I will confess that I was daydreaming during the gospel reading and I can't even tell you what it was from memory. But Fr. Dan Pattee once again offered a homily that was such a total gift, just perfectly put into a word package this gigantic ... thing... that I've been trying to capture for this blog all week. And he made his key point over and over so many times that there is no way I could forget it or get it confused. Like I said, perfect!!
And the point is this: Justice, as Jesus presents it, differs from the "tit for tat" justice that is the general cultural understanding. X deserves y, x gets y, the world is balanced. No, justice for Jesus means being in right relationship with God. And we come in to right relationship with God through right relationship with created goods, especially other people, especially with the poor.
This sums up so, so well what I have been gleaning through reading Alfie Kohn's Punished By Rewards. I realize that Kohn (who I don't know to be a Christian) really gets what Jesus is saying, and is concerned with calling parents, educators and business people to live it. (Non-oddly enough, he makes the passing comment that sometimes a certain religious outlook can be the very reason why some people resist the findings of his research!) Now, I haven't finished the book yet, so I'm really only speaking in reference to the first half of it or so, but as the book is based on research studies, I don't expect to later see him espousing goofy personal views.
The "right relationship" that Kohn encourages between people, and which I think we must see mirrored in the relationship between Christ and the Father, is one that does not rely on the control mechanisms of pop behaviorism. Kohn addresses the near-sighted view of using rewards (trinkets, goodies, money, symbolic value items like grades, or staples like love and attention) to motivate behavior. He also discusses how the use of rewards affects intrinsic motivation, creativity, desire -- in a word, freedom. And he discusses the affect on relationships, whether parent/child, teacher/student or employer/employee when rewards for behavior are used.
So, "right relationship with created goods" here means that those goods are given to us by their Creator. Receiving them with humility, we do not turn around and use things or people to control other people, but to serve needs, because that is how we receive them from our Father's hand. I constantly come back to this gospel passage:
Also a dispute arose among them as to which of them was considered to be greatest. Jesus said to them, "The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. (Lk. 22:24-26)Service and control just intuitively feel so different, even as I just think of the words.
Several times I have nodded in agreement with my whole body as I read Kohn's descriptions of how students can become dependent on symbolic affirmations of good grades or the actual "reward" of being able to interact with other humans about matters of importance (for me, sharing ideas, but it just as easily could be approval, praise, or tangible rewards like scholarships, on which self-esteem is propped). Only to have the whole house of cards fall in when that external mechanism is no more. I can tell this as a longer story, but to be brief, I became enamored with writing in high school and flourished under small doses of positive reaction from an English teacher. After graduation, however, I became deeply depressed and despondent because, even though I attempted to employ my ability, I had no relationship with the world to make it meaningful. I had a skill, but no personal maturity, no "right relationship" to give me direction ahead.
This is all very palpable in my own parenting. My son teaches me all I really need to know, if I'm able to take it in. And I see that he, not unlike myself, despises being controlled. If I relate to him as a person, we are great. If I try to control him, or manipulate him, we are at war. It has taken me a long time to realize that parenting is not about controlling children as one might control a dog on a leash. If we are in right relationship, love flows, and it is beautiful, because it is impossible to force someone to love. You must keep giving love, trust, and wait for it to be reciprocated. Perhaps, a long time.
So, my big realization: controlling others has got to go out the window. Really, that's so easy to say. The trick is to discern when one is controlling. Perhaps my big realization, better put, is that this surprising light has made it easier for me to discern it.
See, another beautiful thing at Mass today was that instead of mentally scrambling to try to remember what I wanted to blog about (!), I found myself thanking God for the gift He was giving to me. I realized this is a gift, and it is given. It is not some creation of mine that is going to fade like a mist in a hot July breeze. I don't have to scurry to keep it. It is given. Immediately I thought of Fr. Carron saying that we start with what God is doing among us. It is about a reality that I do not make.
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