Turning your back on the Church

Homily for the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Deacon Doug McManaman

“The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses. Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example.”

This is an interesting passage from today’s gospel reading; what it shows is that Jesus makes a distinction between what the scribes and Pharisees teach, and the example they set before us. Embrace and observe what they tell you, but do not follow their example. The reason is that they are hypocrites, they are egoists. Their religious leadership is all about them and how they appear. 

The reason this reading is so relevant can be summed up in that old expression: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Hypocrisy has not died out; it’s still here in the Church, there are still clerics who are opportunists, who think priesthood is about them, who are envious and love to be the center of attention, and so on and so forth. Jesus established a Church on the twelve apostles, choosing Peter as the head of the Apostles, and yet he knew they would scatter and that Peter would deny knowing him. But he chose them anyway.

That’s the humility of Christ. He continues to be present among us, to forgive our sins and to give himself to us in the flesh, through the unworthy hands of sinful human beings. There’s no getting around that. Catholicism is not about us; it is about Christ.

Christ’s directive here can be very difficult to live out: do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example. Even among the clerical ranks, there are some who are somewhat pharisaical. So if you encounter a priest or bishop who is annoying, immature, perhaps thinks it is all about him, when you are stuck with a cleric who has as much compassion and diplomacy as a steak knife, the temptation can be to walk out, turn your back on the Church and never look back. Some people have done so. But it is at this point where we have to keep our eyes on Christ, not his instruments. 

The fact is we are all hypocrites. None of us really practice what we preach, at least not perfectly. I don’t know about you, but whenever I look back at my own life, when I see old pictures or videos of myself and am reminded of things I did or said that are now forgotten, I often don’t like what I see. I often say to myself: “Gosh, I can’t believe I said that back then, or I can’t believe I did that. What an idiot I was”. And although we may not see anything wrong with us now, 20 years from now we may look back at this time and shake our heads at what we can’t see now, but will see later. And yet Christ still works through us. He still gives us a sharing in his divine nature, even though we are very imperfect and unworthy vessels. We still have charisms that he has given to us for the building up of the Body of Christ, and yet we remain defective vessels. 

So when a person turns his back in anger at the Church for some clerical imperfection–and I am excluding criminal behavior here, that’s a different matter altogether –, when it is merely a matter of annoyance or something he said or his personality, or something more serious such as genuine egoism or condescending moralizing, one is cutting oneself off from the sacraments, which are channels of divine grace. It’s what the expression “cutting off your nose to spite your face” means in this context. 

This life is about learning to forgive one another, and all those who refuse to forgive, who choose to harbor unforgiveness against the Church as a whole or against another person, really end up condemning themselves. In the Our Father, we pray: forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us. We are instructing God to forgive us only to the degree that we forgive others. If we don’t forgive, we block God’s forgiveness of our sins. And so we need to pray that God will give us the strength to get past whatever wounds we carry, and this could take a long time for some of us to get to that point, but if we hope for the Lord’s forgiveness, we have to be willing to forgive all those in our lives who need to be forgiven.