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| George (played by Jimmy Stewart) and Clarence (played by Henry Travers) |
[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Third Sunday 2012]
In today’s second reading from 1
Corinthians 12, St. Paul says, “God placed the parts, each one of them, in the
body as he intended;” or, as the verse is translated in another version of the
Bible: “God has set each member of the body in the place he wanted it to
be.” (1 Corinthians 12: 18)
That line makes me think of a
great scene from the movie I spoke about in my Christmas homily, “It’s a
Wonderful Life.”
Clarence, the guardian angel of
the main character, George Bailey, was trying to dissuade George from killing
himself by showing George what the world would have been like if he had never
been born. But it wasn’t an easy task
for Clarence! For a long time, George
convinced himself that the changes he was seeing in his friends, family and
surroundings were just the work of his very creative imagination—or the result
of some magic trick performed by Clarence.
What finally made it clear to
George that what he was seeing around him was real, was when he tried to visit
his mother (who, of course, didn’t recognize him and called him crazy), and
when he went to the place where “Bailey Park” used to be. (Bailey Park was the housing development that
George had helped to finance through his Building and Loan Company.)
In place of the beautiful homes
that used to be there, all George saw in front of him were gravestones. Clarence said to him, “Are you sure this is
Bailey Park?” George responded, “Well,
this should be Bailey Park. But where
are all the houses?” Clarence answered,
“You weren’t here to build them.”
Then George looked to one side,
and he spotted a gravestone that had the name of his brother, Harry Bailey,
chiseled into it. George had saved Harry
from drowning when they were children.
Harry had gone on to become a war hero during the Second World War. But the dates on his gravestone read
1911-1919.
As George knelt on the ground
looking at the stone in disbelief, Clarence said to him, “Your brother, Harry
Bailey, broke through the ice and was drowned at the age of nine.”
George immediately jumped up and
screamed, “That’s a lie! Harry Bailey
went to war! He got the Congressional
Medal of Honor! He saved every man on
that transport!”
Clarence shot back, “Every man on
that transport died! Harry wasn’t there
to save them because you weren’t there to save Harry!”
It was the perfect illustration
of what Clarence had said to George a little earlier in the film: “Strange,
isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so
many other lives. When he isn’t around,
he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?”
St. Paul would most definitely
agree, based on that line from 1 Corinthians 12 that I quoted to you just a few
moments ago: “God placed the parts, each one of them, in the body as he
intended.”
According to the teaching of 1
Corinthians 12, we, together, make up the body of Christ, which is the
Church. This means that, individually,
we are like the various parts of a
physical body: we each have different roles, different gifts, different
functions in God’s plan for the salvation of the world. And yet, just as all the different parts of a
physical body are supposed to interact with one another and work together for
the good of the body as a whole, so too we in the Church (and in the world) are
supposed to interact with one another and work together for the good of all.
That’s the will of our good and
loving God.
So obviously what we do (and what
we don’t do) in this life affects not only ourselves; to some extent what we do
and what we don’t do affects everyone
else, because our lives are so closely intertwined with the lives of
others. St. Paul makes that point here
by saying that, if one part of the body suffers, all the other parts of the
body suffer with it.
We all know this by experience,
I’m sure. If you have a toothache or an
earache, for example, it’s not just your tooth or ear that suffers.
That one hurting part of your body affects your entire physical organism in a negative way. And it ends up making you miserable—from head
to toe!
It’s a terrible thing when one
part of your body hurts and everything else seems to hurt with it.
But do you know what’s even worse,
my brothers and sisters? What’s even worse is when you’re missing a
part of your body! What’s even worse
is when all the parts of your body that should be there aren’t!
Just ask anyone who’s had a part
of their body amputated, or who was born without one or more of their limbs.
This was the lesson George Bailey
learned from Clarence, when he got to see what the world would have been like
if he had never been born. He came to
understand that he was a missing part
of “the body”—and that his whole town was suffering because of his absence.
And so it is in the real world,
when God wants people around, and they aren’t!
As Clarence said so prophetically,
when a person isn’t around who is supposed to be around, “he leaves an awful
hole.”
I ask you this morning, how many
“holes” have been left in our world because of the shootings at Sandy Hook
Elementary School last month, and because of the many other murders and acts of
violence that take place in our country every day?
How many “holes” have been left in
our nation because of abortion, since that horrific practice was legalized 40
years ago this very month?
Last I knew, about 55 million!
If God has a plan for each and
every human person (and he does!)—a plan which involves their interaction with other
people in the body of Christ and in the world—then what happens when someone who’s
an important part of that plan isn’t there?
If you have a young son or
daughter, for example, and it was part of God’s plan for that son or daughter
to marry one of the children killed in Newtown, Connecticut, last month, how
will your child’s life be affected in the future? Or what if the person whom God wanted your
son or daughter to marry was aborted and never made it out of the womb?
Or what if, in the plan of God,
one of those children from Newtown was destined to become a great
scientist—maybe the scientist who would unlock the secret to Parkinson’s
Disease and discover a cure?
The “hole” that person leaves
will certainly have a negative impact on my life! I can guarantee that.
I remember seeing a cartoon several
years ago that made the point in an extremely powerful way. In this cartoon, a man looks up to heaven and
cries out, “God, why haven’t you sent us people with cures for cancer and Aids,
and answers to world hunger and all our social problems?” A voice comes from heaven: “I did.” The man says, “But, where are they?” The Lord responds, “You aborted them!”
Among the almost 55 million who
have been killed in the womb in the last 4 decades, don’t you think there were
at least a few great scientific minds?
And perhaps a few economists, who would have had the insights that we
need to turn our sick economy around?
And perhaps a few people who would have developed successful businesses
to put some of our unemployed citizens back to work? And maybe even a few good priests and
religious who could have saved some souls who otherwise will die in the state
of mortal sin?
Clarence, the angel, was right: “Each
man’s life touches so many other lives.
When he isn’t around, he leaves an awful hole.”
May God help us all to take this
truth seriously, and then to make every effort—by our words, by our deeds, and
yes, even by our votes—to prevent any more “holes” from afflicting our world.
