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Live
Letters Twenty-Fifth
Sunday in Ordinary Time |
The Catholic Telegraph
September 22, 2000The New Testament offers a mixed picture of the early Church. It seems that sometimes everything was peace and joy, as in the early days after Jesus’ ascension into heaven when the apostles and others "devoted themselves with one accord to prayer" (Acts 1.14) or, after the coming of the Holy Spirit, when the believers "devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers" (Acts 2.42).
But there was also the self-serving of Ananias and Sapphira (cf. Acts 5.1-10). There were the factions in Corinth (cf. I Cor. 17-22) and the frictions arising from false teachers (cf. I Tim. 6.5). Sacred Scripture teaches us that there was plenty of unrest in the early Church. Maybe God’s word intends to keep us aware that the internal problems of the Church today are not unique to our times.
This Sunday’s passage from James speaks of the sources of both tranquility and turmoil in a Christian community. The author has been speaking about the need for control of the tongue, especially on the part of those who exercise a teaching function in the Church. As our passage begins, he has shifted to more general considerations.
First of all he points out that upheavals in the Church have their origin in self-seeking. Then he deals with wisdom, the wisdom that cultivates peace and that results in holiness. (Note that peace in most Scriptural contexts does not mean the absence of war, but the harmony that arises, through God’s gift, from everything working together for the good of all.) This peace-bringing wisdom is straightforward, not tinged with duplicity. Through kindness, patience, forgiveness it contributes to the well-being and tranquility of the community. Unrest in the community has a different source, namely, the self-seeking he had mentioned before ("your passions that make war within your members"). This is a habit of mind that desires to possess at the expense of another what it does not have. It cuts down other people and begrudges them what they have. It pits members of the Church against one another and divides the community into warring factions. This self-seeking vitiates the prayer of the one afflicted by it, either because it keeps him or her from praying at all, or because it leads to the kind of self-centered prayer that God cannot answer.
This passage teaches us that sharing faith in Jesus is not enough to guarantee peace and harmony in the Christian community. That faith has to be expressed in ways that build up the body of the Church. Destructive behaviors have to be eliminated.
The contrast that James outlines between "wisdom" and "passions" is the contrast between generosity and selfishness. Generosity looks out first of all for the well being of the other. It wants and does what is good for the other (and is, thus, a synonym for loving). It encourages people to come together in thought and action without consideration for its own needs.
Selfishness, on the other hand, puts me first. It want what it wants, even if that means taking it away from another. Self-seeking is divisive and conflictual by definition. Taking second place and letting others have the advantage is totally foreign to the selfish heart.
Of course "generosity" and "selfishness" translate into generous and selfish individuals. Generous people are the answer to a pastor’s prayer. They help the community work as one. They bring a sense of cooperation to the local community. They are artisans of peace and tranquility, real agents of the love of Christ for His Church. Selfish people, on the other hand, bring division, suspicion, strife. My ideas, my needs, my preferences: that’s what really matters, and that’s all that really matters. These are people who always need to be right, no matter what the question; whose personal preferences become law for the others to obey; who view attempts at reconciliation and understanding as a sell-out of the faith. Enough people like that can lead a community into a state of ongoing turmoil, of unrelenting conflict, whether the community be a parish, a diocese, or even a whole country.
We have all had our generous moments, when we were able to extend ourselves for the good of others, when we contributed in some significant way to the righteousness and peace of the Church. We have also had our selfish episodes, when something seemed so important to us that our care and concern for others got lost in the struggle for it. After the struggle is over, whether we have won or lost, we find ourselves wondering how we could have gotten so passionate over so little.
This Sunday’s live letter does not invite us to look around and try to categorize our fellow believers, but to look into our own hearts and ask whether the Church is more peaceful or more turbulent because we are members.
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Conversation Questions
Have I ever experienced the wisdom that brings peace?
Where do I see selfishness in my own life of faith?
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