Overview:

Tuesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

A Reflection for Tuesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

“And if you greet your brothers only,
what is unusual about that?
Do not the pagans do the same?
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt. 5:43-48).

Find today’s readings here. 

A perfect Manhattan—is that just a very good Manhattan?

Each of the older bartenders I ever worked with seemed to have the same story about being confused about the word “perfect.” The fable goes that at some green point early in their careers, a bar’s regular comes along and embarrasses them with that puzzling order, “A perfect Manhattan, please.” The rookie bartender then makes a Manhattan to the very best of their abilities, serving up what they hope is a perfectly balanced and perfectly chilled cocktail: two dashes of bitters, and two parts whiskey to one part sweet vermouth. Stirred over plenty of ice and served up.

The prickly patron refuses this drink because it is not, in fact, perfect. The bartender tries again, applying even more focus this time. But still, our regular insists, this lovely amber drink before them is not perfect. 

Eventually our folk-hero bartender learns what “perfect” really means. For a stirred cocktail like a Manhattan to be perfect, its portion of vermouth needs to be split evenly between both sweet and dry vermouths. Our humble bartender was only using the typical sweet vermouth. 

Whether or not this story happened just once and has been mythified, passed on and co-opted by bartender after bartender, or if it is something that really did happen to the handful of bartenders that trained me does not matter. It is a real confusion they prepared me for, and it is a very real confusion I continue encountering in today’s Gospel.

“So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect,” Jesus says.

Who, me?  

I cannot help but feel as if I have been presented with a seriously unfair demand reading Jesus’ words. I thought Christ meets us where we are!

Well, of course he does. But this perfection that is asked of us is an even-handedness: You shall love those who love you, and you will pray for your enemies as well—sweet vermouth and dry vermouth. 

Jesus reminds us that God the Father makes the rain fall on the just and the unjust and the sun to rise on the bad and the good. This will go on, thank God. And it is a peaceful thing that we can count on these fair and perfect inevitabilities.

So if, like me, you feel miffed for even a millisecond with Jesus’ call for perfection, consider your agitation as a stubborn resistance to peace. What mortal willfulness might be keeping you and I from welcoming this call to pray for our enemies?

Julian Navarro is America Media’s advancement manager.