Archbishop’s Journal: Jesus challenges us to challenge ourselves
- September 27, 2009
San Francisco Archbishop George H. Niederauer delivered the following homily at the annual meeting of the Equestrian Order of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, Northwest Lieutenancy, in Boise, Idaho on Sept. 27.
Ninety years ago, William Butler Yeats, a great Irish poet of the last century, wrote a famous poem, “The Second Coming,” in which this line appeared, describing the world Yeats saw around him: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with passionate intensity.” What Yeats saw was that so many young people, who should have been the hope for the future, believed in nothing, and dedicated themselves to nothing, (“the best lack all conviction”) while the Nazis and Communists, then seizing power, tried violently to force their ideas on everyone (“the worst are filled with passionate intensity”). Indifference and intolerance were side-by-side threats.
In our gospel reading today, Jesus Christ attacks both these temptations. John the Apostle tries to show Jesus what a loyal follower he is by telling the Master that he has caught a stranger using Jesus’ name to cast out an evil spirit! John very jealously tried to stop the stranger from doing that, because he was not one of the officially authorized disciples. Jesus teaches John (and us) a lesson in tolerance: “Don’t stop him! No one can act in my name and power and speak ill of me – if he is not against us he is with us.” Those words of Jesus remind the Church of a story about Moses and Joshua, so we have our first reading this afternoon. Moses tells Joshua to not be jealous of a gift of God to other people, just because they received the gift while separated from Moses and Joshua.
Sometimes our neighbors will not permit us to live our Catholic lives in peace and with respect. This is a much greater problem in other countries than it is here, but it happens in this country as well. Still, that is not an excuse for us to treat others with hatred or contempt or sarcasm. Instead, we need to give a good example of the tolerance everyone should practice. We ought to rejoice over the goodness in everyone, including those who do not share our faith. Remember those words from the Prayer of the Order that we prayed together yesterday: We asked of Christ, “Give us the strength to love all beings of the world your Father has created, and more so, our enemies.”
Perhaps the greatest single challenge we presently face as Knights and Ladies of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem is summed up in the title of Jim Pahanik’s book, “The Long Journey: The Search for Peace and Justice in Jerusalem,” and in the title of Patriarch Michel Sabbah’s most recent book, “Faithful Witness: On Reconciliation and Peace in the Holy Land.” It is fear of violence, weariness with oppression, and the impossibility of a free life of civil peace and of gainful employment that have so severely diminished the Christian presence in the Holy Land in recent decades. We are called to pray, sacrifice, witness and work for peace and justice for all who live in the Holy Land. Without the mutual regard and respect that tolerance demands, peace and justice will forever be just a few more negotiating sessions away.
Tolerance is not the same as indifference. If we admit that there may be more than one way to God, that is not the same as saying we believe that every way is equally good, or that it doesn’t really matter which way you choose. That is not what we Catholics believe. To admit that all truth is bigger than any one man’s grasp of it is not the same as saying that no one can know the truth or that there are no real answers anywhere. That is not what we Catholics believe.
When someone attacks our Catholic faith, we need to be informed and committed enough to respond, and to respond vigorously as well as respectfully. However, a vigorous defense is different from a savage attack on the faith of someone else. Several years ago, in Regensburg, Germany, Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI strongly but respectfully challenged those who would use violence to defend their own faith and to force that faith on others. In some places his statement was met with the very violence he was denouncing.
Individually and collectively, our human temptation is to be intolerant of others and very tolerant of ourselves. We easily condemn in someone else what we overlook in ourselves. For example, I might say, “My neighbor spoke harshly to me this morning. That proves what he is really like inside. It shows how he really feels about me.” But I easily make excuses for myself: “She shouldn’t be angry just because I spoke a little strongly. She should realize I had a headache, and I was in a hurry.” Making excuses for ourselves comes more easily than making excuses for others.
So Jesus teaches us to save our “passionate intensity” for our commitment to our own faith, and not to spend it on attacking others. The words Jesus uses here sound extreme: If your hand or your foot or your eye leads you into sin, cut it off or pluck it out! The custom in the time of Jesus was to use exaggeration for the sake of emphasis. Remember some other examples from the Savior’s teaching: he sees the Pharisees making a big deal out of a small matter, and then not even seeing a truly serious matter for what it is, so he accuses them of straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel. Another time Jesus teaches his followers to correct their own faults before correcting those of others, so he asks, “Why do you see the tiny speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?”
Besides, we often speak like this ourselves. Think of the exasperated mother who says, “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times, don’t exaggerate!” Or someone with a closet full of clothes who complains, “I haven’t a thing to wear!” Indeed, according to the Apostle James, in our second reading, we had better go through our closets from time to time and give what we no longer wear to those who need it more.
What is Jesus teaching us here? To be passionate and whole-hearted in our effort to follow him, to apply his teaching to every aspect of our lives, to every relationship, so that nothing is “off-limits” to our living as a Catholic Christian. Jesus challenges us to challenge ourselves: “Do not tolerate the sins you commit with your hands or your feet or your eyes.” That includes the places we go, the things we read and watch and listen to, the gestures we make, and all the sins we commit in our speech. We need to try to cut out of our lives those actions that offend God and hurt our sisters and brothers in Christ. Of course we do not cut the actual tongue or hand or foot or eye. Instead, we try to cut out the actions that abuse those parts of us that are gifts from God.
The lessons Jesus teaches in the gospel story today support one another. We need to welcome and value the people whose backgrounds and beliefs differ from our own, especially when we can make common cause with them in working for peace and justice. At the same time we need to be vigilant about the words and actions over which we do have control and for which we have responsibility: namely, our own words and actions.
We pray for our Order around the world to be given the courage, perseverance and generosity of those first Knights, so that, in our time, we cooperate with God’s grace working within us and among us, so that peace and justice may flourish in the land made holy by the Savior who gives himself to us in this Eucharist and gave himself for all peoples on the Cross. We call out to the Lord with the words of our Order’s Prayer: “Free our soul and heart from sin, from partiality, from bias, selfishness and timidity, so that we can be worthy of Your sacrifice.”
From October 2, 2009 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
