“An attentive ear is the joy of the wise,” so writes Sirach. Wisely listening to the wisdom of another requires we “conduct our affairs with humility.” Jesus wisely gives an attentive ear to others and therefore conducts his affairs with humility. In the Gospel, “Jesus went to dine at the home of one of the leading Pharisees” and unfortunately sees them conducting their affairs with a need to be “exalted” and not with “humility.” They judge for sin, do not love sinners, and reject people, like Jesus, who do love sinners.
A man who wisely did his best to be attentive to humility and love sinners was Francois Mauriac (1885-1970). Mauriac was an author recognized in 1952 by the Nobel Committee in Literature; for “the deep spiritual insight and the artistic intensity with which he has in his novels penetrated the drama of human life.” Monsieur Mauriac, who died this first day of September in 1970, was not raised in a Christ-like household of wisdom, humility, or love. He was raised in a Pharisaical-like residence of sin obsession. Bred to see the shadows of humanity, he sought the light and found it in Jesus. Mauriac brought the darkness of his childhood, and then, later, his Nazi colluding France into the light of his wisdom, humility, and love through his writings. He knew and wrote about those whose darkness was covering Europe. He knew them in the self-titled Christians who with Nazi supremacy refused to humble themselves before their Jewish and Gypsy neighbors that they judged as sinners, would not love, and persecuted. “All tyrannies are founded upon contempt for humanity,” Mauriac wrote. “When this temptation to contempt overcomes us, we must remember that Christ was a man like us and that He loved us. If He was one of us, then every man, no matter how miserable he be, has a capacity for God.” The miserable ones whom Mauriac knew from his childhood and his France ached across his pages as he taught us their capacity for God. He taught us our own as well. For across his pages we were joined heart to heart and life to life with characters we wanted to misunderstand, judge, and persecute. And in the process, we came to know the Pharisee residing in our own hearts. We learned from Mauriac to conduct our own affairs with humility. We learned to release the belief that anyone lacks the capacity for God. We learned the power of love, especially for the sinner.
“Even the genuinely good cannot, unaided, learn to love. To penetrate beyond the absurdities, the vices, and, above all, the stupidities of human creatures, one must possess the secret of a love which the world has now forgotten.” (Vipers’ Tangle – Francois Mauriac)
Prayer: Spirit, may we be humble of heart and live the love our world has forgotten.
Question: How is Mauriac’s insight true for me –“ I never once realized that the superficial appearance of others was something that I needed to break through, a barrier that I must cross, if I was ever to make contact with the real man, the real woman, beyond and behind it.”
September 01, 2019 Gospel Luke 14:1, 7-14 Twenty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time