Father Tim Lemlin
It is said that we are unable to go much more than three minutes without thinking something negative, making a judgment or complaining. Isn't that amazing? This isn't something with which we are born. It is something that we learn.
We hear in today's gospel that when Jesus finishes his brief announcement that "Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing," "…all spoke highly of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth." The scripture to which Jesus is referring is the passage from the prophet Isaiah that we heard last week:
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord."
The very next words out of the town people's mouths are, "Isn't this the son of Joseph?" They begin to make a judgment. Once they do, they become susceptible to fear, and fear is only one step removed from anger and violent behavior.
Negativity, judgment, complaining, impatience, comparison, and competition are the tools of the false self. The false self is the image that we create for ourselves and will die when our bodies die. It is false because our true self is made in the image and likeness of God and will never die. That we are made in the image of God is something that can never change. When we create our false self, however, we stop being the likeness of God. We become the likeness of the false self and the false self needs to be negative and judgmental; it needs to complain, to make comparisons and be competitive to maintain itself - to keep itself alive.
This false self relies upon deception. When we are operating out of our false self we can't see that we are ever wrong. Our actions, lifestyle, the way we relate to others (even when we might admit that they are wrong) are all justified without our consciously being aware that they have been justified. The false self does this in several different ways. A primary way the false self does this is to make us feel justified. This is accomplished by projecting our faults (sins) upon another.
It is not usual, when I am in a group of people, to hear a person complain about others trying to control the direction of the group. Often the one who is complaining is the person in the group who is making the greatest effort to do the controlling.
Justification is also achieved by being a victim (real or imagined). When I am a victim I can justify retaliation and still feel good about myself.
It was nearly impossible for at least a month after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center to speak of peace or forgiveness. Even people who were working for peace before the attack were calling for military retaliation. The prevailing way of thinking was, "We are victims of an unprovoked attack and we need to seek justice." This way of thinking would lead us a week or two later to bomb, among other things, a wedding party. We called it collateral damage.
The false self hides in obscurity because it knows that when it is seen it cannot sustain itself. The Greek word for this self is persona. Translated, persona means mask.
The good news that Jesus proclaims is that the false self, once we see it, once it surfaces in our conscious awareness and is accepted for what it is, also becomes a doorway to our true self. As a doorway it leads us to discover who we were before we were an American and a Catholic; before we were an engineer, accountant, mother, father, CEO, priest; before we were a son or daughter of our parents; or before we were a victim - someone hurt by another (which we all have been). Jesus tells us that we come to God not through our gifts (our strengths) but through our faults (our weaknesses). This is the purpose of prayer: to put us in touch with the reservoir within us in which our true image lives and help us to see our true likeness so that we gain the courage to face and accept that which is false about ourselves. The reason why we gather here each week is to be models for each other of this true image and likeness of God. Prayer and Eucharist are not about earning points with God. They are about discovering the freedom and gaining the courage to allow the false self to die.
It should be noted that the false self will not die easily. It will cling to life in whatever way it can. It will become ingenious in its deceptions. Only continuous prayer (being in touch with the reservoir of God within each of us) and being with others who are praying will bring us the freedom to be who we really are… a few moments a day. The false image that we have of ourselves (the more aware we are of it) can become our friend. It can help us to become more human and accepting of others. This is the good news that Jesus preaches.
