
“I know your works; I know that you are neither
cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot.
So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold,
I will spew you out of my mouth. For you say, ‘I
am rich and affluent and have no need of anything,'
and yet do not realize that you are wretched,
pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.”
(Apocalypse 3.15-17)
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SMUG

“in God's
Face”
It
is extremely likely that
you understand these words in an explicitly material sense
... and you would do well, to do so. How many of us are
complacent in our material prosperity, building yet
greater barns in the form of “trophy houses” (houses built
as a “statement” ... not as a place in which to raise children)
in which we envision ourselves in a digital nirvana, unaware
that our souls will be demanded of us before the night passes.
We see ourselves not so much through our own eyes, as through
the eyes of others: they invest
us with a value that corresponds to, is commensurable with,
our success in accumulating, acquiring, amassing, matter
as emblematic of value.
It
really is a matter of perspective — and taste.
From
God's point of view we have merely succeeded in blinding
ourselves. We do not see that what we have gathered to ourselves
are the very things so distasteful to God that He is prepared
to spew them out as something vile.
A
more profound dimension remains often untouched: our lack
of poverty, not in things material, but in things spiritual.
How many of us realistically consider ourselves in terms
of the poverty of our spirit?
Few.
Most
often, we are, as it were, the fourth, as yet to be acknowledged
person in a holy quadrinity. Next to God, we are inerrant,
impeccant (without sin).
Do
you doubt this? Count the number of people who go to Holy
Communion (really, it would be easier to count the number
who do not go ... most often a
cipher) — then count the number of people lined up for Holy
Confession ...
We have amassed to ourselves a spiritual and
often garish grandiosity that speaks eloquently of our complacency.
Sin is a phenomenon that occurs in “others” –
not in our parish, maybe not even in the Catholic
Church. Perhaps not in Christianity itself. We have become
our own “redeemers”, and the very people who should be admonishing
us against this, our bishops, priests, catechists, “Ministers-of-this--that-and-the-other”
— are the people who are most eager to place the laurel
of victory on our proud heads ... even if the race is not
yet finished.
Were
we just tepid, we would — or at least should —
fear being spewed from the mouth of God Who sees our hypocrisy.
But we are worse than tepid ... we are arrogant, unwilling
to acknowledge our wretched, pitiable poverty. We are naked
... and do not even know it. Or what is worse yet, know
it, and pretend that we have no shame.
Geoffrey
K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
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