The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today invite us to contemplate the consequences to our communities of sin.
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| Cloud over community |
The reading from the Book of Daniel identifies sin as being communal.
we have rebelled against him, and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God by following his laws, which he set before us by his servants the prophets.1
Psalm 79 laments that the divine honor is compromised and God’s own servants suffer.
* [Psalm 79] A communal lament complaining that the nations have defiled the Temple and murdered the holy people, leaving their corpses unburied (Ps 79:1–4). The occasion is probably the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian army in 587 B.C. The people ask how long the withdrawal of divine favor will last (Ps 79:5), pray for action now (Ps 79:6–7), and admit that their own sins have brought about the catastrophe (Ps 79:8–9). They seek to persuade God to act for reasons of honor: the nations who do not call upon the Name are running amok (Ps 79:6); the divine honor is compromised (Ps 79:1, 10, 12); God’s own servants suffer (Ps 79:2–4, 11).2
In the Gospel from Luke, Jesus warns against judging others.
* [7:1–12] In Mt 7:1 Matthew returns to the basic traditional material of the sermon (Lk 6:37–38, 41–42). The governing thought is the correspondence between conduct toward one’s fellows and God’s conduct toward the one so acting.3
George Butterfield quotes “Yet we rebelled against you and paid no heed to your command, O LORD, our God, to live by the law you gave us through your servants the prophets.” (Daniel 9:10).
It can be fairly easy to get mad at our family or our church and begin to rail against "they" and "them." However, I have seen bishops apologize for the sins of the diocese, a diocese they weren't even in when those sins occurred. That is what a righteous person does. We are in this together and when any of us sins it falls upon all of us to own it and work to change what is happening. Quitting or ranting against them wasn't for Daniel. He can teach us a lot about how to be better community members.4
Don Schwager quotes Ephrem the Syrian (306-373 AD), a wise early Christian teacher and writer, who comments on Jesus' exhortation to not condemn.
Do not judge, that is, unjustly, so that you may not be judged, with regard to injustice. With the judgment that you judge shall you be judged. This is like the phrase "Forgive, and it will be forgiven you." For once someone has judged in accordance with justice, he should forgive in accordance with grace, so that when he himself is judged in accordance with justice, he may be worthy of forgiveness through grace. Alternatively, it was on account of the judges, those who seek vengeance for themselves, that he said, "Do not condemn." That is, do not seek vengeance for yourselves. Or, do not judge from appearances and opinion and then condemn, but admonish and advise. (COMMENTARY ON TATIAN'S DIATESSARON 6.18B.)5
The Word Among Us Meditation on Luke 6:36-38 comments that in today’s Gospel, Jesus says that the measure we use will in return be measured out to us (Luke 6:38).
Jesus calls us to give to one another generously—even to people we might not like very much. When we stop judging and condemning, we are giving patience and compassion. When we forgive, we are giving mercy. When we put a priority on the needs of other people, we empty ourselves and make room for God’s blessings and grace to fill us.6
Friar Jude Winkler notes how Daniel prays for people who will not survive without the compassion and forgiveness of God. As we practice mercy, our hearts are opened to receive the Love of God. Friar Jude reminds us that lack of surrender leads to our attempt to control.
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, discusses encountering the uniqueness of the Enneagram as a character-structure construct. It offers both a portrait of healthy and a portrait of unhealthy for each type, and prompts us to identify honestly where we are functioning on that spectrum. This might vary from day to day or even hour to hour, but the gift presented to us is greater awareness that leads to psychological and spiritual growth.
A newer theory that I happen to agree with is that our path of disintegration is that innate self-survival reflex that stops our fall by reaching out to the lower-level manipulation techniques of another type as a way of getting our attention—letting us know we are falling and if we don’t catch ourselves we’ll “break our arm” or worse.
While it is helpful to see the full picture of the type from which we borrow in health, the key for all of us is to focus on health and growth in our [own] dominant type. To recognize ourselves in integration requires that we accept the best of ourselves in our dominant type. . . .
Giving ourselves to this path requires a disciplined cultivation of spiritual depth accessible only through faithful contemplative practice that brings us into the transforming presence of a loving God.7
Our path to awareness of sin and mercy in our community is one of surrender and honesty about our healthy and unhealthy tendencies.
References
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