Sitting with the Sacred

This week’s readings:

1. Ezekiel 33:7–9
2. Psalm 95:1–2, 6–7, 8–9
3. Romans 13:8–10
4. Matthew 18:15–20

What this week’s readings say to me:

This week’s readings unpack concepts that the English language zips into a suitcase its speakers call love. The first reading tells me that one concept that love suitcase holds is looking out for each other. The first reading goes on to remind that the drive within us to protect each other is often painful because we don’t always appreciate protective efforts or recognize them for what they are. We especially bristle against warnings, advice, and other kinds of help when we didn’t ask for it.

If is looking out for each other is one half of a pair of glasses that go into the love suitcase, not harming each other is the other half. Maybe a better metaphor for these concepts is a set of hearing aids rather than a pair of glasses. Or maybe the love suitcase contains both a set of hearing aids and a pair of glasses. To look out for each other, we have to be able to see our surroundings through God’s eyes and to hear through God’s ears. Wearing God’s glasses and God’s hearing aids also allows us to recognize and appreciate the protective efforts of God and our neighbors in our lives. This is one message I get from the second reading.

The third reading points me to several ways we harm each other when we don’t wear God’s glasses and hearing aids, when all we can see is our own desires rather than what’s best for us and the people and resources God has given to us. Not wearing the assistive devices God wants to give us doesn’t just result in blurry vision or distorted hearing. It results in a variety of wounds or diseases. The preventative medicine and treatment for these is love. Like an antibiotic, acting with love provides an answer to numerous problems. The fourth reading first recommends that when someone wounds us, we try to treat the injury ourselves. But sometimes we run out of bandages or ice packs and have to get some from a neighbor — or a store. Then there are the times when these over-the-counter treatments don’t do the trick, and we have to seek professional help and sometimes prescription remedies. This is the extended analogy that came to my mind when I read the Gospel reading’s guidance about what to do when someone “sins against” me (Matt 18:15). So maybe this container that represents self-giving love holds not only a special pair of glasses and hearing aids but also special bandages, ice packs, and the ultimate prescription drug — one that doesn’t cease to be effective if we turn to it too much. Instead, I’m told, the more we rely on it, the more powerful it becomes.

What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:

The reflection on this week’s readings offered by Carolyn Jacobson, MSW, PhD doesn’t use my analogy of the suitcase of love and its contents. Frankly, I’m glad because making that analogy work involves quite a stretch. However, if Dr. Jacobson’s reflection had used my analogy, it would say that we aren’t meant to use the items in the suitcase in a vacuum. Their power lies in their ability to facilitate connection.

Beyond this week’s readings:

My first reaction when I thought about what to write for this section was that the first reading is really uncomfortable to read. Reading it doesn’t give me the cushion of forgetting the passage’s commission and warning as I move on to the next part of the Mass.

And it’s warning is unpleasant to hear. Why? Because it’s easiest to warn someone when there is physical evidence that something he or she is doing clearly hurts himself or herself and/or others. But spiritual harm can be harder to detect than physical harm. I hate even the thought of telling people what I think they won’t like hearing if I can’t prove that what I’m warning against is harmful.

Sharing and being open to correction is especially difficult today when so many voices have access to audiences, and not all opinions can coexist in healthy, productive ways. I wonder if the amount of access many people these have these days to a variety of opinions and information means there are fewer incidences of innocently not knowing something. I wonder if there’s choosing not to find out or choosing to ignore is more common now than these responses have been at other times. Or has humanity simply ignored different individual and societal ills in different ways at different times in different places?

On one hand, I recognize not making assumptions is important, but if I’m reasonably sure that someone has access to the same information about what’s right and wrong and I do, it doesn’t seem helpful to, or warn him or her, even if I haven’t done so before and I don’t know whether someone else has.

I’m wrestling with part of the Gospel reading too. It says that if someone wrongs me and doesn’t want to make amends, even when other people, including those in authority tell him or her to, I should treat the person like a Gentile. To many characters in the Bible, treating someone else like a Gentile means avoiding them as much as possible. And yet, while Jesus might challenge Romans and Sumerians, He doesn’t reject them. Maybe the message is that He doesn’t reject people who are open to Him but that I don’t need to feel responsible for the choices of people who reject my concern. I don’t need to keep opening my concern to dismissal. Rather, the time to consider reopening that door is when the person opens it a crack him or herself.

I want to close this post with a prayer for parents, guardians, teachers, and mentors. God bless advisers and caregivers and grant them Your wisdom, courage, and consolation. Amen.

Work cited

 The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.