Word to the Wise
Friday, October 24, 2008 - Friday in the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time
[Ephesians 4:1-6 and Luke 12:54-59]I, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace....
I once had a banner that featured a character from the cartoon, PEANUTS: Linus Van Pelt, long suffering little brother of Lucy! The banner had the following words on it from Linus: "I love humanity; it's people I hate!" Those words come to mind when I read such a wonderful vision of the ideal community as we are given in the scripture from Ephesians today! Who could argue with such a program? Who among us does not yearn for such a community and way of living? But how many of us actually experience it on a steady basis? I'm smiling as I write this because I don't want to seem cynical or pessimistic! I've lived in community as a Dominican for most of my years in religious life. I am very aware of the challenge to incarnate the humility and gentleness, the bearing with one another and the struggle to maintain a sense of unity that is part and parcel of any human community - especially in our individualistic culture! I also have seen Linus's famous statement paraphrased, as it were, in this way: I love community; it's the members that I hate! Well, we can't do it that way. The challenge to love is not to love an abstraction but another person, and not just the "group" but the individual members of the group! So many of us think (and I include myself in this): I'd find it easier to "love" so-and-so if only he/she didn't act in such and such a way! Perhaps we can draw renewed motivation from the words above where we are exhorted "to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received!" Another way of saying it which I occasionally offer to people in the Sacrament of Reconciliation is, "Am I living the way I want people to remember me?" There will be "one Lord, one faith and one baptism," but there will also be that brother or sister who is hard to get along with! We can't have one without the other! AMEN