Tuesday, Feb 9, 2010

Archbishop

November 18th, 2009
By Archbishop George H. Niederauer

It’s obvious why the gospel reading from Luke about Jesus’ curing the 10 lepers is often chosen for our Thanksgiving Day Mass: it is all about gratitude and ingratitude, especially the gratitude of the Samaritan leper. Less obvious is the meaning of what Jesus says to the Samaritan leper: “Your faith has been your salvation.” Why “faith”? Why not gratitude or humility or thoughtfulness?

Faith is a way of seeing – of interpreting life. The tradition of Thanksgiving Day began in 1621 because the early colonists in Massachusetts saw their survival as a blessing from God, a grace, or gift, not as good luck, or the product of their own talents, or the result of their superiority over others, or no more than they deserved for being such grand people. In the same way, nowadays some children are grateful to their parents for the care and love which they have lavished on them, and they want to love and care for a mother and father who have given so much of themselves to them. Other children are not so grateful, because they do not “see” things that way.

Our faith in God helps us to “see,” to interpret life as a gift from God. As St. Paul says in his letter to the Colossians, we thank God “because of the favor that has been bestowed” on us in Christ Jesus, in whom we have been “endowed with every gift of speech and knowledge.” Indeed, as Catholic Christians we “lack no spiritual gift” as we “wait for the revelation of Our Lord Jesus Christ.” In this faith vision, this faith way of seeing and interpreting our lives, everything we have or are is a freely given gift from a loving God, unearned by us, and thus not our achievement. These gifts are held in trust, and we are to use them as God wishes, not as we wish. We are not the masters and mistresses of our own lives: St. Paul again: “No one lives as his own master and no one dies as his own master – both in life and in death, we are the Lord’s.”

Others, who do not share our faith in God, do not see life this way. Indeed we live in a time and a culture which sees life less and less this way. Increasingly, the vision of many folks, consciously or unconsciously embraced, is a kind of social Darwinism: “survival of the fittest” is the rule. It’s everyone for himself or herself. I’ve got mine and if you don’t have yours, tough. I’ve got mine because I’m smarter than you are, and I work harder, and I had better parents (who came to this country before yours did), and I had a better education, and I’m clever enough to make my own breaks and my own luck, and the people I identify with just have more going for them than yours do.

By contrast, our own faith vision can lead us away from prideful, judgmental individualism to gratitude and praise to God. St. Paul says, in the Letter to the Colossians: “Grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I continually thank my God for you.”

But with gratitude and praise to God, we are only half way home in our living of the Christian faith. Jesus taught two great commandments, not just one, and faith in God and gratitude for his blessings leads us also to generosity to one another, to all, our neighbors. The more deeply we believe in God as Father and Jesus as brother, the more clearly and constantly and profoundly we will be aware of all around us as our brothers and sisters. This is a struggle for us; we are weak and tempted to selfishness, to self-centeredness and self-absorption. Our sinfulness is very real. The more disconnected we let ourselves become from God, moment by moment, day by day, the more disconnected we will become from each other, especially the most needy and fragile and vulnerable among us.

And let us not romanticize the faith vision of our brothers and sisters in Christ. We are not called to spoil each other, any more than parents show love to their children when they spoil them. We need to challenge and confront sinfulness in ourselves and around us when we are called to do so. But that challenge and confrontation has nothing to do with petty gossip and backbiting; with judging and condemning others in our minds or in our conversations; with “writing off” the struggles of others, especially those less fortunate than ourselves.

Ten lepers were cleansed, healed. One believed, one “saw” his healing as a gift from God though Jesus Christ. He returned and gave thanks, and his Savior told him that his FAITH had been his salvation. Our faith brings us to Eucharist. We look at the altar and we see not just bread and wine, but the Body and Blood of Jesus who gave himself for us and now gives himself to us. We look at ourselves, at our lives, and we see not just accomplishments and acquisitions but blessings and gifts from God. Let us pray that this same vision of faith will continue when we leave the church and will help us to see the life of Father, Son and Spirit in one another and in those we meet. Then the faith that makes us grateful and generous will be our salvation too.

 

From November 20, 2009 issue of Catholic San Francisco.