Bishop Glen John Provost
Bishop of Lake Charles
St. Raphael Catholic Church, Iowa
September 5, 2010
23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
“For the corruptible body burdens the soul and the earthen shelter weighs down the mind that has many concerns.” Wisdom 9:15
At midnight on a rainy and cold night in Paris, I was returning to my hotel. I had just attended the opera and was ascending the steps from the subway, when I stepped into the rain that by this time had become a drizzle. There stood one of the most ancient churches in the city, St. Germain des Pres, where I celebrated Mass every day. Also, there on the side of the church, at the entry to the steps of the subway, standing in the drizzle, was an older lady singing, with a hat at her feet to collect money from passersby. Her songs and her voice reminded me of the great French popular singer of a few generations ago, Edith Piaf. I paused in the chilly, wet air to listen as long as I could to her raspy voice and dropped something into her hat, for which she immediately stopped and thanked me and then resumed her song. Something so similar had happened a long time ago but with a slight difference.
Rainer Maria Rilke, a well-known Austrian poet, one hundred years before me, told the same story of being in Paris. He too was living in the same neighborhood as I, and every evening he would pass an older lady singing in the street with a hat at her feet. On his last night in Paris, he, unlike me, decided to give her something more creative. So when he passed by and listened to her song, he placed a rose in her hat, at which point she picked it up, smelt its fragrance, thanked him, and walked off. There would be no more singing. She had what she wanted. He felt as though he had given her something greater than money. Pope Benedict recounts this story in one of his books, as a lesson that the most important things in life are not tangible. The rose would wilt and fade, but the old lady would remember always that a stranger loved her singing. The rose was merely a symbol.
“For the corruptible body burdens the soul and the earthen shelter weighs down the mind that has many concerns” (Wisdom 9:15). So says the Book of Wisdom. The lesson is that material things pass away, and we should strive always for the things that last. As a matter of fact, Jesus teaches a radical rejection of those material things.
In the Gospel today, Jesus concludes, “Every one of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33). Jesus is teaching a hard lesson. There is a cost to discipleship. Knowing that we are human, Jesus must exaggerate his language to make His point. He does so in the opening words: “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). Jesus knows that if he does exaggerate the point—hate is a strong word—then a potential disciple will not realize fully what that disciple must give up. The disciple must be ready to carry his cross. He must be like a builder of a tower or a king at war who must determine what it will take to complete the task. Jesus is saying that there are more important things in life than possessions, things for which no price is too great. Like the lady singing on the street corner, we can stop singing because there is something greater here. The rose is merely a passing symbol of a gift no money can buy.
I was amused a while back when somewhere in a store I encountered a mother with her children. The mother was trying desperately to entertain her children for the afternoon. She turned to them at some point and said, “Well, kids, are we happy yet?” If she had not added that little word “yet,” the question would have been strange enough to me. However, with “yet” it sounded as though happiness was the result of definite calculations within time that were expected to yield definite results at a given moment. In my humble opinion, the question was much too self-conscious.
The word “yet” underscored the dilemma we face. Most look upon happiness as an end in itself, an emotion prompted by certain stimuli. We think that things cause it, but happiness is really a state of mind. When I look at my own life, happiness has never been the result of calculated measures to achieve anything. Happiness is anything but self-conscious. Frankly, it has generally come as a surprise but always as a result of actions that were fulfilling.
Jesus, I know, knew this. He would not have lived and taught as He did, if He did not understand this immaterial approach. Jesus knew that Man could never be happy unless his life was oriented to God. God had created humans with a deep desire for Him. That desire is imprinted on the heart of each of us. To reach that depth of desire, material possessions are useless, because they lie outside of us. It is into the heart that we must look. Otherwise, we can stand on the street corner in the rain singing our hearts out for money and miss the opportunity that comes one day when a rose is dropped into our hat, and we come to know something more valuable.