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The famous management theorist and guru of the late 20th century,
Peter Drucker, once observed: “When a horse is dead, it’s time to
dismount.”
Unfortunately for many of us, we don’t know the horse is dead
because we don’t often encounter the greatest of evils, namely,
death. Yes, we hear about it and we read about it. We also see it
on television. Once in a while, we experience its reality when a
family member or friend may pass away. But rarely does real,
grotesque, frightening, and unapologetic evil manifest itself to us.
I think that’s what made the 1973 movie, “The Exorcist,” so
popular. A supernatural suspense thriller, the movie portrayed a
1949 case of demonic possession and exorcism that the movie’s
author, William Peter Blatty, heard about while a student in the
Class of 1950 at Georgetown University, a Jesuit institution of
Catholic higher education. The movie forced viewers to confront
reality of the devil taking possession of a young girl’s soul.
It was nothing short of terrifying.
The problem in looking for evil to manifest itself in terrifying
ways is that we’re tempted to overlook the reality of death that Drucker
discussed and we heard about in today’s first reading, namely, the
“destruction of the living.”
Wisdom teaches that if we are to confront the destruction of the
living, we must critically examine how we’ve been tempted and may
have chosen—as individuals, spouses, and families and as neighborhoods, states, and
even as a nation—to embrace that which ends
up destroying us. God has created us to be imperishable, but as we
flirt with and embrace evil, we gradually become perishable.
The difficulty, of course, is that those temptations and choices
often seem to concern trifling matters that make very little difference.
The problem, of course, is that each of those little choices builds one
upon the other and ultimately destroy the horse, namely,
our lives.
We may spend our lives working—and working very hard—to provide for
others. But, we discover when we are laid off, fired, or even
retire that we took our identity from our work and because of this,
didn’t spend much time with the people we claimed to love. We never
really lived the imperishable life God gave us, but embraced what
slowly led to our destruction each and every work day, each and
every work week, and each and every year of work…year in and year
out.
We may have taken a spouse or parent or friend for granted, never providing
any indication of the depth of love we had for that spouse or
parent or friend. A sudden and unexpected heart attack or car accident
then took the life of that spouse or parent or friend and it isn’t long before we realize, in our
grief, how guilty we feel because we hadn’t said “I love you” or “I
care for you” for so
long that we can’t even recall when we last said uttered the phrase.
And this weekend, as we celebrate our nation’s 236th birthday, the
Catholic bishops of the United States are asking us to contemplate
the importance of religious liberty. In light of today’s
readings,
let’s
contemplate how we’ve
embraced the destruction of what’s imperishable by making little choices
through which we have slowly but inevitably given up religious liberty
and become more perishable—that
“dead horse”—as a result.
How?
The choice was made when many in our nation adopted the “credit
mentality” which led them to conclude that they “could have it all,”
when in reality they ended up owing a whole lot. All the while, we
watched on in silence as a mountain of personal, state, and national debt
kept piling up for the next generation to pay off. Yet, never once did we
speak out about the immorality of intergenerational debt. It’s
a form of theft. But, who are we to preach to others about the
seventh commandment?
The choice was made when many in our nation decided to turn the
Sabbath into yet another day of commerce, replacing a trip to church
to worship God with a trip to the mall to purchase yet even more
toys and goodies on credit. But, we stood by as people we
claimed to love
surrounded themselves with material things that made them feel good
for a while, but which we observed leaving them feeling destitute of soul. But, who are we to preach to others about the
first and third commandments?
The choice was made when many in our nation decided to stop
illegitimate pregnancy by subsidizing the behavior that increases
the likelihood of illegitimate pregnancy by treating teenagers as if
they are utterly incapable of being virtuous. Rather than demanding
that moral guidance be dispensed in our public schools, we were
silent as Planned Parenthood was invited to open clinics in schools
to dispense condoms and other advice about “women’s health issues.”
But, who are we to preach to others about the first, sixth, and
tenth commandments?
The choice was made when many in our nation thought that rather than
“stay together for the sake of the children,” children would be so much
happier to see their parents divorced. So we didn’t bat an eye when
“no fault divorce” prevailed, despite the sixth and tenth commandments as well
as Jesus’ teaching against divorce.
The choice was made when many in our nation touted “women’s
rights” and the Supreme Court declared that women possessed the right to do
violence to their bodies in the name of “freedom of choice.” We
stood silently in fear of daring to say that every human right—both
men’s and women’s rights—come from God. Many of us also wagged our
heads and said “What business is it of mine what a woman does with
her body?” However, there is no such thing as “my body”—for either men or
women—because our bodies belong to their Creator. There’s
that pesky first commandment again. And who are we to preach
to others about the fifth commandment?
The choice was made as many in our nation decided to judge people
by race and skin pigment. We stood on the sidelines in silence as
equal opportunity and affirmative action took precedence to
something that’s fundamentally more important, namely, that every
human being is a child of God and may never be discriminated against
for any reason. What does coveting a neighbor’s
goods—the ninth commandment—have to do with anything?
Yes, our nation affords most of its citizens a standard of living
unimagined just five decades ago. Yes, equal opportunity has been
extended to those once denied it. Yes, our nation boasts
extraordinary advances in science, technology, and medicine. And,
yes, our life expectancy has increased more in the past two decades
than in the past seven decades combined. Isn’t
that just great?
But, it must be asked by those who revere our nation’s
guarantee of religious liberty, what does all of that matter if the
price we have paid is our religious liberty?
By making those very small choices whereby we adopted the values of
a secular, consumerist society which required privatizing any
religious expression, we certainly didn’t start with the intention
of driving God not only out of the public square but also out of our
homes and our souls. But that’s where many of our choices have
brought us so that we could all
“just
get along.”
And yet, isn’t
the truth that we’ve never felt more alienated
from one another?
“God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of
the living,” the author of the Book of Wisdom reminded us in the
first reading from scripture. The most unrecognized form of
death—that dead horse Peter Drucker identified—is to live an
absolutely meaningless life. In the context of our nation’s 236th
birthday, a “meaningful life”—to be imperishable—is to live and to
revere and to protect the religious liberty that is ours as God’s
beloved sons and daughters and to pass it on intact to the next
generation.
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HOMILY
