EIGHTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME C

[cappie]

In today’s readings, we hear Jesus speaking in Galilee as well as a Jewish sage named Sirach in the First Reading, writing in Jerusalem more than a century earlier. The two of them touch upon a single truth: The words that come out of us make known the hidden thoughts within us. 

The lesson from Jesus is “Don’t try to change other people.  Try to change yourself. That’s more than enough work for you to do.”

Jesus’ directive is a hard one. Isn’t it a lot easier to point out other people’s faults and shortcomings than look at our own?  But Jesus points out that if we don’t attempt to correct our own vision, then we are definitely not in shape to lead and guide other people:

“Can a blind person guide a blind person?
Will not both fall into a pit?

“Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye,
but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own?”

These teachings of Jesus are among the most challenging in the gospel, especially coming after last Sunday’s lessons to love our enemies and turn the other cheek. They are challenging because they name very real weaknesses that we all share, and for which we constantly need reminders. Oh, it is so much easier (and dare I say, enjoyable?) to point out other people’s splinters than to acknowledge our own much bigger faults.

But, of course, there are the practical things that we must do, like the ones I mentioned above: theology, boycotts, protests, prayer, and such. We can’t abandon those things.  I think Jesus’ lesson from today’s readings is that for those involved in Catholic  social justice, the attitude we have towards the people who may be opposed to us is just as important, maybe even more important, than the work that we do.

I read recently the closing paragraph of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Christmas 1957 sermon entitled “Loving Your Enemies,” which was delivered at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. He wrote the sermon while in jail for committing civil disobedience during the bus boycott in that city:

“To our most bitter opponents we say: ‘We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you.   But be ye assured  one day we shall win freedom but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process and our victory will be a double victory.’”

That’s quite a lofty goal. But it is also powerful and necessary if the justice that we seek is rooted in God’s love for all. How do we do that? I had some insight into that from another friend’s gift.

I recently read a collection of sayings called “An Interrupted Life.” by Etty Hillesum, a Dutch Jewish woman who was killed at Auschwitz on 30 November 1943 (age 29 years). I have found her thoughts to be very profound, especially coming from someone who lived through such horrors, violence, and daily threats to her life. Despite the chaos and terror that she lived through during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, Hillesum found it within herself to write the following:

“I really see no other solution than to turn inward and to root out all the rottenness there. I no longer believe that we can change anything in the world until we have first changed ourselves. And that seems to me the only lesson to be learned from this war. That we must look into ourselves and nowhere else.”

“The stance in each one of us to stay true to what we know to be good and right, to keep believing in the deep and abiding personal love of God, that speaking kindly to another at all times is right, that being taken for a fool sometimes will do no harm in the long run, if it preserves another’s dignity, to keep trying after we have failed in love, to acknowledge that the precepts of the Beatitudes are worth living."

Those two passages express to me the messages of last week’s and today’s gospel : Love your enemies. And do so by working to change yourself, not them.