30th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C)
Ecclesiasticus 35:12-14, 16-19 | Psalm 33:2-3,17-19,23 | 2 Timothy 4:6-8,16-18 | Luke 18:9-14
The Lord is a judge who is no respecter of personages. (Ecclesiasticus 35:12)
“The rich and powerful get away with murder.”
That’s a oft-repeated grouse that, unfortunately, does bear a kernel of truth. Ask anyone to cite an example, and it’s a rare person who can’t come up with one. Granted, some of their accusations may turn out to be pure hearsay, but I think there have been enough real-life instances through the years, of lawbreakers who were let off lightly (or completely), because making them pay the full measure for their crimes would’ve caused too much societal or economic disruption to be worthwhile. Or, perhaps, said offenders paid handsomely for their offences to be quietly buried…
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We tend to blindly trust those whom we feel to be “trustworthy” for one vague reason or another. At a basic level, we often cast critical thinking aside when it comes to incredible assertions received from our friends and family over social media, written in an authoritative style and citing reputable sources like “BBC World News” and “a Mayo Clinic health study”, or appealing to our desires and beliefs like “FREE Microsoft Surface when you forward to 50 friends!”
On a more dangerous level, we tend not to question assertions and doctrine promulgated by those whom we deem to be in authority, especially when (again) they align with our desires and beliefs. So many people believe the message of the prosperity gospel because “pastor said so,” and who doesn’t want to be wealthy? The investment recommendations of Warren Buffett are more sought after than gold, at least for those who worship at the Temple of the “Oracle of Omaha”.
And, sometimes, we confuse “cults of personality” for actual authority. If Mel Gibson, acclaimed director of The Passion of the Christ, tweeted, “Heard rumors Pope F. considering female ordination question,” I’m sure a thousand times ten thousand Catholics would retweet “POPE OKAYS FEMALE PRIESTS! ABOUT TIME!!!” because they want it to be true, but also because MEL freaking GIBSON said so!
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Today’s first reading and Gospel both proclaim in accord: The Lord doesn’t care if you’re rich and famous, or even if you only think you are. He cuts through all that shiny flimflam, exposing the soul under consideration. That gets His full attention, and woe betide anyone with Pharisaic delusions of grandeur.
As Catholics, we need to do the same: carefully consider the Message, not the messenger. Even clergy are fallible; Mother Church is now dealing with the fallout from hundreds of alleged child sex abusers wearing Roman collars, and we see occasional Archdiocese Chancery Notices warning us about men and women “of the cloth” who may not be all they seem.
But the Word of God, the Word of Truth and Love…that is strong and constant. We need to recognize it when we see or hear it, and that requires us to educate ourselves on the fundamentals of our faith, the very catechism that we despised in our younger days as a “boring waste of time”. As adults, we’ve seen the results of such apathy in others, or perhaps even in ourselves; it’s past time to Get Real and learn what the Universal Church professes in faith.
Let us also pray for the messengers, both lay and clergy, from whom we receive information and instruction, that God may grant them the strength and presence of mind to carefully discern the Truth of the words they propagate. It’s easy to denigrate them for their failure to fact-check, far harder to realize that they usually mean well…and that we ourselves may some day be guilty of doing the same. Truly, the words “there, but for the grace of God, go I” apply especially when we convince ourselves that “I’d never fall for that crap!”
In that vein, I too ask for your prayers, dear brothers and sisters, that I may not lead you astray with my daily words despite my best intentions. Otherwise, the devil would be rolling on the floor in uproarious mirth, chortling at the chaos unleashed without any effort on his part.
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While researching the topic of “cults of personality”, I stumbled across this 2011 blog post by Julie “Happy Catholic” Davis, reflecting on a popular priest’s fall from grace. I recommend that you read her post in full, but her closing words are so insightful that I’ll quote them here:
The danger of putting people on pedestals is that they will almost always fall.
Truly, the only pedestal that matters is on Mount Calvary. And the person on it will never, ever fall from grace.
Amen.