PERFECTLY LOVING THE LESS THAN PERFECT
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus came from a number of generations of epic and biblical proportions. 14 times 3. A mix of perfect numbers in the Jewish tradition. Signaling to perfection. Fulfillment. A new era.
However, looking more closely, the list of names reveals a list of less than perfect people leading to the most perfect person who would ever walk the face of the earth.
And that most perfect person is perfect in the most important way. The way that He loves. And Jesus loves each and every one of those less than perfect people that would lead up to him. He loves them with compassion and empathy. His love extends to all the generations.
Over the last few months, I have found myself in a new era. I have felt Jesus inviting me to love my own history and the people in it with more compassion and empathy. For my own circumstances, happenings, and mistakes, I am learning to love my doings by understanding them rather than judging them, being loving to myself rather than being critical of myself, and befriending myself rather than being a stranger to myself.
So, as I do so for myself, I find myself loving the people in my life with more compassion and empathy, and I have found that love extending to more and more people - people whom I would have previously excluded. I have discovered that people in my life can be way less than perfect (most of all myself), because I am loving them. It is not that they are unloveable, it is only that I have room to grow in loving them.
Whether it takes me generations, I know not. I only know I find it fulfilling, this striving, this progress: to love perfectly the less than perfect.
Eddie Ngo, SJ