HOMILY 12-6-2015

"A WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING"
Learning to Discern

My prayer is that you may be able to discern what is of value.

Philippians 1:8-11

The famous circus owner P.T. Barnum is credited, maybe wrongly so, with the phrase, “There’s a sucker born every minute!”  He may, or may not, have said it, but it still rings true no matter who said it! Whether it is inflated dating sites or fake Nigerian inheritances, scamming is a big business, especially over the internet.

Even if it isn’t an outright scam, sometimes the information offered on internet sites about some products are not always clear. I learned my lesson several months back. I bought a small TV for my room at Saint Meinrad online. What they did not make clear was that it was a “rebuilt” TV that turned out not to be as
“rebuilt” as they said! It would not work! It took me hours, to follow their instructions for returning it, obviously designed to discourage people like me from returning their defective products. I had also ordered some gym shoes. They were exactly what I was looking for and the price was very good, but what they did not make clear in the add was they were “”women’s” shoes! I thought it was too good to be true! It took another few hours to wrap them and send them back! Bargain? I don’t think so! Don’t get me started on airplane websites. Sometimes I think they are deliberately confusing so they don’t have to issue a refund even if it their fault!

TVs, clothing and airplane tickets are one thing, but even more deadly are the shallow values and immoral choices that are being sold to all of us each and every day, not just the young! People are suckers for the bill of goods that is being sold to them every day through TV, internet, movies and music. People, even parents and grandparents, are doing insane and destructive things that they would never have done just a few years ago, just because someone told them it was OK or “everybody else is doing it” and they have swallowed that advice - hook, line and sinker!

Before you think I am about to start a petition to close down all these sources of information, let me say this! I am not interested in changing any laws. I am here to challenge people, like Saint Paul in our second reading, to learn how to discern what is of value – how to be smart enough, wise enough and sharp enough to be able to see through the shiny wrappings and recognize the evil that is being presented to us!

May prayer is that you may be able to discern what is of value.

Saint Paul wrote these words to the people of Philippi. Philippi was “sin city.” It was a great commercial center, a crossroads, where every imaginable idea, custom, religion and personal habit competed for acceptance. It was very much like our own culture in many ways.

Do you know what the very first gift God gave to Adam and Eve? It was the gift to choose – to choose between good and evil. “Eat anything in the garden you want, but don’t eat that fruit!”  The gift of choosing is repeated in Deuteronomy 30:19.  “I call heaven and earth today to witness against you. I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live.” 

The history of the world is the history of good and bad choices.  The bad, lazy and cowardly choices of people in previous generations still haunt us down through the generations. Even more so, our own bad, lazy and cowardly choices or our own good, industrious and courageous choices have had a lot to do with who and where we are today. They, too, will affect future generations.

With the gift of choice comes the responsibility to choose wisely. Before we can choose wisely, we must be able to clearly discern what is of value. There is gold and there is fool’s gold. There is the real thing and there is the cheap imitation. There is the truth and there is the lie. There is a wolf and there is a wolf in sheep's clothing. Therefore, we must look before we leap and discern before we choose. 

My fellow Catholics, we too live in a culture where every imaginable idea, custom and habit compete for our acceptance in very slick packaging.  Drafting laws against these evils is not easy, and sometimes impossible. What we must do today is to “be able to discern what is of value” and choose that, regardless of what “everyone else is doing” and “to be in the world, but not of it.” We do have the ability to choose and to choose wisely. We must exercise that ability. To do that we must be able to discern what is of value from what simply “looks” good to the untrained eye!   And, yes, sometimes we just have to say “no!”