Word to the Wise
Friday, February 21, 2020 - Friday in the 6th Week in Ordinary Time
[Jas 2:14-24, 26 and Mark 8:34-9:1]What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to hem, "Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well," but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it? So also faith of itself, it it does not have works, is dead. [James]
The Letter of James brings to the forefront a tension in Christian faith that has been present from the very beginning. Christianity is not simply private belief without any connection to moral behavior or social justice. Neither is it salvation that can be won on the accumulation of good deeds. Popes Benedict XVI and Francis have reminded us in their joint encyclical Lumen Fidei that faith is the result of an encounter with a love greater than any other love we could imagine. But it carries with it the responsibility to care for others. God has reached out to us and we must reach out to others. The final judgment scene in the Gospel According to Matthew (25:31-45) is a dramatic presentation of this truth. "As often as you did it for one of my least ones, you did it for me."
Putting "skin on" our faith may include devotional expressions of our love for God,and participation in the sacramental life of the Church, but it cannot stop there. The Old Testament prophets continually denounced pious behavior that had no connection with care for the "widows and orphans." This is true not only on an individualistic basis but on a collective/communitarian basis. The late Archbishop of Louisville, Thomas Kelly, O.P. once told me that when he became archbishop he was living at the cathedral rectory. He noticed that the location of the place where the homeless and "street people" could get help at the rectory had been moved from the front to the back of the house. He ordered that this assistance be moved back to the front because, as he told me, "No one wanted to see the faces of the poor!"
We have here at the university parish where I live an active group of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. I serve as their "spiritual adviser." At each meeting, I hear the reports of their home visits which precede their outreach. They directly encounter those in dire need. It is "front line" work. Perhaps we are not all called to that ministry, but the gospel and St. James both challenge us to ask what we do for "the least of my brethren." AMEN