Our Lord says, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” This may appear strange that God should require us to a perfection like his own but it is not. God’s own character is the model of man’s perfection because he created man in his own image.
God’s mind is occupied in the contemplation of is own truth, wisdom and beauty, his will in loving his own goodness and both mind and will are guided by his infinite truth and goodness. So man’s mind should be guided by the contemplataaion of God’s truth wisdom and beauty, his will to the love of God’s goodness and both mind and will be directed by obedience to God’s truth and goodness. Man’s life would be an image of God’s life and man’s perfection would be like that of his Father in heaven.
Reflection by Rev. Paul Robichaud CSP
To be like God, what an idea! Some of us might wish we had the God-like power to control our world and make it respond so that everything would turn out the way we want. Most of us understand that while God has created us, we are with our imperfections, a long way from being like God. But the good news is as Servant of God Isaac Hecker writes that God has created us in God’s own image no matter how imperfect we are and this is our starting point. We are created in the image of God through the loving care of the Father and we have become the adopted children of the Father through the death and resurrection of Jesus. So as imperfect as we might be we have divine potential.
Father Hecker invites us to grow in God’s image. God’s mind is occupied in the contemplation of is own truth, wisdom and beauty, his will in loving his own goodness and both mind and will are guided by his infinite truth and goodness. So by doing what God does, as we contemplate God’s truth, for example, we grow in God’s image. Paulist Father Paul Robichaud CSP is Historian of the Paulist Fathers and Postulator of the Cause of Father Hecker. His office is located at the Hecker Center in Washington D.C.
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