Word to the Wise
Tuesday, August 26, 2008 - Tuesday in the Twenty-first Week of Ordinary Time
[2 Thessalonians 2:1-3A, 14-17 and Matthew 23:23-26]Cleanse first the inside of the cup, so that the outside may be clean.
One of the popular spiritual/psychological terms nowadays is "integration." It broadly designates the process by which a person "gets it all together!" Another popular way of putting it is "What you see is what you get!" For most of us this is a lifetime process! Jesus is speaking of a reality that we would call "character." It means that the interior dispositions and traits (virtues) of a person are the motivating factors in their behavior. In the case of the religious authorities of his time, he was pointing out that their supposed virtuous behavior was motivated by greed and power and not by faith and honesty. "Mixed motives" is an expression that might describe many of us. We may well have the virtues of prudence, justice, temperance (moderation) and fortitude (courage) in us, but we are also aware that we occasionally make bad choices, we aren't always fair, we can over indulge our appetites and we don't always stand up for what we believe when it's inconvenient or embarrassing to do so! The difference is that if we have truly interiorized those virtues, the occasional mistakes and weaknesses will be exactly that: occasional. They will not be characteristic of us. Thus we realize on those difficult occasions that we acted "out of character." Integration means that we put those virtues into action on a consistent basis and other people can experience this example on our part. This is where the role of parents and other influential teachers is so important. Although the human person is born basically good, there are many negative formation forces in our American culture that require a deliberate effort to be overcome. It begins with parents and teachers who provide the basic formation and teach ways in which those important cardinal virtues are strengthened inside so that outside conduct is always a reflection of them. However, gradually the individual person has to assume responsibility for his or her own spiritual and moral interior! If we wish to avoid hypocrisy, we have to maintain good character. Jesus tells us where we need to look first. AMEN
config
view
logs
3840.0 KB
75 ms
4
