*****
“Whoever gives only a cup of cold water to one of these little ones to drink — he will surely not lose his reward."
In his commentary on this passage from today’s Gospel, William Barclay observed:
“We cannot all be prophets and preach and proclaim the word of God, but he who gives God’s messenger the simple gift of hospitality will receive no less a reward than the prophet himself. There is many a man who has been a great public figure; there is many a man whose voice has kindled the hearts of thousands of people; there is many a man who carried an almost intolerable burden of public service and public responsibility, all of whom would gladly have borne witness that they could never have survived the effort and the demands of their task were it not for the love and care and the sympathy and the service of someone at home, who was never in the public eye at all. When true greatness is measured up in the sight of God, it will be seen again and again that the man who greatly moved the world was entirely dependent on someone who – as far as the world was concerned – remained unknown.”
“We cannot all be shining examples of goodness. We cannot all stand out in the world’s eye as righteous. But he who helps a good man to be good receives a good man’s reward.”
“The great beauty of this passage is its stress on simple things. The Church and Christ will always need their great orators, their great shining examples of sainthood, their great teachers, those whose names are household words. But the Church and Christ will also always need those in whose homes there is hospitality, on whose hands there is all the service which makes a home and in whose hearts there is the caring that is Christian love and, as Mrs. Browning said, ‘All service ranks the same with God.’”
Barclay’s reflection is reminiscent of three observations made by St. Francis de Sales on this very consideration of the importance of little things:
“Little daily acts of charity, this headache, toothache or cold, this bad humor in a husband of wife…in short, all such little things when accepted and embraced with love are highly pleasing to God’s mercy. For a single cup of water, God has promised to his faithful people a sea of endless bliss.”
“Put your hands to strong things by training yourself in prayer and meditation, receiving the sacraments, bringing souls to love God, infusing good inspirations into their hearts, and in fine, by performing big, important works according to your vocation. But never forget your distaff or spindle – in other words, practice those little, humble virtues that grow like flowers at the foot of the cross: helping the poor, visiting the sick and taking care of your family, with all the tasks that go worth such things and with all that useful diligence which will not you stand idle.”
“Nothing is small in the service of God.”
Today, in big ways – in little ways – how might God be calling you to live a rewarding life?
*****
"Unless I see the mark of the nails…I will not believe.”
In Introduction to the Devout Life, Francis de Sales wrote:
“Do not say that so-and-so is a drunkard even though you have seen him intoxicated, or that so-and-so is an adulterer even if you saw him in his sin, or that so-and-so is incestuous because he has been guilty of a certain depraved deed. A single act is not enough to justify the name of vice...To deserve the name of a vice or a virtue, there must be some advance in an act and it must be habitual. Hence it is untrue to say that so-and-so is bad-tempered or a thief simply because we once saw him in a fit of anger or guilty of theft…We must not draw conclusions from yesterday to today, nor from today to yesterday, and still less to tomorrow.” (IDL, Part III, Chapter 29, p. 202)
So why is it, then, that so many people continue to refer to the Apostle whose life and legacy we celebrate today as “Doubting Thomas”? Nearly two thousand years have passed since he declared to his peers what it would take for him to believe that Jesus was risen. Why should we vilify Thomas for being honest? Why should we beat up on Thomas for speaking from his heart? Jesus certainly didn’t!
Jesus didn’t scold Thomas for his declaration. Jesus didn’t refuse Thomas’ request. Quite the contrary! Jesus showed him his hands and his side, saying, in effect: “Do you want to see my wounds? Here they are! Do you want to touch my hands and side? Please do! If that’s what it’s going to take to convince you that I’m real, Thomas, then by all means please do it!” It was then that Thomas believed that the person who was standing in front of him was the same Jesus with whom he walked for three years. It was the same Jesus who had spent his ministry meeting people where they were and now, he offered the same courtesy to Thomas.
Besides, Thomas’ disbelief was not habitual – it was a one-time event.
In the closing scene from the film Red Dragon, Dr. Hannibal Lector’s character opines: “Our scars have the power to remind us that the past was real.” Perhaps, only the scars left by Jesus’ humiliation, passion and death could convince Thomas that Jesus had conquered death! Perhaps that’s why Thomas had the courage to speak this truth despite the giddy euphoria of the other Apostles who had previously seen Jesus. Can you really blame Thomas for not simply taking their word for it?
Come to think of it, it is a remarkable thing that the experience of resurrection did not remove the wounds of Jesus. The lasting marks of pain, disappointment, misunderstanding, rejection, humiliation, abandonment, suffering and death were clear for all to see. Notwithstanding these wounds, however, Christ's resurrection powerfully demonstrates that pain, sadness, suffering and injustice -- as real as they are -- do not, ultimately, have the last word. While suffering was clearly a part of Jesus’ life, there was so much more to his life than just suffering.
Maybe it’s time for us to retire the moniker “Doubting Thomas” and replace it with “Honest Thomas” from this day forward! Maybe it’s also time for us to simply accept the fact that there are some things about Jesus that we can know only through our own wounds and the wounds of others.
*****
“I walk in your truth…”
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America.
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary…to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them…We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Do you want to experience life to the full? Do you want to have life and to have life in abundance? Then serve God! Show in your own life – and in the lives of others – the power and promise that comes with giving homage to God! How can we do that? (1) Seek good by pursuing and promoting the God-given, unalienable gifts of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness with others, and (2) stop evil by confronting and containing anything that threatens these same God-given, unalienable gifts. Using the language of the Salesian tradition, we are most free when we walk with integrity, that is, when we treat ourselves and others with profound respect and reverence.How can we walk in the truth today? How can we be truly happy today? The answer - by doing our part to continue fashioning a nation in which all people can experience the liberty that comes from serving the needs of one another.
*****
“The Lord hears the cry of the poor…”
“On the occasion of Elizabeth of Portugal’s birth in 1271, her father, Pedro III, future king of Aragon, was reconciled with his father, James, the reigning monarch. This proved to be a portent of things to come. Under the healthful influences surrounding her early years, she quickly learned self-discipline and acquired a taste for spirituality. This proved fortuitous when, at the age of 12, she was given in marriage to Denis, king of Portugal. She was able to establish for herself a pattern of life conducive to growth in God’s love, not merely through her exercises of piety, including daily Mass, but also through her exercise of charity, by which she was able to befriend and help pilgrims, strangers, the sick, the poor—in a word, all those whose neediness she noticed.”
“In the midst of her charitable work, Elizabeth remained devoted to her husband, whose infidelity to her was an open secret. He, too, was the object of many of her peace endeavors. She long sought peace for him with God, and Elizabeth’s efforts were finally rewarded when he gave up his life of sin. She repeatedly sought and effected peace between the king and their rebellious son, Alfonso, who thought that he was passed over to favor the king’s illegitimate children. Elizabeth acted as peacemaker in the struggle between Ferdinand, king of Aragon, and his cousin James, who claimed the crown. When she had retired as a Franciscan tertiary to the monastery of the Poor Clares after the death of her husband, Elizabeth was able to bring about a lasting peace between her son Alfonso, then king of Portugal, and his son-in-law, the king of Castile.”
“The work of promoting peace is anything but a calm and quiet endeavor. It takes a clear mind, a steady spirit and a brave soul to intervene between people whose emotions are so aroused that they are ready to destroy one another. This is all the more true of a woman in the early 14th century. But Elizabeth had a deep and sincere love and sympathy for humankind, almost a total lack of concern for herself and an abiding confidence in God. These were the tools of her success.” (www.americancatholic.org)
Elizabeth of Portugal was named for her great aunt, St. Elizabeth of Hungary. Regarding St. Elizabeth of Hungary, Francis de Sales observed:
“St. Elizabeth, daughter of the king of Hungary, often visited the poor...how poor was she in the midst of all her riches and how rich was she in her poverty!” (IDL, Part III, Chapter 15, p. 166)
The Lord hears the cry of the poor. The Lord also hears the cry of those who minister to the poor and who try to sow the seeds of peace.
Today, in what ways might the Lord hear our cries today?
*****
“Why do you harbor such evil thoughts in your hearts?
In his Introduction to the Devout Life, Francis de Sales claimed that impugning the motives of others is a primary source of much of the sin and iniquity with which our world is plagued.
We witness slander when someone falsely imputes crimes and sins toward another person. We see slander when someone reveals another’s secret faults or exaggerates faults that are already obvious to everyone. We hear slander when someone ascribes evil motives to the good deeds that another does or attempts to minimize - or deny them - all together.
In today’s Gospel we see such slander in action. Perhaps slander in thought only, but slander nonetheless.
After forgiving the sins of a paralyzed man, Jesus is palpably aware of what was going through the minds of the scribes – they secretly assumed that such action made Jesus guilty of blasphemy, that is, of usurping the power and authority of God. They were determined to turn any good that Jesus did into something bad. Jesus response is swift and twofold – he calls them out for their secret, distorted thinking and then powerfully proves by what power and authority he forgives sins by healing the same man of his physical paralysis.
Would that Jesus could have healed the attitudinal paralysis of the scribes so easily, a paralysis stemming from the slanderous manner with which they viewed Jesus, because when they weren’t falsely accusing him of assorted crimes and sins, they attempted to minimize – or discredit entirely – the good that he accomplished and the healings that he performed. What is the moral is this Gospel? There are far worse ways of being incurably paralyzed other than being unable to walk.
*****
“I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”
In today’s Gospel, we are considering two related – but remarkably different – notions of what it means to be God-like. We are considering two related – but remarkably different – models for growing in holiness. The tension between mercy and sacrifice is not something invented by Jesus, but it is as old as the Hebrew community itself. Actually, it is as old as the human family itself (Cain and Abel – Abraham and Isaac). But Jesus does make this issue front and center in his ongoing struggle with the Scribes and Pharisees.
Under the paradigm of SACRIFICE, holiness is all about proving my fidelity to God. It is all about showing God that I love God enough to go without food for a day, to slaughter a bull, to walk so many miles in my bare feet or to donate $5 million to my church’s capital campaign. Mind you, none of these things are wrong per se, but when holiness is understood almost exclusively as sacrifice, the danger is that it may ultimately lead to loving God to the exclusion of loving my neighbor.
The ancient Israelite prophets frequently criticized their people for somehow attempting to pit the love of God against the love of neighbor. In the prophet Isaiah, we hear:
“The multitude of your sacrifices – what are they to me?’ says the Lord. ‘I have more than enough burnt offerings, or rams and the fat of fattened animals. Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed.” (1: 11 – 17)
By contrast, the MERCY paradigm of holiness emphasizes the need to integrate the two components of Jesus’ Great Commandment exemplified in the words of 1 John 4:12:
“No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and love is made complete in us.”
Not to put too fine a point on it, but loving God and loving neighbor can never be separated. They are indeed two indispensable sides of the very same coin. The goal of holiness that we pursue in praying, fasting, singing songs of praise, donating blood making meals for the homeless and every other act of piety and mercy is not to prove anything to God but to give God complete influence over our hearts.
Sacrifice can be extremely beneficial when it is a means for submitting ourselves more completely to God’s mercy and not a substitute for it. For example, fasting can teach us to be aware of our own hungers and our need for God to feed us as a remedy for the pride of self-sufficiency. However, if God indeed desires mercy over sacrifice, the commands that God gives us are not intended to be tests of our loyalty to God but rather a pathway for allowing His reign of mercy to reign in our hearts - a reign expressed through our exercise of mercy toward one another.
*****
"No one patches an old cloak with a piece of unshrunken cloth…People do not put new wine into old wineskins."
In his reflection on this passage from Matthew’s Gospel, William Barclay wrote:
“Jesus was perfectly conscious that he came to men with new ideas and with a new conception of the truth, and he was well aware how difficult it is to get new ideas into men’s minds…The Jews were passionately attached to things as they were. The Law was to them God’s last and final word; to add one word to it or to subtract one word from it was a deadly sin…To them a new idea was not so much a mistake as a sin.”
Barclay continues:
“Within the Church this resentment of the new is chronic and the attempt to pour new things into old molds is almost universal. We attempt to pour the activities of a modern congregation into an ancient church building that was never meant for them. We attempt to pour the truth of new discoveries into creeds that are based on Greek metaphysics. We attempt to pour modern instruction into worn-out language that cannot express it. We read God’s word to twentieth century men and women in Elizabethan English and seek to present the needs of the twentieth century man and woman to God in prayer language that is four hundred years old. It may be that we would do well to remember that when anything stops growing, it starts dying. It may be that we need to pray that God would deliver us from the closed mind.”
Of course, close-mindedness is not limited to churches, temples, synagogues or mosques. Closed minds can be found wherever people are gathered – on Wall Street, on Capitol Hill, on commuter trains, in classrooms, on the Internet and even around the dining room table. The truth of the matter is that we all struggle sometimes with keeping our minds open to new things, new ideas, new places and new people. One is reminded of these words from Albert Einstein: “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
About what may God ask us to keep an open mind - just this day?
