The Eighteenth Sunday of the Year (A)
Dear brothers and sisters,
There comes in each of our lives a time
when - at least once - we try to run away from the troubles and frustrations of
daily life (these times occur more often for some than for others). The
pressures and the stressors that we encounter and even sometimes endure,
become, we think, too much for us to handle and so we flee in search of a place
of solitude, quiet, and peace, a place where others cannot find us, bother us,
or take our attention away from our own needs, wants, and desires.
Each of us has tried to run away and hide,
to greater or lesser distances and with greater or lesser effectiveness. Does
it not seem, though, that each time we flee, someone manages to find us and
require something of us? We carve out a few hours to ourselves and the boss
calls with an emergency at work; we plan a vacation that turns out to be not
quite what we at first envisioned; we sneak off to a quiet room of the house
when no one is looking, but the children discover us anyway. Yes, if we are
honest, it happens to us all.
We need this time to ourselves, we say, and
sometimes we even like to invoke the example of the Lord Jesus to justify our
frustration and irritation. Even he snuck away from the crowds “to a deserted
place by himself,” we say, but the Gospel passage proclaimed for us today, on
closer inspection, proves us wrong (Matthew 14:13).
Without a doubt, the Evangelists present to
us several times in the Gospels in which Jesus set out for a quiet place. This,
we suggest, shows Jesus getting away to "recharge" and to take time
for himself, to care for himself so that he might better care for the people.
While such an interpretation may not be wholly incorrect, it seems to place the
wrong emphasis on the Lord's actions.
No, Jesus did not go away from the crowds
for himself, but to be with the Father; because he was not focused on himself,
he was not frustrated by the gathering crowd. As two commenters observed,
"Jesus shows no signs of being irked" by the gathering crowd. “Instead,
‘his heart was moved with pity’ as he peered out across the vast human sea of
hunger and heartache that pressed in around him. However fatigued, Jesus made
himself available to the sick and suffering” (Matthew 14:14).[1]
His going away from the crowds was not an
act of selfishness, as ours often is, but was rather an act of selflessness;
his attention was set not on himself, but on his Father in heaven. Whereas we often
go away not to pray, but to hide, Jesus went away not to hide, but to pray. The
difference in emphasis is no small matter and one that we would do well to
heed.
Just a few days ago, we welcomed back to
Honolulu the mortal remains of Saint Marianne Cope and enshrined them here in
the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace. It was a day filled with many
emotions, a day of laughter and of joyful tears. Most importantly, though, it
was a day for us to reflect again on what led Mother Marianne on the path of
holiness and a time to ask ourselves if we are on that same path.
As he spoke of the mana of our Beloved Mother of Outcasts, Bishop Larry reminded us
that the bones of this holy woman were given to us as a spiritual candy.
Rather, they were given to us
so
that the Holy Spirit may penetrate into our bones and lead us to feed the
hungry on our streets, to welcome the stranger on our borders, to clothe those
who are naked and vulnerable with the education that will adorn them with the
finery of wisdom, to free those imprisoned by their own self-worship.[2]
Are these not the same people who often
inconvenience us and require something of us? This list is certainly not
exhaustive.
As one simple example of what I mean, let
use an everyday example. When I first came to Hawaii eight years ago, one of
the things that particularly struck me was the friendliness of the drivers. If
someone needed to change lines on the freeway, they were waved in and they
waved back to say mahalo [thank you].
At the same time, if someone accidentally cut someone off, he would wave back
to say “Sorry!” and the one cut off would wave in response to say, “No worries!”
Driving with aloha was common. Now,
though, just eight years later, such friendliness and aloha is not easy to find on the freeways. Certainly other drivers
inconvenience us, but is this any reason for us not to love them?
I dare say that the iwi [bones] of Mother Marianne are with us to serve as a constant
reminder to us that wherever there are people in need, there we must be. In his
first encyclical, His Holiness Benedict XVI put it both brilliantly and simply
when he answered the question, "Who, then, is my neighbor."
"Anyone," he said, "who needs me, and whom I can help, is my
neighbor."[3]
Of course, helping our neighbors sometimes
proves to be something of an inconvenience to ourselves, and so we try to run
away with all of our excuses of "recharging." We put the emphasis in
the wrong place, on ourselves, and not on God who said, "whatever you did
for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me" (Matthew 25:40).
Like Mother Marianne, we must look to the example of Jesus and forget ourselves.
"Humility," said C. S. Lewis, "is not thinking less of myself,
but thinking of myself less." Precisely by thinking of herself less and
more of the patients at Kalawao and Kalaupapa, Mother Marianne progressed daily
on the path of sanctity and now is rightly honored among the Saints, whose company
we, too, are called to join by thinking of ourselves less and more of others.
As Saint John the Baptist said, "He must increase, I must decrease"
(John 3:30).
When Mother Marianne heard of the plight of
the patients of Kalawao and of the great need for people of faith to attend to
their needs and to share with them the love of God, she was the only woman
religious to answer the Bishop’s call. She knew the difficulties that awaited
her, the many inconveniences and the countless hours of labor she would endure
on their behalf; still, she went. Following the example of Christ, she emptied
herself of selfishness and selflessly gave her life for the patients.
She once said, “My heart bled for the
children and I was anxious and hungry to put a little more sunshine into their
dreary lives.” In the presence of her iwi,
we have to ask if we are anxious and hungry to put more sunshine into our own
lives, or into the lives of others. Mother Marianne would have us think of
others more and of ourselves less. Today, let us ask her to intercede for us so
we may learn to follow her on the path of holiness to arrive in the presence of
the Lord. Amen.
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