Try Your Hardest To Enter By The Narrow Door

Recently in one of the Scripture readings at Mass, we heard someone ask Jesus if only a few people would go to Heaven.  In response, He tells us to try our hardest to enter by the narrow door.*  To love as best as we can, we have to fit through a narrow space, we must humble ourselves so we can love more.  We are to strip away all in ourselves that prevents us from loving God and our neighbor.  

We are called to shun anything that leads us to hate.  God calls us to uphold the dignity of our neighbor.  We all must respect our neighbor regardless of the race of our neighbor; to do otherwise is to be racist and reject God's law of love.  Racism reflects hate, and so we are called to be antiracist, working against racism.  I think of the Black Lives Matter sign that I saw in the window of a bookstore in San Jose last week.  

A sign is just a beginning.  Last month, on the feast day of Saint Peter Claver who ministered to slaves in the 1600s partly by bringing food and medicine to them, I heard someone say that Saint Peter Claver would have approved of the statement that Black lives matter.  While likely true, Saint Peter Claver showed that Black lives matter much more through how he treated them rather than what he said about them.  

What we do matters much more than what we say.  Black persons should not be subject to the discrimination which continues to be inflicted on them.  Black individuals should not be brutalized by police officers or anyone else because of their skin color.  While it is important to declare that Black lives matter, it is much more important that we show through our actions that we value the lives of our Black sisters and brothers.  

This particular bookstore I've mentioned prominently stocks books on racial justice.  They are encouraging their customers to be antiracist, to change not just what they say but also what they do.  

It is easier to change what we say than what we do.  Nevertheless, God has given us free will.  We can use our free will to work for racial justice.  We can decide to be in psychotherapy to address the psychological insecurities which drive us to degrade others, including on the basis of race.  We can get to know and become friends with others of various races, to demolish walls of prejudice.  We can read books on racial justice so we recognize how institutional racism breeds, in our voting laws, our criminal laws and our law enforcement policies, and in how these laws and policies are made, interpreted and implemented.  We can make the choice to pray, to ask God for grace.  Through grace, we can do what we would not otherwise be able to do.  If God pours His love into our hearts,** then we can love our neighbor as God does.  Amen.  

* Matthew 7:13; Luke 13:24 

** Romans 5:5 

Invited To Step Outside Of Ourselves

God corrects us since we are ignorant.  God shows us what we do not want to see.  In what God shows us, our misperceptions are corrected so that we see with clear vision.  

We have preconceptions of who God is.  In our mind's eye, we have picture of what we believe God looks like.  Similarly, we can have an idea of the appearance of Mary, the mother of Jesus.  What we imagine is not necessarily accurate.  God sets us straight so we see right again.  

We get an inkling of such correction from Our Lady of Guadalupe, who appeared in 1531 to Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, a native peasant, on Tepeyac Hill in what is present-day Mexico.  After initially coming to him a few times on that hill, later he went before the bishop to convey her request that a shrine be built there, so that people could go there to receive grace.  The bishop told Juan Diego that he needed a sign to confirm that the apparition truly was Our Blessed Mother Mary.  When Juan Diego, at Our Blessed Mother's direction, returned to the bishop with flowers from Tepeyac Hill even though it was winter, upon Juan Diego opening his tilma, or his mantle, and letting the flowers fall to the ground, upon his tilma was impressed an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  

Our Lady of Guadalupe is depicted on the tilma as having the features of a woman native to the land in which she appeared.  Europeans, only having arrived in the Americas less than forty years earlier, only had seen such native people for the first time a few decades before she appeared to Saint Juan Diego.  For centuries Europeans likely had been envisioning Our Blessed Mother Mary as not looking like she appeared to Juan Diego.  

Europeans were coming to the Americas to evangelize the native peoples, having a certain idea of what Our Blessed Mother Mary looked like.  As it turned out, the native people seemed to have evangelized the arriving Europeans, who were probably corrected in their misconceptions of the certainty of the appearance of Our Blessed Mother Mary.  

We can be convinced we have something to show to our neighbor, when in fact our neighbor has something to show us, when God wants to show us something through our neighbor.  We can be sure we are the teachers, when in fact we are the students.  The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is a call to humility.  

In this summons to humility, God guides us to see our neighbor with fresh eyes, casting aside our inaccurate perceptions of our neighbor.  So often we avoid seeing our neighbors for who and what they truly are.  God is in our neighbor, but we can refuse to see God in our neighbor.  

Jesus told us that we find Him in those of the least among us.*  Jesus is in the impoverished person who comes to us.  When the bishop received the poor man Juan Diego, he welcomed Jesus.  When we welcome our neighbor into our hearts, we open our hearts to Jesus.  

What we do to our neighbor, we do to Jesus.  When we subject our neighbor to racism, we are not only disrespecting our neighbor, we are also rejecting Jesus, who is in our neighbor.  

When we refuse to open our hearts to our neighbors, we close our hearts to God.  In the one in front of us who is different from us, we receive a call to open our hearts, to see anew, to see as God wants us to see.  

We receive this summons to see with new eyes as we gaze upon Our Lady of Guadalupe.  By appearing as a native, she challenged the assumptions of the Europeans who likely did not expect her appearance to be as it was.  

In Our Lady of Guadalupe, we see a rebuke of racism.  In her we see a call to welcome those who are different from us, to listen to them, to pay attention to them, to see them with fresh eyes.  As we consider her, we are invited to learn from those who are different from us.  

Race is an invitation to step outside of ourselves.  When we are with someone of another race, God wants to teach us through that person.  If we are racist, we reject God's advances.  As we open our hearts to someone of another race, we open our hearts to God.  

* Matthew 25:40,45  

Look At What Burns Inside Us

On Wednesday last week, most of us monks returned here to the hermitage after being evacuated last month due to a wildfire.  All monks, all staff and all other residents of the hermitage are uninjured, thanks be to God, and due to the vigilant hard work of firefighters, monks and hermitage staff.  No buildings at the hermitage were damaged.  Some of the land at the hermitage burned, some due to the fire spreading, some under controlled burns prudently set by firefighters to prevent the fire from proceeding further.  

However, the fire station about two miles away--as the crow flies--did not hold up.  As firefighters were struggling to contain the blaze, it overwhelmed them.  They sheltered under their fire blankets.  Although they were rescued, and even the one firefighter who had been in critical condition recovered, thanks be to God, the fire station was destroyed by the roaring flames.  

We construct edifices, becoming confident of how they will be bulwarks that will save us from ruin.  From what are we protecting ourselves?  To achieve the purpose we intend, what we construct must be stronger than what we believe threatens us.  Can we really protect ourselves?  Are we supposed to protect ourselves, or make ourselves more vulnerable?  By looking at our deficiencies, then we can address how we need to improve and so become who we are meant to be.  

We are invited into awareness of who we are supposed to be when we are confronted by what threatens us.  These past days, fires have been breaking out in places far and wide.  They not only wreak destruction; they also call us to look at why they have broken out at all.  They call to us to examine ourselves and see how we have been contributing to the crisis which has been endangering our lives.  

Firestorms of violence have erupted these past days.  George Floyd and Daniel Prude were killed by police officers; it is easy to imagine how Mr. Floyd and Mr. Prude could have been taken into custody more prudently than they were actually subdued.  If I see another person as a threat, what does that perception say about me?  It is vital to be aware of how we perceive another person: our perceptions of that person will guide how we treat them.  

We can build fortresses of unwarranted assumptions about other people, assumptions we make because we feel they threaten our safety, and therefore that they will harm us.  It is not that much further to conclude that we must then attack those other persons before they hurt us.  We can easily do so without considering that they have been getting abused for years, decades, even centuries; we can proceed to continue such abuse without being aware we are perpetuating the very mistreatment we have condemned.  

Convinced we need to protect ourselves, those we hurt sometimes quite reasonably conclude that they would do well to protect themselves from us.  In our own eyes, we seem justified; in others' eyes, we may seem anything but justified, but rather we might seem like preemptive aggressors.  

When we assume we must shield ourselves from harm, we are acting from insecurity.  Why are we not confident in who we are?  Not accepting who we are, feeling we are inadequate, we lash out by attacking others.  

From this vantage point then, can we ever truly protect ourselves?  Often when we find supposed problems in other people, we are merely projecting our own insecurities onto them.  If the deficiencies are to be found in ourselves, then no amount of trying to extinguish perceived flaws in others will ever help us feel secure.  

Indeed, if we are somehow falling short, we are the ones who are to look at ourselves.  We need to take stock of what is in us that makes us uncomfortable, that leads us to feel inadequate and squirm because we feel we do not measure up to what we want to be or to how we feel we should be.  As we embrace this duty, necessarily we are being called to become vulnerable.  Unfortunately, rather than accept this duty, some people are so insecure that they lash out against others, sometimes violently so.  

Yet the fundamental question remains for each and every one of us.  When we are faced with the reality that we fall short somehow of being how we would like to be, that we are not as virile, not as strong, not as intelligent, not as resilient as we would like to be, that we are not as loved, admired or imitated as we would like, then we are presented with the decision whether we take out our dissatisfaction on those around us, or whether we examine why we are not closer to our ideals, and how we can achieve those aims.  

After the visible fires were extinguished, fires still broke out.  How did these fires erupt seemingly without any external cause?  The roots of trees were burning.  Due to the devastation on the inside, suddenly the outside became consumed through the intense heat that was brimming within.  

Each and every one of us needs to carefully consider the attitudes, preconceptions and prejudices that we mistakenly believe keep us safe, but which in fact merely harbor hostility that seems to be simmering, that, unchecked and unaddressed, may boil over into violence toward our neighbor.  If we are convinced we have no prejudices, whether with race or with some other concern, it is prudent to consult sources specially designed for that purpose, to help us look for a more objective answer, unsettling as it may be.*  

As we conduct this crucial self-examination, we lay bare the core of our hearts.  We aspire to open up to the light of day whatever stands in the way of our loving our neighbor.  Painful as it is, we are called to die to all that is in us which we feel protects us, but will not save us, but only imperil us and our neighbor.  The grain of our ego having fallen into the ground and died, then love can yield a rich harvest.**    

Love springs up in abundance when all opposed to love in us dies.  When fire ravages a forest, much carbon is left in the soil, which tremendously fuels new plant growth.  As we die to that in us which impedes the free flow of love through us, then God pours into our hearts His love through the Holy Spirit.***  For this love to be poured into our hearts, we must cultivate our hearts for love.  

To love our neighbor, we must love ourselves.  To love ourselves, we must be honest with ourselves.  To love our neighbor, we must see ourselves as we really are.  Once we are looking at ourselves with all honesty, then we can consciously work to eliminate all that stands in the way of love.  As we get out of the way, we make way for love.  

* https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/ 

** John 12:24 

*** Romans 5:5