedy, unfairness etc., the God who accepted the pain of the crucifixion. Crucifixion which is madness to the wise and a scandal to those who follow various religions but to us it is the power of God. Typically religion is understood as a protection gods give to the humans. Christianity, however, is about God who saves us in order we could have the eternal happiness. Sometimes Christians are described as seekers of suffering. We don’t seek suffering. Neither did Jesus. But we are realistic. We know that suffering is the outcome of sin. As long as sin exists in this world of ours as long the suffering, in its various forms, is to mark our existence. However sin, which is always turning away from God, doesn’t turn God away from us. God is not sulky because of our unfaithfulness. He is always faithful. He is with us when the consequences of our sins and the sins of others affect us. As the global warming, air pollution and wrong choices of other drives affect us as our sins affect others and their sins affect us.
            My Dear Friends! The Lord wants us to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. As even a little of salt can penetrate and season the whole dish as the Lord wants to penetrate the most despairing and most hardened hearts and minds by the presence of his disciples who live the Beatitudes every day. As the light embraces and enlivens the living creatures of this world as the Lord wants to embrace and enliven all men and women by the presence of his disciples who live the Beatitudes every day.
            Let me finish with a prayer written by Blessed John Henry Newman. This prayer is prayed by Sisters of Charity, founded by Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta, after receiving Holy Communion. When the Lord Jesus enters their very being they don’t think about themselves, they don’t focus on enjoying the closeness with the Lord but they pray:
Dear Jesus, help me to spread your fragrance everywhere I go;
Flood my soul with your spirit and life;
Penetrate and possess my whole being so completely
That all my life may be only a radiance of yours;
Shine through me and be so in me
That everyone with whom I come into contact
may feel your presence within me.
Let them look up and see no longer me—but only Jesus. Amen.