Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A.
Exod 22:20–26, Ps 18, 1 Thess 1:5c–10, Matt 22:34–40.
I learned something important about human nature on a trip to Greece. You can stand in the middle of one of the great achievements of Western civilization and still be thinking about lunch.
After morning Mass at the cathedral in Athens, our tour guide took us up to the Acropolis. The place is extraordinary. You stand on that rocky height with the Parthenon in front of you and the whole city spreading toward the sea, and your jaw hangs open at the wonder of it.
Our guide wanted us to understand all of it. In detail.
She knew the significance of the marble, the purpose of every building. I began to suspect that if a piece of gravel had rolled down the hill during the Peloponnesian War, she could tell us which direction it traveled.
Eventually we made our way back down. It was about one o’clock. Most of us had skipped breakfast for Mass. At that point I think a few of us would have eaten a piece of the Parthenon if it came with mustard.
We explained this to our guide. She felt the museum was too important.
The museum holds extraordinary pieces from the Acropolis, sculptures, objects from ordinary houses, and parts of the Parthenon itself. You can look down through the glass floors and see the streets of an ancient neighborhood still lying underneath. Ordinary people walked there.
It is the kind of place that can stop you cold. Our guide was there to make sure nothing stopped us. We saw pottery. We saw more pottery. The hours passed.
Finally, around four o’clock, we emerged. Our guide beamed. She was pleased with the day’s accomplishments. Then she announced that we were going to have lunch, because, she explained, four o’clock is when Greeks have lunch.
What she had stopped noticing was the group of people standing right in front of her—tired, hungry, and doing their best, in every polite way they could manage, to tell her what they needed. She was so absorbed in the thing she believed mattered that the actual human beings she was supposed to be guiding had become secondary.
It is a very human mistake. We can become so fixed on our own sense of what is important that we stop seeing the people around us. We can be doing something worthwhile and still miss the person passing out from hunger right in front of us.
That same mistake appears in some elements of modern self-help. It has become its own religion. There are enormous sections devoted to it at Barnes & Noble. Its creed has permeated pop culture. Its gospel has a familiar ring: Be true to your authentic self. Find your true self within. Your feelings are the voice of your true self.
The problem comes when we take a partial truth and make it absolute. Feelings matter. Our emotions can alert us to real problems. Sometimes we need to step back, establish boundaries, or recognize that a relationship has become unhealthy. But feelings are not infallible moral guides. Something can feel wrong without being wrong, and something can feel right without being good.
You don’t feel like visiting Mom at the nursing home? Listen to your authentic self. You don’t feel like going to Mass? Honor your feelings. Your coworker is drowning in work, but you’d rather scroll through your phone? Stop people-pleasing. Apparently, being authentic means following your feelings, regardless of what anyone else might need.
Think about Uncle Uther at Thanksgiving. Three beers in, he’s become nasty, insulting everyone around the table. Nobody says, “Finally! The authentic Frank!” Instead, somebody insists, “That’s not the real Frank.”
Why? Because we intuitively believe there is something better in Frank than the person currently making Thanksgiving miserable. We distinguish between who he happens to be at this moment and the person we believe he could be.
The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau helped popularize the idea that human beings are naturally good and that society corrupts us. Ironically, Rousseau entrusted all five of his children to a foundling hospital.
The problem is not that society never corrupts us. It certainly can. The problem is assuming that whatever comes naturally must therefore be good.
Aristotle understood something important about human nature. We become just by practicing justice, courageous by practicing courage, and generous by practicing generosity. We develop character through the choices we make. The goal is not to pretend to be someone you’re not. The goal is to become someone better.
Christianity takes us a step urther. We are not simply creating a better version of ourselves through willpower. We are called to become more like Christ through the grace of God. We learn to love as he loves, and that changes not only what we do but who we become.
Today’s readings show us what this looks like.
In the first reading, God reminds Israel: “You were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt.” Israel must remember its own history when dealing with strangers, widows, orphans, and the poor. Its experience of vulnerability shapes its treatment of the vulnerable.
Then God gives a concrete example. If someone takes his neighbor’s cloak as collateral for a loan, he must return it before sunset. Why? Because the poor man has nothing else to sleep in.
Picture the creditor. The cloak is safely in his possession. The debt remains unpaid. The sun is going down. And now God expects him to give the cloak back.
Our creditor might consult a modern life coach. “I’m working on establishing boundaries. I need to stop putting other people’s needs ahead of my own. Returning that cloak just doesn’t feel right for me.”
But God sees what the creditor did not: a man who has nothing to keep him warm at night.
“If he cries out to me,” God says, “I will hear him, for I am compassionate.”
The creditor’s concern for himself has made him blind to his neighbor.
And that brings us to today’s Gospel.
A lawyer asks Jesus which commandment is the greatest. Jesus gives him two: love God with your whole heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.
Love of God and love of neighbor belong together. We cannot claim to love God while remaining indifferent to the people he has placed in our lives
But loving our neighbor does not mean abandoning prudence. Not every demand made on us must be granted. There are healthy boundaries that are themselves acts of love. Sometimes, love requires saying no, keeping a safe distance, or refusing to participate in destructive behavior. Protecting someone from abuse is not selfishness. And neither is recognizing that we have limits.
There is a difference between a boundary that protects us from harm and a boundary that protects us from having to care.
Sometimes we call it protecting our peace when what we really mean is that another person’s needs are inconvenient. Sometimes we call it being authentic when we simply don’t want to do what is right.
The point is not to ignore our feelings, deny our needs, or say yes to everyone. It is to stop treating our feelings as the final authority on what is good.
The world tells us to discover who we are by looking inward. The Christian life invites us to become who God created us to be by looking toward him and learning to love the people around us.
We do not become our best selves by making ourselves the center of the universe. We become more fully ourselves by learning to love God and neighbor rightly.
And sometimes that begins with something as simple as returning a cloak before sunset.
