Infused by the Spirit,the Church can banish religious jealousy to create a true civilisation of love
Posted on January 31st 2010 in Weekly messages
Traditional wisdom speaks of either three or seven ages of man. The three ages may certainly be matched by the three ages of jealousy that lurk inside the depths of our hearts. They are progressively revealed in those occasional moments of exasperation and tension. The jealousy of youth is to think everyone else is much better looking, and more socially adept than oneself; the jealousy of middle age is to compare wages, houses and cars in order to arrive at the obvious conclusion that too many people look better off than oneself; and the jealousy of old age is centred on health and ageing. It might be possible to spend all of one’s life consumed by one form of jealousy or another. Yet it is one of the most corrosive of emotions, since often those of whom one is jealous are blithely unaware that they have aroused such deep seated emotions.
Jealousy lives off half truths, and selective blindness. The jealous vision only sees the outside of someone else and never the internal struggles and disappointments that might lurk within another’s heart. There is also a forgetfulness of the many gifts given to each of us by God which, though different to each person, are no less valuable. Like little children, what another possesses looks so much more attractive that what one has oneself. Every parent must go through the painful task of breaking this obvious consequence of original sin or, in modern parlance, what might be called this selfish gene.
The continuity of civilisation requires the taming of the consequences of original sin through the use of law and tradition, but also of the care and love expressed by parents towards their children. Whatever the scientific facts say about evolution, the idea that selfishness provides the driving force for the development of civilisation is woefully inadequate. The Christian, though, has a deeper vision still to present in Jesus Christ that penetrates to the heart of the problem. The stain of original sin is to be taken away by the waters of baptism and infusion of grace, the consequence of the death and resurrection of Jesus. This is the ultimate remedy for the destructive consequences from the curse of jealousy.
This Sunday’s Gospel, the second half of Jesus’ opening sermon in his home synagogue at Nazareth, demonstrates how one simple sentence pricks the unspoken anger of the townspeople and transforms them from thinking how gracious were His words to the arousal of murderous intent. What had Jesus said to cause such a swing in mood? - simply that a few fortunate inhabitants of Capernaum had benefited from His gifts of healing. These ‘others’ were not some abstraction in another country but the villagers just a day’s walk away.
The consequence of this incident is that unless one can accept that others may benefit from the mercy of God, one is unable to benefit oneself. This has ecumenical and inter-religious consequences, both for Catholics and for others. It is possible to know that one shares in the truth about God through Jesus Christ, and shares the spiritual advantages available in the Catholic Church, while at the same time recognising that God can and does work elsewhere throughout the world. Faith can never become a jealous possession. For these reasons those Churches that emphasise nationalistic identity tend to struggle in multi-cultural societies, once they have lost touch with their roots, as do other faiths that live by assertion only. Catholicism as a world religion that is open to the Holy Spirit working outside its visible confines, is able both to break out of the self-imposed limits of religious jealousy and the limitations of secular inspired nationalism. The Church can become the foundation for a true civilisation of love, as it both identifies the reason why Christians need continuous renewal but also possesses the vision for a true humanism.