Well, it’s been a good week here at St. Patrick Parish. I’m still living with my mom, but we have found another really nice house not too far from here and we the deal may be done by the first of December. Kind of reminds me of a story.
One Sunday morning, a mother went in to wake her son and tell him it was time to get ready for church.
He replied, “I’m not going.”
“Why not?” she asked.
“I’ll give you two good reasons,” he said. “(1), they don’t like me, and (2), I don’t like them.”
His mother replied, “I’ll give you two good reasons why you SHOULD go to church: (1) You’re 59 years old, and (2) you’re the pastor!”
A couple of weeks ago, I talked about what can be seen a true meaning of “humility.” Namely, humility is simply to know yourself as you are, without illusion, before Almighty God. This involves acknowledging everything about you that is right and true and beautiful and just, without falling prey to the temptation of false modesty. At the same time, it also involves acknowledging the gravity of our capacity to sin without being Pollyannaish (sugar-coating it). In the end, when we fully appreciate what we have been given, and what we have been FORgiven, the only response possible, and the only response necessary, is gratitude.
This week, Our Lord gives us a very good example of that in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. In the Jewish mind of first century Palestine, you could not get a more diverse comparison. The Pharisees were seen as those who studied the Law of Moses and tried to live it out to fullest. They were held in highest regard. On the other hand, tax collectors were seen as collaborators with the Roman occupational government and enriching themselves by their position. They were despised by all. So at the outset of the parable, the sympathies of the crowd would very much have been with the Pharisee and very much against the tax collector.
But Jesus turns that notion on upside down. In the parable, it is the arrogant Pharisee whose prayer is fruitless and the tax collector who goes away justified. The reason is clear. The Pharisee is honest, but arrogant; the tax collector stands honest and humble.
Can humility be so easily perverted? Absolutely. There is one kind which is particularly insidious. Sometimes it is a wisp of subtle, underlying cynicism. At other times, it is a pervasive sense of accommodation to a make-shift solution. Most often it is an expression of undeniable frustration. Or the ubiquitous, “That’s just the way it’s done around here.
In Psychology, this phenomenon is called “learned helplessness.” Fr. Dan spoke to this a couple of homilies ago when he gave the example of the elephant that remains tied to the stake because he does not believe he has the strength to pull it out.
Oddly enough, even when things are out of whack, and even when we know they are out of whack, we are oddly resistant to change.
[Here I told the THE THOU ARE EAGLE STORY. Really, it’s best just to listen to it on the audio file.]
And so my dear friends in at St. Patrick Parish, I have but one question for you…
Are you chicken?
or are you eagle?
As Christians, we are never helpless. In the power of the Holy Spirit, we are a light on a lampstand, the salt of the earth, the city set on a hill. We were created to be great saints, right now, right here in 99504.