22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A (Sept. 3)
First Reading: Jer 20:7-9
Second Reading: Rom 12:1-2
Gospel Reading: Mt 16:21-27
In this Sunday’s liturgy, St. Paul
urges us not to let ourselves be “conformed to this world,” but to “discern what
is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
God and “the world” give us conflicting messages. When Jeremiah obeyed God, “the world” mocked and reproached him. When Peter exclaimed “God forbid!” on hearing of Christ’s approaching death, Jesus rebuked him for setting his heart on human things instead of divine.
“The world” exerts a constant pressure on us. We see how it affects teenagers, dictating their clothes, their friends, their language, their entertainment, etc., but we do not always recognize its effect on us. In practice, most of us are “scripted by the opinions, the perceptions, the paradigms of the people around us,” Stephen Covey says in his bestseller The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
For example, according to “the world,” our society’s attitude to sex is normal, and Victorian England, in which women did not expose their bodies and literature virtually ignored sex, was unnaturally repressive.
History shows just the opposite: our society’s preoccupation with sex is highly abnormal. Sex is very pleasurable and necessary for the continuation of the human race, but our society regards it as the be-all and end-all of existence. Our fixation on it is ludicrously out of proportion to its importance and even its pleasure.
Sex now initiates relationships, instead of representing their culmination in marriage. Movies, sitcoms, soap operas, and novels depict it. Jokes are based on it. Magazines tell women how to cultivate it. Sexual advances are expected on dates. Sexual attraction is held to excuse the breaking of solemn promises.
Our society’s sex mania is perhaps more obvious to me than to others because I do not watch television, “surf” the Internet, or read magazines. When I say so, I often get the response, “Neither do I, Father, except for the news,” but reporters, too, are fixated on sex.
We are immersed in society, and our whole society is saturated with sex. We take it for granted, like a fish in water. “Our whole civilization is aphrodisiac,” philosopher Henri Bergson said as long ago as 1932, and it has become steadily more so ever since.
St. Paul’s warning, therefore, is addressed to all of us: “Do not be conformed to this world.” That means no pre-marital or extra-marital sex in thought, word, or deed; no divorce, artificial contraception, abortion, or homosexual activity. It means avoiding dress, books, magazines, conversation, people, movies, and advertisements that tempt us or others to disobey the sixth and ninth commandments.
Of course, it means keeping all the commandments. For an accountant, it means no false financial statements; for a policeman, no bribes; for a union worker, no illegal strikes; for nurses and doctors, no participation in abortions or euthanasia; for employers, no delay in paying wages.
For everyone, it means honesty in crossing the border or filing income tax returns; attending Mass every Sunday even when there is a ball game on; making the sign of the cross and saying grace before and after meals even in public; avoiding discourtesy in traffic, as though our own errands are more important than anyone else’s. In brief, Christ said, it means loving God with all our being and our neighbours as ourselves.
It is not easy. It brings mockery and reproach. However, it is the only way to true peace of mind, as Jeremiah found.
“Intrinsic security ... doesn’t come from what other people think of us or how they treat us,” said Steven Covey. “It doesn’t come from the scripts they’ve handed us. It doesn’t come from our circumstances or our position.... Peace of mind comes when our life is in harmony with true principles and values and in no other way.”
That is why the psalmist prays, “Your ways, O Lord, make known to me; teach me your paths.”