HOMILY WEEK 12 01 – Year I
Faith: the Longest Journey to the Heart
Memorial of St. Aloysius Gonzaga
(Gen 12:1-9; Ps 33; Mt 7:1-5)
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“The longest journey of life is from the head to the heart.”
This familiar saying provides the context for today’s liturgy and the readings inviting us not to judge others but rather to make an inner journey into critical and compassionate self-awareness.
In the gospel, Jesus clearly gives his disciples two instructions precisely on this point. First, they are not to judge, so as to not be judged themselves. Then Jesus spells out the implications of that teaching: they are not to focus on the failings of others, but rather make that inner journey into greater awareness of their own failings, and deal with them first.
There is an interesting psychological dynamic at play here. When we are blatantly not aware of our own painful emotions, defects of character and even addictions, either out of ignorance or out of fear of facing them, we will tend to project them outwards onto others. We will precisely blame others or put onto others the very defects of character that we fail to recognize or are afraid to deal with in ourselves. As Richard Rohr likes to put it, “We transmit the pain we don’t transform.”
Examples of the need for this gospel teaching abound all around us, and probably each of us can identify when we needed to hear this teaching. And probably all of us, at one time or another, could admit that we could not enter into this healing process alone – we needed the feedback of others, because we are so often spiritually blind and simply cannot see the very defects that others can easily spot in us.
Looking back over my life, I needed others to point out to me my tendency to control, a degree of stubbornness within me, some impatience, even anger, which I actually at first denied, some impatience, and more recently, a sense of entitlement. I needed help to “name it, claim it, not blame it, tame it, and then I could aim it” or help others deal with their own inner blindness. I needed to take the log out of my own eye before I could even think of helping others do the same.
Our failure to live this critical teaching of Jesus can be very hard on others. Jan experienced sexual abuse as a child which left her somewhat insecure and codependent. For years she enjoyed a relationship with Irma, without being aware that their friendship was a bit lopsided – Irma in a position of domination, and Jan often trying to please her. At one point, Jan took a powerful retreat that transformed her life. She became aware of how loved she was by God, found her voice, became more outgoing, and even began praying for other people.
But at the same time, she noticed an extreme change in Irma, who suddenly became abusive and critical towards her, questioning her motives and actions, and making it difficult for her to continue volunteering in their church. My suspicion in this situation is that Irma, who in her own insecurity had an inner need to exercise domination over another person, now had to try to exercise control over Jan. She, totally unaware of that inner darkness within her and probably afraid to address it, was driven to try to find a log in Jan’s eye so she could maintain some sort of domination she needed to feel good about herself.
The choice of the liturgists to include the first reading about the call of Abram to set out into the unknown on a journey of faith is laudable, because this invitation to let go of judging others, and to become more aware of our need to work on ourselves is truly a long journey of faith, the longest journey we will make in our lives. It is a journey of transformative faith from the head to the heart.
The Word Among Us states that by the time of today’s first reading, Abram had already travelled over 800 kilometres from Hur to Haran by foot. But then God called him to take another 500-kilometre journey to the land of Canaan. Between these places lay vast distances of desert and arid landscape, symbolizing the challenge of faithfully and prayerfully going through the pain of facing our inner reality, accepting our inner reality, and dealing with that inner reality.
That journey takes a lot of faith in God’s love for us, and humility to receive feedback from others who have the courage to share our own truth as they see it with us. Shakespeare was very astute when he wrote, “Would that we could see ourselves as others see us.” Thankfully, we know that Jesus as the Messiah came to redeem and to sanctify, to forgive and to heal, and as he so often put it, we need not be afraid to set out on that long, inner journey.
Today is the memorial of St. Aloysius Gonzaga (1568-91). He is an example of someone who lived today’s readings – whose life was a journey of prayer, fasting and selfless love. He is patron saint of young men. Born a prince of the nobility in Lombardy, Aloysius began to practice prayer and penance at a young age, rejecting the materialistic values of his position and family. Against great resistance, in 1585 he gave up his possessions and his rights as the eldest son and joined the Jesuits, hoping to go to the missions. Instead, in 1591 the plague broke out in Rome, and Aloysius offered himself to serve the sick and dying in the hospital. He caught the plague and died three months later at just 23 years of age. He was canonized in 1726. As Jesus himself stated, there is no greater love than to lay one’s life down for others, and that is what Aloysius did.
The Eucharist was for the Israelites their daily manna in their wilderness journey, sustaining them and teaching them to live one day at a time. May our celebration empower us to let go of any tendency to judge others, and set out on that inner journey of greater self-awareness so that we might be more like St. Aloysius Gonzaga ourselves.
