Retreat Homily for March 17

          We all know that everyone has a claim to be Irish on St. Patrick's Day, but of the parable of which Jesus spoke, which type of person do you consider yourself to be: The not-so-bad righteous person with a haughty attitude or the public sinner who humbly pleads for mercy? We are in a Catch-22 because we implicate ourselves by choosing one over the other. We may not profess to be righteous, but are we privately thankful that we are not like the rest of humanity who make less savory choices than we do? After all, we are rather decent, law-abiding, religious people. We are far from perfect, and we are not as bad as others we know. Hmmpf. Some of us tend to see ourselves more like the lowly tax collector who is not afraid to speak of our sinful condition and adopts a more desirable type of humility, and yet few of us want make ourselves vulnerable to publicly acknowledge we are sinners. So what is it to be a Jesuit? It is to know that one is a sinner, fundamentally loved by God in light of or perhaps because of our sinfulness, and yet called to be a companion of Jesus as Ignatius of Loyola was.

          This parable makes me ask two questions: (1.) how does God see us, and (2.) how do we see ourselves? Our task as disciples of Jesus is to learn as God loves us, so it stands to reason that we are to first experience God's radical love for us. We cannot love until we are first loved. I think the first thing we do as we approach prayer is to let God set his face upon us - to warmly look upon us as a loving parent and to cherish who we are and what we have become. God must be astonished at our beauty as we present ourselves in prayer. We accept God's affection and love for us and respond by mutually sharing ourselves back to God in freedom. As we let God love us, we learn to love ourselves more fully, and then we can love others in the same respectful way God loves us. God's love transforms us so that our vocation becomes a sort of brilliance shining forth from Christ. His love fills us and impels us to moves us outwards towards others.

          We may need to examine the ways we see ourselves. The book by C.S. Lewis Till We Have Faces chronicles the lives of two royal sisters - one beautiful and the other envious of her sister's beauty. The one who did not hold remarkable beauty eventually became Queen and spent her life trying to define herself in relationship to her more beautiful sister. She put herself through arduous struggles. She became successful at many endeavors and thought  she could never captivate a man's attention as her sister did. She did all things well and put on masks for her many roles. However, she was admired, respected, and esteemed by everyone, but she could never see her own beauty. Her pursuit of doing the "good" to compensate for her seeming lack of beauty blinded her to her own natural beauty. As she approached her death, she had to learn to remove her many masks and to see herself as God and the people saw her - as a remarkably, good and noble woman, with incredible natural beauty and worthy of receiving the great love many tried to give her. We cannot see God until we have our own face.   

          We hold onto illusions about who we are that affirm us and help us cope. We tell ourselves some narrative that defines us as a person. We look at the "what" we have done instead of the "how" we have done it. We look at what we have accomplished or learned as a measure of our goodness. We say things like, "I'm a good engineer. I'm a savvy business leader. I'm a strong woman. I've made a lot of money" as proof of our good qualities, yet it may be instructive to allow the illusions we hold about ourselves to die. Lay them aside. By stating some quality about us firmly or loudly, we come to believe what we say. Sometimes those affirmative statements are necessary for our good health, but hold onto them lightly. We may need to take off our masks so we can come to know our true self. We will fear the process, but like the end results. Surely it is the way we really want others to know us.

          As we learn from the parable of the righteous and humble, notice that Jesus only pays attention to the underlying attitudes one holds towards God and others. A person who has sincerely lived in right relations to God and others is both a humble and righteous. The Lord tells Hosea the same words the Psalmist sings, "It is love that I desire, not sacrifice." It is time we really learn this important criterion. We can do all things well, but if we do them out of duty, to please others, because we are driven, or we think it is expected of us, then we have not grasped the point. To the one who does all things with love, God will certainly lavish with mercy. Let us offer to God our true selves, as broken as we are, with real faces, and a compassionate care for others. Receive the love God offers you. Your whole life will be filled with the presence of a love that conquers all.