(Sixth Sunday of the Year (A): This homily was given on
February 16, 2020 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond
Suriani. Read Sirach 15:15-20; Psalm
119:1-2, 4-5, 17-18, 33-34; 1 Corinthians 2:6-10; Matthew 5:17-37.)
[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Sixth Sunday 2020]
John stood before the assembly of students on the first day
of school and he said, "Good morning, boys and girls, I'm your new
principal. Welcome to Mediocre Middle
School. During the upcoming year we will
be implementing a brand new philosophy here; it's called the "Just Get
By" philosophy. From now on, we
will no longer challenge you to use your God-given abilities and do your
best. In fact, it won't matter to us
whether you get an A-plus or a D-minus in any particular course. The only thing we ask is that you avoid
getting 'F's'. If you can simply avoid
failure in each subject, that will be acceptable to your teachers and to those
of us in the school administration."
(Wouldn't some of you young people like to go to that school?)
The other day Jane attended the first meeting for the new
local basketball team. The coach said to
her and the other girls, "Ladies, I have some good news for you. During the upcoming season we will not be
having any practices or scrimmages. You
can spend your time doing something else.
You won't have to spend hours learning plays or any new skills. As long as you can dribble the ball without
tripping over yourself, and shoot the ball so that it ends up somewhere in the
near vicinity of the basket—that's all we care about. Our aim is not to win, or to teach you new
skills, or to help you to learn how to work together as a team. All we want to do is survive the
season."
Bill recently bought a new company. During his first day as owner, he gathered
together all of his employees in the corporate meeting room and he said,
"Friends, from now on your one job requirement will be to show up for work
every day. You don't need to do anything
while you’re here, unless you feel like it.
All I will ask is that you take up space here for 8 hours. Then you can go home."
Now you might say, "Fr. Ray, what are you getting
at? Those are 3 ridiculous stories. In the real world those things would never
happen!"
Correct! And that's
precisely why I shared them with you today!
You see, each of those anecdotes provides us with a clear example of
mediocrity and minimalism: John the principal told his students that he was satisfied
if they did the bare minimum in their studies; Jane's coach told her that she
was happy with a mediocre effort and performance on the basketball court; Bill
told his workers that all he wanted them to do was show up for work: "Do
the bare minimum—just come through the door and take up space—and I'll be happy
and pay you a full salary."
Well, I think we all know that in the real world this kind
of mediocrity and minimalism is not acceptable either in school or in sports or
in the workplace. Then why, I ask you, has it become acceptable for many people in the
area of personal morality? Sad to
say, but when it comes to moral matters, many people today have become
minimalists. Their attitude is not,
"What must I do to be perfect? What
must I do to be the best that I can be?"
Rather, their attitude is, "What's the bare minimum that I have to
do to get into heaven?" Or, to
phrase the question another way: "How much can I get away with here on
earth and still avoid going to hell?"
Jesus, in today's Gospel text from the Sermon on the Mount,
gives us an implicit but very clear warning against this type of minimalistic
attitude. In effect he says to us,
"Look, not only must you try to avoid mortal sins in your life; you must
also try to avoid the venially sinful attitudes that lead to mortal
sins." For example, he says, "You have heard the commandment imposed
on your forefathers, 'You shall not commit murder; every murderer will be
liable to judgment.' [But] what I say to
you is: everyone who grows angry with his brother will be liable to judgment;
any man who uses abusive language toward his brother shall be answerable to the
Sanhedrin, and if he holds him in contempt he risks the fires of
Gehenna." Murder and deep
hatred are the mortal sins that Jesus mentions here. But at the root of those sins is anger. So initially—yes—the anger we have in our
heart may only be a venial sin. But if
we don't make the effort to face it, deal with it, repent of it and let it go,
then Jesus indicates that it can grow to the point where it becomes mortally
sinful.
This is why we must not be minimalists when it comes to
matters of morality. If we don't take
our venial sins seriously and try to uproot them from our lives, then they can
easily dispose us to more serious sins.
Our Lord makes the same point here with regard to impure
thoughts. He says, "You have heard the commandment, 'You shall not commit
adultery.' [But] what I say to you is:
anyone who looks lustfully at a woman has already committed adultery with her
in his thoughts." Does that
mean that every impure thought that pops into a person's mind uninvited is
mortally sinful? No, it doesn't. But Jesus is warning us, "Look, if you
don't make the effort to dismiss an impure thought when it comes into your
mind—if you entertain the thought and say to yourself, 'Let me see how far I
can go with this without falling into serious sin'—then chances are you will
fall into serious sin. And that serious
sin will come the moment you have a firm intention to commit the lustful
act." The bottom line: when it
comes to sins of lust and anger, the message of Jesus is: "Don't be a
minimalist. Don't simply try to avoid
the big sins or you may fall into them."
The proper Christian attitude concerning moral matters was
expressed by our Lord in one line from this same Sermon on the Mount. He said, "Be
perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect." "But Fr. Ray, we're weak and sinful
human beings; it's not possible for us to be perfect." Here I think we can all take a lesson from two
great football coaches—one named Lombardi, the other named Belichick. Jerry Kramer, and other ex-Packers have often
said, "Coach Lombardi demanded perfection from us. He made us strive for absolute perfection on
that football field. Of course, he knew
(and we knew) that we could never attain that goal. But because he made us strive for that ideal,
we all became better football players than we ever thought we could be."
You can be sure that Bill Belichick has the same message
for his football players before every game and even before every practice. Actually the message is implicit in what he
says to his players all the time: “Do your job!”
Let me summarize it for you in this way:
In moral matters, if our goal is mediocrity, mortal sin may
be the result. But, if perfection is our
goal, we will probably become better people, better disciples of Jesus Christ, better
Catholics than we ever thought we could be.
May it be that way for all of us.
