My Difficult Neighbour…

Thursday of the 9th Week in Ordinary Time
2 Timothy 2:8-15 | Psalm 24:4-5,8-10,14 | Mark 12:28-34


The scribe said to Jesus, ‘Well spoken, Master; what you have said is true: that God is one and there is no other. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and strength, and to love your neighbour as yourself, this is far more important than any holocaust or sacrifice.’ (Mark 12:32-33)

About a decade ago, I spent Holy Week on business in Taiwan. It was a very busy trip, and we ended up working right through the Easter Triduum and into the first week of Easter. It was the first Holy Week I’d not been in church, and I was extremely uneasy all week, a veritable skin-crawling sensation.

After that incident, I resolved never to travel overseas during Holy Week again and, sure enough, that uneasy feeling never returned.

Except recently, when I reflected upon that troubled time, because it was then that I realised the real reason for my extreme reaction: I could not properly “love my neighbour” at the time.

You see, I was a consultant to a software team that was facing a rather difficult technical manager at a client site. He was critical of our efforts in a rather strident manner, because things were running far too slowly if not simply failing, and my appalling command of Mandarin and nonexistent Hokkien didn’t help me smooth things over with him.

In short, I was stressed to a point just shy of a physical outburst…which would have been applied directly to the manager’s face. I’ve yet to visit holocaust on anyone, but I came really close that time. “Love thy neighbour?” Hah! I wanted to kill him!

It took some needed separation in time and space to realise that he too was probably under great stress. Quite a few of the failures we encountered were actually due to issues with their own infrastructure; they were quietly limping along, with a few minor hiccups that could be papered over, but then our shiny new software came along and flattened their house of cards. He happened to be the reporting manager for both our project and the IT department, so his bosses were almost certainly shoving rather pointed questions up his nethers.

In hindsight, I could’ve taken some time off during that weekend, to clear my head in church and remind myself of Christ’s sacrifice and rejoice in His resurrection, and perhaps receive some divine inspiration on how to proceed with this difficult task. Instead, I chose to slave with the team all week long, trying to work around the issues we were facing…and not making much headway.

I suppose a more accurate description of that period would be: I loved my neighbour as myself…not very much at all. To realise that I could not love myself brought the skin-crawling back all over again.

Lord, You have searched me, and You know me through and through. All my thoughts and my faults lie open to Your gaze. Help me learn to love myself as You love me, that I may in turn love and lift others as You love and lift me, especially those like me who wander in the darkness of fear, uncertainty, doubt and anger. In that way, may we all be granted lightness of heart and clarity of mind, to love and serve You now and forever. Amen.

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