If you’ve been to a grocery store since March, chances are you had
this experience or something similar to it:
You were looking for a particular brand or product that the store just
could not keep in stock: staples like milk, eggs, tuna fish, soap – and
who will ever forget the Great Toilet Paper Crisis of 2020? Part of the
problem was the supply chain could not keep up with the new demands
of so many people suddenly being home all day – but a big part of the
problem were the “hoarders”: people who stockpiled many of these
staples, managing to snap them up as soon as clerks could re-stock the
shelves.
So you complained – too loudly and angrily, perhaps – to the
manager of the store. You went through the entire litany: how you have
been a loyal customer of this store for years, that this pandemic has been
difficult for you and your family, that it’s unfair that a few people should
be able to snap up everything, etc. The manager listened politely and
apologized profusely. Maybe he or she would save you a roll of TP or a
dozen eggs. Then, the next time you shopped, you found a product that had been
out of stock for weeks. Your heart leapt for joy! Never could you
imagine that hand sanitizer could be the cause of such elation; you
grabbed the tomato soup as if you had found the Holy Grail. You
resolved that you would not do without this again, so you filled your cart
with as many cans or boxes or bags of the product as you could push.
Did it ever dawn on you that someone else would now do without
because of your “stocking up”?
Or you may have experienced this: You’re at the bank to conduct
some business and the customer ahead of you seems to be renegotiating
the debt of a small European country; he or she has managed to tie up
not just one but several tellers and an assistant manager while you and
others wait. It’s finally your turn and, without realizing it, you take up
more than your fair share of their time with One more thing, Before I
forget, and As long as I’m here…….
Or you’re looking for help at the hardware store or home center and
you wait and wait while another customer has collared a clerk in search of the right nut and bolt. Finally, finally! – it’s your turn. And you
found that you had more questions about your project than you thought – as other customers waited. You had become the kind of shopper you
had complained about, the would-be-do-it-yourselfer who needed more
help than you realized.
It’s not much of a leap from being the forgiver to the forgiven. The
servant’s cruel treatment of his fellow servant begins with his forgetting
that he was once indebted and forgiven. Such forgiveness does not
come easily: it requires overcoming our own anger and outrage at the
hurt we have suffered and re-focusing our concern, instead, on the
person who wronged us; it means possessing the humility to face the
hurt we have inflicted on others as a result of our insensitivity and self-
centeredness. But only in such forgiving and seeking forgiveness are we
able to realize the possibility of bringing healing and new life to a pained
and grieving situation. Christ calls us to create within our families and
communities that king of environment in which forgiveness is joyfully
offered and humbly but confidently sought. It begins by recognizing our
own indebtedness, our own failings that divide and hurt – often without
our realizing it.
The Once and Future Hoarder 9-13-2020
September 13th, 2020The Killing Silence 9-6-2020
September 6th, 2020The silence is deafening.
Family members and friends must tiptoe around them. Spouses,
parents, children are held hostage by the silence. Not in our family, we
insist. Better to hold our tongues than set them off, we fear. It may be
alcoholism, drug addition, physical abuse that tears the family apart; or a
misunderstanding or conflict over finances, a divorce, a child’s rejection
of the family’s culture or values that creates a tension that represses the
family dynamic. It’s a silence that kills.
A student is struggling in school and doesn’t know how to ask for
help or is afraid to seek out a teacher for fear of being labeled.
A youngster is the target of bullying. He or she is miserable but is too
scared to say anything to an adult.
The project is failing; the business is going down the drain. The
company has many savvy, experienced people who know what to do –
but nothing is said, no one is consulted. This is a tough market – and
any appearance of trouble or vulnerability will sink everything. The surviving spouse is lost. The grief is more than he or she can
bear. But they don’t want to be a burden – the children have enough
going on in their lives. So the widow or widower becomes more and
more isolated.
Regardless of the cause or circumstances, fear is the controlling
agent.
Say nothing – it will just make things worse.
He won’t hear it.
She’ll never change her mind.
You’ll only get hurt.
Please, I can do this on my own. I’m fine.
And so, there is silence.
Silence – while hearts scream in agony and spirits shrivel and die.
Jesus challenges us in today’s Gospel not to tolerate the dysfunction
in our lives or allow our judgements and disappointments to isolate us
from others, but to confront those problems, misunderstandings and
issues that divide us, grieve us, and embitter us. More challenging still, Jesus says, is to face those situations in which our demands and
expectations are the cause of such turmoil and then managing to put aside those wants and needs of ours that are exacting such a heavy cost
from those we love. Christ calls us to the hard work of reconciliation, to
be committed to seeking solutions not out of indignation or self-
righteousness but out of a commitment to imitate and bring into our lives
the great love and mercy of God.
Easy Does It? 8-30-2020
August 30th, 2020A young man, eager to make it to the top, went to a “success in
business” seminar taught by a wealthy tycoon. “What’s the reason for
your phenomenal success?” he asked.
Back came the answer, in a gravelly voice: “Hard work!”
“Uh, well, what’s the second reason?”
It’s natural to find the easy way to do things. Book stores sell
thousands of “easy” books. Spanish Made Easy, Five Easy Steps to a
Better Vocabulary, Easy Does It, Eat What You Want and Lose Weight.
Looking for the easy way may be natural, but today Our Lord warns us
that about really important things, the easy way isn’t the best way. The
easy way isn’t always the right way.
Perhaps the harshest words that ever came out of the mouth of Jesus
were aimed at his friend for counseling him to take the easy way. The
scripture says Jesus turned on Peter, turning on someone…what a
phrase, and said, in new Testamentese: “Simon, get the blank out of here. Your advice of taking the easy way, avoiding the cross,
eliminating pain at any cost, is a dangerous temptation that might make
me fall. I don’t need people around me that only judge by the world’s
standards. The easy way is not always the right way.”
Many of you here with some years experience know that what Jesus
says is true! Success in life requires a willingness to resist the lure of the
easy way. A sound body requires that you exercise, eat the right foods,
and conquer bad habits. A sound mind requires that you read, that you
observe, that you continually learn, instead of resting on a handful of pet
convictions handed down from grandma and grandpa and never
expanded or enlarged. A sound marriage requires that each partner goes
into it with the understanding that marriage is not a 50/50 proposition,
but a 70/30 one, in which both partners give 70. A sound family means
that we will take the time to be sensitive to the needs of our children,
that we provide not only for their physical needs, but their emotional and
spiritual needs as well. Such goals require sacrifice, they require
perseverance…Every one of us knows that the path to personal success is the path of self denial. And why should we do this unnatural thing, take the hard way, pick the cross, say no to our inclination to ease.
Because our Lord has loved us the hard way, the godly way, the right
way; no one who looks on that cross would ever complain when God
asks us to sometimes take the hard way. After all, Jesus did not come to
make life easy. Jesus came to make human beings great People of Faith!
