A PREVIOUS, BUT STILL USEFUL, POST
The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones.
Luke 16:1-10
Trash
TV is forever giving some of the weakest people in our culture a spotlight for
showing off their crudeness, addictions and ignorance. I must confess that I
get sucked into watching it sometimes – usually with a jaw dropped in
amazement. Just when you think you’ve heard and seen it all, the ante is
“upped” in one form or another. “Tom, Dick, Harry, John, Kevin, Bob, George,
Devin! All eight of you are not the father!” “I
am here today to tell my teenaged daughter that I have been secretly having a
relationship with her boy friend for the last three years!” “I want to come
clean today with my girl friend and tell her today that I am the one who has
been secretly cashing her grandparents social security checks for the last
three years in order to cover my gambling debts.”
One
of the themes that gets regular coverage is the inability to say “no.” Pathetic examples of humanity tell the
audience in a million different ways that if the temptation is there, one is
forced to give into it because one is surely powerless to do otherwise.
Likewise, if the opportunity arises to commit adultery, defraud the government
or take something from work, we are told that a person would be foolish to pass
it up.
Today’s
gospel calls us to be people of integrity, no matter what call we have
answered. A person of integrity knows right from wrong and has the strength of
character to choose what is right, even when no one is looking, even when it is
possible to choose wrong and get away with it. The opposite of a person with
integrity is a small self-centered person, always “on the make,” no matter how
devastating the effect is on himself or others.
The
ability to say “no” to opportunistic situations is one of the most basic
abilities of a person of integrity. A person of integrity declares his
independence from the terminal egoism of popular culture. A person of integrity
responds to life from well-defined principles, not from his or her basest
addictions.
A
person of integrity says “no” to the assumption that says “the end justifies
the means.” When we buy into this perspective, we are willing to use deception,
manipulation and even death to accomplish our “good” goals.
A
person of integrity says “no” to radical materialism – that driving passion to
“own,” “possess” and “have” at all cost, even at the expense of individuals and
the community as a whole.
A
person of integrity says “no” to radical individualism. Radical individualists
promote themselves only, always taking and never giving back. We are social
beings by nature. We live in communities and are therefore never free to do
whatever we wish in an absolute sense.
A
person of integrity says “no” to the “group-think,” the “herd mentality,” “what
everybody else is doing.” Unable to love themselves, people without integrity
are unable to love others. Addicts to the “latest best offer,” their marriages
often end in tragedy. Refusing to grow up, they do not have what it takes to
sustain family life and leave children
without the parenting that is rightfully theirs!
Friends!
If all this sounds terribly counter-cultural, it is! One of the marks of mature
adulthood is the ability to do hard things for one’s own good, to stand up to
the coward in oneself and to say “no” to lazy, destructive choices. Build your
life on solid principles, no matter how few follow you.
I
teach a class every spring semester to the guys who will be ordained to the
priesthood this spring. In fact, they are also going through their own
graduations at Saint Meinrad today. They have been though four, six or more
years of supervision and evaluations to make sure they are doing what they
should be doing. I spend a lot of time
preparing them to be their own spiritual directors and life coaches, if
need be, because their success, like yours, will depend a great deal on their
ability to say “no” to lazy, destructive choices that may feel good to them in the short run and say “yes” to
the hard choices that are really
good
for them in the long run.
Friends,
the sign that you have really reached adulthood will be your ability to manage
your own appetites, your ability to do hard things for your own good, your
ability to stand up to that perpetual adolescence that is so popular and
embarrassing in so many middle-aged men and women today. Choose the things that
will give you life. Reject the things that will bring death into your life.
Choose to be directed by solid spiritual principles, rather than always going
with the latest best offer, always taking the road most traveled, always
choosing the easy way. Be a man or woman of integrity instead of a slave to
your own cowardice and addictions. A man or woman of integrity, with a good
education, has the ability to be a successful professional, a successful
marriage partner, a successful parent, indeed whatever God calls him or her to
be.
Let
me end this homily with a quote from one of my heroes, Victor Frankl, a
prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp.
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of human freedoms, the ability to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, the ability to choose one’s own way.”
Friends, reject “group think.” Choose to be directed by spiritual solid principles.
Choose to be men and women of integrity.
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