Wednesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 367

“Take care not to perform righteous deeds
in order that people may see them;
otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father.

C&E Catholics who suppose that Ash Wednesday is the uber-holy day of obligation will be familiar with today’s gospel. Each year we begin the Season of Lent with this reminder of the Jewish traditions of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving. We should do these things collectively, as the People of God; but, Jesus says, each one should keep their observance secret so that “your Father who sees in secret will repay you.”

With the invasion of identity snatchers and the Internet many people worry about their loss of privacy. Our medical records, our spending habits, our sexual preferences and practices: all are out there for public review and assessment. But while they complain that the private has become too public, we might also observe that the public has become too private.

Just as some British have a morbid fascination with their royal family, spending millions of euros and wasting millions of hours watching the comings and goings of a set of ordinary men, women, and children; so have Americans become obsessed with the POTUS’s comments, gestures, and tweets. Mr. Trump is not the first president to occupy every moment of public life, though he may have learned to exploit that power more than his predecessors.

If we should “take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people see them,” we should also rein in our obsessive interest in other people’s lives. Why should I care what an entertainer, athlete, or politician thinks, feels, or says? Haven’t I a life of my own?  

Especially those very public persons whom I might never meet personally? In my 71 years I have never been in the same room with anyone very famous. I have stood twenty feet away from one US senator. I happened upon the filming of a nationally syndicated TV show once. I was once among several thousand people when a pope sped by. None of these encounters left a trace on my life. If I forgot them totally, I’d be no worse off.

We were not always obsessed with the private lives of our leaders. Few people knew about President Roosevelt's polio at the time. The national press discreetly ignored his disability. Nor should it matter today. His greatness was his leadership through two major crises, and his vision of a peaceful post-war world.

Jesus advises us to “go to your inner room [and] close the door.” We should not only shut ourselves in, we should also shut the world out. That may take a while, depending upon how agitated we are and how practiced we are at this discipline. We will almost certainly experience the world’s demands as a "legitimate distraction," a reason to ignore the command to “pray to your Father in secret.” We are tempted to think the world's crying needs are too important, too pressing. The world threatens us with guilt and shame if we ignore it too long. “Where do you get the privilege of solitude? Who do you think you are?” they say to us.

“Wait on the Lord!” the scriptures repeatedly advise.

… who bends down to me and hears my cry,

draws me up from the pit of destruction,

out of the muddy clay,

sets my feet upon rock,

steadies my steps,

and puts a new song in my mouth,

a hymn to our God.