HOMILY FOR MASS OF TUESDAY OF THE ELEVENTH WEEK OF ORDINARY TIME (YEAR I)
ST MARTHA’S CHAPEL, LEICHHARDT, 17 JUNE 2025
‘Demanding,’ ‘a perfectionist,’ ‘hard to work for’—these were the descriptions recently given by those who work for Jensen Huang, the Taiwanese-American CEO of tech giant Nvidia. Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993, as a niche producer of computer chips for graphics and gaming. Now it’s a $3.5 trillion behemoth, dominating chip production, bested in value only by Microsoft. When told of his staff’s comments Huang said: “It should be like that. If you want to do extraordinary things, it shouldn’t be easy.”[1] His ‘no pain, no gain’ leadership style is not unusual amongst top performers, whether CEOs, athletes or other professionals. They all say you can’t achieve excellence without sacrifice, suffering, doing what others won’t.
In today’s Gospel (Mt 5:43-48), the CEO of God’s Kingdom.org gives a directive His disciples think completely OTT. He had just finished saying: “Sure, it’s the natural law for all humanity not to kill, fornicate, perjure or avenge yourself. But in this Company you must harbour no grudge against a brother, no lust toward a sister; no divorce and remarriage; no lies, even when you’re not under oath; instead of revenge, turn the other cheek!” (Mt 5:17-42) Flabbergasting: but Jesus’ next words were clinchers: instead of the Old Testament ‘love your neighbour’, I say love even your enemies; instead of ‘resist oppressors’, I require you to pray for persecutors; instead of ‘be good guys’, I say be perfect like God!
Is this just ambitious goal-setting, a case of “aim for the stars and land on the moon” thinking, meant to spur us to go above and beyond? Surely Jesus doesn’t really expect ordinary sinful mortals to harbour no loathing, lust or lie, to love everyone and be perfect like God?
Surveying the rest of the Gospels it’s clear this was no rhetorical ploy to boost spiritual productivity: it’s exactly how Jesus lived Himself. He loved even His enemies, prayed for His persecutors, absolved His torturers, right to the end, right up to praying “Forgive them Father: they know not what they do.” (Lk 23:34)
All very well for Jesus—you might be thinking—being perfect like God was no struggle for Him, He was God. But when we are wounded or angry, victims of injustice, it’s all we can do to not strike out at those who’ve hurt us. A bit of demonising them in our hearts, and sharing our thoughts with a few others, is natural enough. No one can really expect us to love them…
That’s exactly what Jesus expects, because it’s right but also because it’s for our own good. If we want forgiveness, we have to exercise it ourselves. If we want to be free of enemies and of what having enemies does to us, we have to let go of the grudges that only eat us up. We must die to the darker side of our personalities, the vengefulness, lust, envy and the rest.
But we can feel powerless to bring that about. Jesus gets that. If we are to live his super-human company rules, we’ll need the Gospel, the Church, sacraments, virtues, works of mercy. We need Him! Only by conforming ourselves to Christ can we find in ourselves a love that forgives not seven times, not seventy, but seventy times seven times. The more Christlike we become, the more impartiality, liberality, affability, Jesus-sized mercy, God-like perfection will be ours.
Adam and Eve sought to cut corners and become pseudo-gods while avoiding love’s demands. But becoming more perfect costs—costs us in dying to self, above all costs Jesus who died to enable this in us. “Remember how generous the Lord Jesus was,” Paul says today, “rich as he was, he became poor for your sake, to make you rich out of his poverty” (2Cor 8:1-9). And so dear friends, receive the riches of Christ’s graces that allow us to live and love like Him!
[1] Sawdah Bhaimiya, ‘Nvidia’s CEO was labeled a “demanding” boss by staff. But experts say you have to be cutthroat’, CNBC Make It, 13 May 2024.
