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| Dick and Tom Smothers |
(Twenty-third Sunday of the
Year (B): This homily was given on September 9, 2012 at St. Pius X Church,
Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.
Read James 2: 1-5.)
[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Twenty-third Sunday 2012]
“Mom always liked you
best!”
If you watched television
in the late 1960s, you probably remember that line from the old Smothers
Brothers Comedy Hour. At some point in
almost every show, Tom Smothers would say those words to his younger brother,
Dick.
“Mom always liked you
best!”
And it almost always got a
laugh.
But real-life favoritism—as
St. James indicates in our second reading today—is anything but funny!
Just ask some of our Olympic
athletes from 30 or 40 years ago. They
know this, unfortunately, by their own experience. Now it’s true, in every Olympics a few
athletes will complain about the scores given to them by the judges in their
respective events. But nothing in the
recent past compares with the scoring injustices that took place 3 or 4 decades
ago—when communism was alive and well in Eastern Europe!
Remember those days? You’d have an American athlete, for example,
perform a great gymnastics’ routine, and the U.S. judge would give him a 9.8
out of 10; the French judge would give a 9.7; the Canadian judge a 9.5; but the
judges from the Soviet Union and the other Soviet bloc countries would give
scores in the 7s!
Now, to be fair, it
sometimes worked the other way around as well: great performances by Soviet
athletes were sometimes purposely under-scored by U.S. judges (and judges from
other free, western nations).
Which only serves to
illustrate how difficult it is for human beings to be impartial! Unfortunately, the problem of showing
partiality was not unique to the mother of Tom and Dick Smothers and to judges
at the Olympic Games during the Cold War years.
The temptation to show partiality is a temptation that every human being
faces—constantly!
The words of
St. James in today’s second reading are a challenge to us in this regard: they
challenge us to acknowledge this temptation and deal with it! Listen again to his words: “My brothers and sisters, show no partiality
as you adhere to the faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ. For if a man with
gold rings and fine clothes comes into your assembly, and a poor person in
shabby clothes also comes in, and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine
clothes and say, ‘Sit here, please,’ while you say to the poor one, ‘Stand
there,’ or ‘Sit at my feet,’ have you not made distinctions among yourselves
and become judges with evil designs?”
Now speaking of
distinctions, I think we need to make an important one at this point between partiality and preference. Every human
being has certain preferences in life with respect to other people—and there’s
nothing wrong with that. We all have
certain people in our lives whom we like more than others; people we are closer
to; people with whom we have special relationships. There’s nothing wrong with having such
preferences; it’s a normal part of life on planet earth. The
problem comes, however, when others suffer specifically because of these
preferences!
That’s
partiality! For example, in the
situation that St. James describes in this text, the problem was NOT that the
rich man was treated so nicely; the
problem was that the poor man was treated badly precisely because the rich man
was treated so nicely!
Because we are
weak human beings who are tainted by the effects of original sin, it’s very
hard for us to be impartial at every moment of every day, in every circumstance
of life. In fact, I would say that only God is perfectly impartial; we, on
the other hand, can be very easily influenced (whether we choose to admit it or
not) by things like money and power and fame and social status, etc.
St. Peter came
to understand God’s perfect impartiality during the controversy in the early
Church over whether or not Gentile men could become Christians without first
being circumcised. And so he said in
Acts 10: “I begin to see how true it is that God shows no partiality. Rather, the man of any nation who fears God
and acts uprightly is acceptable to him.”
St. Paul came
to the same conclusion, and so he wrote in Romans 2:11: “With God there is no
favoritism.”
For the Lord,
impartiality is the norm; for us, sad to say, it’s often the exception, not the
rule.
Which means that for us it always needs to be a goal! It needs to be a goal that
we strive to attain each and every day—if we’re really serious about living our
Catholic Christian faith.
And one of the
keys to reaching the goal of impartiality (or at least coming close to it) is
to try to see other people as God sees them.
Why is God
totally impartial?
It’s because he
sees each of us—all of us—from the same perspective and through the very same
“lens.” It doesn’t matter if we’re rich
or poor, powerful or weak, famous or infamous: when the Lord looks at a human
being—any human being, beginning at the moment of conception—he sees someone
created in his image and likeness; he sees someone that his Son, Jesus Christ
suffered and died for; he sees someone that he loves with a perfect and eternal
love.
Our tendency is
to have a much less positive perspective on people—and especially on those who
aggravate us, or cheat us, or mistreat us; or who aren’t very important in the
eyes of the world, or who aren’t very smart or well-dressed or clean; or who
lack some other personal quality that we place a high value on.
We tend to see
these people in a negative light, which, of course, leads us to show partiality
to others whom we find more appealing.
Obviously,
therefore, overcoming the sin of partiality is not easy! It takes prayer, and practice—and a lot of
effort. It involves training ourselves
to look at every person we meet and think, “This is a person created in the
image and likeness of Almighty God; this is a person Jesus Christ our Lord and
Savior suffered and died for; this is someone whom the Creator of the universe
loves with a perfect and eternal love.”
If Mrs.
Smothers had had those thoughts when she looked at her two sons, Tom and Dick,
she certainly wouldn’t have liked her son, Dick, best (presuming that she
really did favor Dick over Tom). If
Olympic judges 30 or 40 years ago had had those thoughts when they evaluated
athletes from other countries, they certainly would have been fairer in their
scoring. And if the Christian mentioned
in this passage from St. James’ letter had had those thoughts when he looked at
the poor man who came into his church that day, I’m sure he would have treated
that poor man with a lot more dignity and respect.
“Dear Lord, help each and
every one us to succeed where these others failed. Help us to see everyone—even our worst
enemy—as you see them, and
thereby avoid the sin of partiality.”
