Word to the Wise
Saturday, September 12, 2009 - Saturday in the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time
[1 Timothy 1:15-17 and Luke 6:41-49]A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good, but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil; for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.
Ethical conduct is a subject that appears before our eyes almost every day through personal experience and media reports of court trials of prominent figures such as Bernard Madoff, But unethical conduct need not be criminal to be unethical. The rightness or wrongness of an action is not a matter of its legality. There are plenty of examples of persons who commit unethical acts under the color of law. The pious response when confronted is, "I broke no laws!" The real issue is one of moral character, as the quotation from Jesus' teaching in the gospel scripture for today shows. People of good character are not likely to engage in unethical conduct. The "store of goodness" comes from interiorizing the gospel values - especially the values of love of God and neighbor! The greed revealed in some of the prominent trials is very deep in the persons is a sign of the "store of evil." The refusal to admit to values that transcend mutual convenience leads to decisions that focus solely on gain and pleasure without regard to the damage being done to oneself and others. It is not a matter of a single unethical act representing a momentary lapse (although such an act can have serious consequences), it is a matter of a systemic amoral rot, as Jesus points out earlier in the gospel passage, speaking of good and bad trees. Today's gospel scripture is a challenge to self-examination on a personal and societal level. We can live in perpetual mistrust of others' motives or we can live in a community of love. The choice is ours. AMEN
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