When you hear Jesus
saying these things, hear Paul as well, ordering you: “Be imitators of me, as I
also am of Christ” (1 Cor 11.1). Whose imitator must I become? Is it the
firstborn of all creation? Wisdom? Logos? Truth? Or am I, as a human being,
ordered to become the imitator of the human Jesus, so that I may imitate his
humanity? I do not say that it is unfeasible to imitate his divinity, for
ascending I progress and by God’s grace I achieve the ability to imitate the
divinity of Christ—if it is actually possible to imitate the divinity of
Christ. The same is true of the God of the Universe: “Become perfect, as your
Father who is in heaven is perfect” (Mt 5.48), and, “Be holy, because I am
holy, the Lord your God” (Lv 11.45), and again, “Be perfect before the Lord
your God” (Dt 18.13) (Psalm 15 Homily 2 in Homilies on the Psalms: Codex
Monacensis Graecus 314 [The Fathers of the Church; trans. Joseph W. Trigg;
Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2020], 65)