Tuesday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 450

The just man appraises the house of the wicked:
there is one who brings down the wicked to ruin.
He who shuts his ear to the cry of the poor will himself also call and not be heard.



Buddhist have a saying that goes something like this: "When I came to the monastery, I knew that rivers were rivers and mountains were mountains. But after many years of deep meditation I came to understand that rivers are mountains and mountains are rivers. Now I have been in the monastery all my life, and I am very old, and I see that rivers are rivers and mountains are mountains"

At some point in my life, I began to understand the old monks saying. As a child I learned there are good people and bad people. We can trust good people, but we avoid bad people.

But I learned that good people often do very bad things, and some truly wicked people dote on their children and make enormous sacrifices for them. All pedophiles, I am told, were sexually abused as children. I should have some compassion for these unfortunate persons. I was just as vulnerable once, and I might have suffered that horror.

But most people who were sexually abused as children, attaining adulthood, do not prey on children. They protect their children and raise them carefully. They have not countered evil with evil.

Finally, in my senior years, I have learned that there's little I can do for really vicious people. I am sorry some were abused as children, for instance, but the best place for them and for us, is prison. Where bad people go. I would be happy to offer them the sacraments and to listen to their story, if they were only willing to receive the grace I offer as an "administrator of the mysteries of God." Many, perhaps most, refuse the opportunity. I am sad for them and pray that God's mercy might reach where I cannot.

The Book of Proverbs -- from which today's first reading is taken -- is addressed to children. Here are simple, easy to remember, formulas for life. For every reliable truism there is an opposite truism, equally reliable. The wise learn to apply the right proverb to the right occasion. They live by today's first proverb:

Like a stream is the king’s heart in the hand of the LORD;
wherever it pleases him, he directs it.

They use proverbs as craftsmen use their tools, knowing from experience and habit which one to use as the situation requires. Their attitude is willing rather than willful because they have divested ego from the process and its product. They do not pretend to infallibility as they trust that God's spirit will guide them. If the results are disappointing after their best efforts, they know that God is still in charge. God sees beyond our horizon and knows what good will come from failure.

The Christian, as the Lord describes in today's gospel, is the one who hears the word of God and acts on it. "Duty are ours, results are God's." as President John Quincy Adams said.