Link to today's readings - 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time [Cycle C]
Sunday, October 27, 2013
(Disclaimer: this reflection originally published in October, 2010. Hence the Tiger Woods reference.)
Reflection
I always feel a little bit superior when I work out in the morning.
Back in college, when I would walk across campus at 8:30 am, already having put in a couple hours of intense physical exertion at swim practice, I would look at the sleepy eyes and labored gait of my classmates as they struggled in a semi-conscious daze to make it to their first class. To this day, when I finish a run in the early morning hours, I stroll back to my apartment with a self-satisfied smile… as though I’ve accomplished more before breakfast than most people will manage all day.
It’s easy to feel superior. To feel as though we are going above and beyond what most people in similar circumstances do. To put ourselves in a category apart (that is, above) from those around us.
Our daily experience is replete with examples of people feeling superior in some way. The student who pulls a $5 bill out of her pocket and puts it in the collection basket while most of her peers just pass it on without contributing anything. The student who doesn’t drink and who rolls his eyes at all of his drunk classmates who are making fools of themselves stumbling back from South U on Saturday night. Or the one who heads right to work after class and who has to contribute to her college expenses while her sorority sisters take for granted their rich family’s ability to send them to school for free. It’s easy to feel as though we are different—better, really—than our peers for some reason or another. Not drinking. Going to Church every week. Doing community service.
This tendency to regard ourselves as somehow superior to others—to believe that we are better in some way—is perhaps the single most common affliction of “good” people. We know sin when we see it, or at least, the really obvious forms of sin. When a friend tells us she cheated on her boyfriend; or another informs us that he cheated on an exam by getting an advance copy from the GSI; or still another confesses that she has been hooking up with several different guys… all of those are pretty straightforward and common examples of people failing to live up to the ideals of the Gospel.
But it’s the subtler, more surreptitious variety of sin that so often plagues the devout believer. The kind that, when we’re listening to those same friends list their litany of sins, convinces us that we are better than those people. It is the deep-seated desire to peek into the lives of others and decide that we would never make those same decisions. It is the reason we tune into trashy reality television and the very basis for Bravo’s existence: there is a tendency within us to glimpse the flaws of others and to say, as did the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable, “God, I thank you that I am not like the real housewives of New Jersey or that egomaniac Tiger Woods who thought he could get away with those affairs.”
As much as we enjoy hearing about a public figure who has successfully started some great initiative like bringing fresh vegetables to urban housing projects to improve the nutrition of impoverished children, we also tune in to hear about the latest political scandal or the news that some baseball player was caught to be using performance enhancing drugs. There is an entire industry devoted to informing us of the latest fall from grace of some politician or celebrity. All because we get a sense of delight from hearing about it and telling ourselves that we would never behave in that manner.
It is precisely this self-satisfaction, this tacit understanding that we are righteous persons who are set apart from the more obviously flawed hordes of humanity, that Jesus takes aim at in today’s Gospel. The Pharisees were among the most morally upright members of society—fervent in their belief and upstanding in their action. And yet it is this sense that they were so morally blameless that they did not require the mercy of God that Jesus condemns. Even the holiest among us still needs a savior. Every single one of us has our flaws, and we all depend on the grace of God for our salvation. The inherent danger of being so morally good is that we may come to think that it is by our own merits that we earn our way into Heaven.
And yet this mistaken understanding of the moral life is explicitly condemned by the Church as a heresy. (It’s called Pelagianism, and St. Augustine spent much of his energy combating it.)
Jesus is reminding us that, no matter how “good” we may be, no matter how attentive to the Scriptures and adherent to the Commandments, we are still, ultimately, imperfect beings who rely on God’s grace and mercy to be redeemed. It is, of course, important to be assured that we are essentially good individuals, created in the image and likeness of our all-good, all-loving God, but it is likewise crucial to acknowledge those areas of our life where we need to improve.
The problem with being a devout believer is that it can lead us to become convinced that we are finished products, not requiring further work. It can result in a sort of moral complacency where we decide that our vocation is to go around helping others make better decisions, while being of the belief that we, ourselves, are all set. Jesus wishes to shake us from that complacency and challenge us to consider those areas of our life where we feel superior, where we may be convinced that we are different than others—better—and not
in need of improvement. The next time we find ourselves watching Bravo or reading online some salacious story about a political scandal and patting ourselves on the back for not cheating on a spouse or drunkenly driving our car into a tree, perhaps we might pause to pray to God and ask what it is WE still have to work on.
Reflection Questions
1) Do you ever find yourself feeling superior? What sorts of things do you do that make you feel as though you are doing more than those around you?
2) Do you think of yourself as being in “need” of a savior? Unpack that language a bit—how is the knowledge of Jesus as savior affecting your life? Is it? How does it permeate your daily decision-making?
3) In what ways could you continue to improve yourself? In what areas of your life do you think that Jesus might be calling you to become more the person He created you to be? What concrete steps could you take to make that a reality?
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