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  

Love Counts No Costs As It Upholds Justice

Yesterday at a protest in London, the actor John Boyega spoke out against racism.  He denounced when people are demeaned for their race.  

It occurred to him that by speaking out so boldly, it might hurt his career.  He considered that he might not have a career after he said what he had to say.*     

He values the dignity of all people, rather than profit at any cost.  He speaks to uphold justice.  

People who seek justice seek God, even if they do not know it.  Those who seek truth seek God.  As persons strive for recognition of the truth of the dignity of all, they strive to do the work of God.  

When one loves justice, goodness and right no matter what the cost, one loves God with all one's heart, with all one's soul, with all one's mind, and with all one's strength.  To love God in this way is the most important commandment, as Jesus tells us in today's Gospel.**  

John Boyega spoke against racism for the sake of George Floyd, a black man pinned to the ground by a white police officer who continued to apply pressure even after Mr. Floyd protested that he could not breathe, resulting in the death of Mr. Floyd.  Although John Boyega thought he might endanger his acting career by defending the rights of our brother George Floyd, and of our other black brothers and sisters, including Sandra Bland, Trayvon Martin, Stephen Lawrence and Mark Duggan, who have suffered similar fates, John Boyega spoke out for the sake of our brothers and sisters.*  To put one's neighbor's interests before one's own, is to love one's neighbor as oneself, the second most important commandment, as Jesus tells us in today's Gospel.***  

Love seeks the dignity of the other.  Love looks beyond oneself.  Love spares no expense.  

We love with all our heart when we work for justice without counting the cost.  We truly love our neighbor when we put our neighbor before ourselves.  In so doing, we become who God made us to be.  

* https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/11780885/john-boyega-speech-black-lives-matter/ 

** Deuteronomy 6:5; Deuteronomy 10:12; Matthew 22:37; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27 

*** Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27; Leviticus 19:18; Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14