DO I CARE TOO MUCH ABOUT WHAT OTHERS SEE IN ME?
“Jesus said to the chief priests and elders. . . : ‘What is your opinion? A man had two sons. He said to the first, “Son, . . . work in the vineyard today.” The son said in reply, “I will not,” but afterwards. . . went. The man. . . gave the same order to the other son. He replied, “Yes, sir,” but did not go. Which of the two did his father’s will?’ The priests and elders answered, ‘The first.’ Jesus said, ‘. . . tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you. When John came to you, you did not believe him; but tax collectors and prostitutes did. Yet even when you saw that, you did not later change your minds and believe him.’” Matthew 21:28-32
What Jesus appears to be saying here is that the tax collectors and the prostitutes have a better chance of doing what God asks of us and entering the kingdom of God than the people who profess to be, standing with God. How can this be?
What might Jesus be asking of us who believe that we are saying “yes” to God? And what makes a tax collector or prostitute – those choosing a way a life condemned by their community – have a higher chance of working with God than does someone who professes to be on God’s team? Perhaps this has something to do with how a person is perceived in the eyes of the people around them and what happens inside a person in response to what others think of her.
DO I CARE TOO MUCH ABOUT WHAT OTHERS SEE IN ME?
Is it that the tax collectors’ and the prostitutes’ “sin is always before them,” because of the negative judgment of them by people who look down on them and their inner reaction to the perceived condemnation of others? Such judgement may give rise to moments of honest reassessment of their “No”. Perhaps Jesus is asking us to see that “honesty is the best policy.” For a sinner (All of us are sinners; only God is Holy.) when our outer self is a manifestation of our inner self, we are better able to draw closer to God.
Those, on the other hand, who are saying “Yes” but meaning “No” are hiding their true inner reality from everyone around them and from themselves, too. They have only a superficial appearance of being in God’s kingdom and, in reality, the untruth about who they are is separating them from those around them.
FINDING GOD MEANS KNOWING I AM A SINNER
Let’s sit quietly with God and ask God to reveal to us the ways in which we are outwardly saying a “Yes,” falsely leading people to think that we are what we want them to think that we are but inwardly saying “No” because we don’t want any criticism and we do like feeling accepted by those around us, but the road to God comes only through recognition of who I am right now and a longing to become the person God is helping me become. That requires true conversion. That requires a recognition of who I am.
Psalm 51
Have mercy on me, God, in accord with your merciful love;
in your abundant compassion blot out my transgressions.
Thoroughly wash away my guilt;
and from my sin cleanse me.
For I know my transgressions;
my sin is always before me.
Against you, you alone have I sinned;
I have done what is evil in your eyes
So that you are just in your word,
and without reproach in your judgment.
A COMMUNITY OF PERSONS
To me this affirms that we humans are and always have been “made in the image and likeness of God” – a God who is a Trinity: a community of Persons. We cannot “go it alone.” Whether we see ourselves as Pharisees, tax collectors, prostitutes, clergy, laity, professionals, service providers or unemployed), we are at the very core of our beings, a community of persons. We need God and others to bring us to fullness.
Sister Loretta
THOUGHT FOR REFLECTION
“The Church is not a communion of those “who have no need of the physician” (Mk 2:17) but a communion of converted sinners who live by the grace of forgiveness and transmit it themselves.”
“When we read the New Testament attentively, we discover that there is nothing magical about forgiveness. But neither is it a fictitious forgetting, a refusal to accept the truth, but an entirely real process of change carried out by the Sculptor. The removal of guilt truly gets rid of something; the proof that forgiveness has come in us is that penance springs up from us. Forgiveness is in this sense an active-passive event: the creative word of power that God speaks to us produces the pain of conversion and thus becomes an active self-transformation. Forgiveness and penance, grace and personal conversion are not contradictions but two sides of one and the same event. This fusion of activity and passivity expresses the essential form of human existence, for all of our creativity begins with our having been created, with our participation in God’s creative activity.”
Ratzinger, Joseph. Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today (p. 104). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.
My interpretation of this quotation’s message about forgiveness and penance is based upon my reflection on what happens inside of me when I realize that something I said or did hurt someone I love, and that person has forgiven me. What wells up inside of me when I realize that this person forgives me is a sense of deep remorse that I DID THIS. And what is welling up inside of me, that is the penance, and it changes me. It, a reaction God made me to be able to have, that instinctive reaction, heals me and makes me closer to being the me God has created me to be.