It is easy to look back and see the mistakes and wrongdoing that was done by our ancestors. In a similar way, it’s the easy option to make scapegoats of a particular group or groups and blame them for all our woes.
Right now it’s easy for us in Ireland to express critical opinions about the dire situation in the Middle East.
Tomorrow’s Gospel gives people like me, who have a tendency to be critical, a great opportunity to get up on my soapbox and point the finger at the leaders of State and church.
Remember the story in St Matthew’s Gospel (23:1-12) where Jesus upbraids the Pharisees and scribes for their hypocrisy and vanity? There are brilliant lines in the passage, this for example: “Everything they do is done to attract attention, like wearing broader phylacteries and longer tassels, like wanting to take the place of honour at banquets and the front seats in the synagogues, being greeted obsequiously in the market squares and having people call them Rabbi.” (Phylacteries are boxes of sacred texts attached to ceremonial robes, in case you were wondering.)
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I’m reminded of the damage done to children in the past. Today, for those who have suffered hurt, it’s payback time, and with a vengeance in some instances, understandably too. But it’s always dangerous to miss the wood for the trees and too easy to find scapegoats on whom we can shovel all our problems and all the injustices that have been meted out to us.
I taught Hamlet for the Leaving Certificate. I can still vividly remember a classroom discussion about whether or not Hamlet was a hypocrite. The students present clearly felt that hypocrisy was one of the worst human failings. Students raised their voices in anger when expressing their disdain and hatred for hypocrisy and hypocrites. I tried to explain it was not as simple as that. Their youthful idealism was having none of it.
What happens to us, as we mature, that we can so easily slip into the habits of the world and our society and have no problem playing the role of the hypocrite? How often have we at some stage or other spoken out of both sides of our mouths at the same time? It’s something we do. We are doing it right now and it’s not just the politicians who do it.
Look at all the current talk about protecting our environment and yet there have never been as many people taking flights that are surplus to requirement. How much food and clothing do we waste? Immediately after the recent budget there was a nationwide discussion about funding the HSE, and a general view that the Government should have been more generous in funding the health service. Has anyone ever done a survey of the millions that are wasted on medicines thrown away? Did we ever open our own medicine chest and be shocked by the amount of out-of-date medication we find? It’s far too easy to criticise “the other crowd” and exonerate ourselves from all wrongdoing.
We are forever spotting the errors and failings of others while at the same time living so easily with all our own failings and faults.
It makes life comfortable to relax in our own failings. And we don’t like being told of our errors and wrongdoing. Often the only time we own up to it is when we are caught. Would the churches ever have done anything about protecting children from sexual abuse but for the horrifying reports in the media? I doubt it.
Tomorrow’s Gospel ends with a powerful sentence: “Anyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and anyone who humbles himself will be exalted.”
I can’t help but think of the arrogance of those in our society who do what Jesus condemned the Pharisees and the scribes for doing more than 2,000 years ago. Today we may be doing it in a far more subtle and sophisticated way but we sure are behaving in such a manner that brings little good or love to our society. We should recall what Jesus said: “You must call no one on earth your father, since you have only one Father, and he is in heaven.”
Inspiring, even audacious words.