You Are Fortunate Because Repayment Will Be Made To You When The Virtuous Rise Again
Fr Dexter Brereton, CSSp ThM STL
When you give a lunch or a dinner, do not ask your friends, brothers, relations or rich neighbours, for fear they repay your courtesy by inviting you in return. No, when you have a party, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; that they cannot pay you back means that you are fortunate, because repayment will be made to you when the virtuous rise again”
Who we choose to eat with, who we choose to sit at our dinner table says a lot about who we are. When I was studying for the priesthood, my religious order the Holy Ghost Fathers held an annual dinner in honour of our Feast Day, the Feast of Pentecost. At this dinner was invited the close relatives of the confreres, as well as our close collaborators, in other words, those who in one way or the other helped our Province through their provision of services for example our medical doctors and financial advisors. It was interesting, that for me, the roll of dinner guests read like a who’s who of Trinidad society. Many were prominent citizens in their own right, coming from ‘old’ families and generally very fine human beings, who happened to love the Church and to love and appreciate the work of the Holy Ghost Fathers.
When we celebrated our most prominent ‘family’ dinner we invited our friends, who were, more often than not, powerful people, well-known people, but at the same time good people, people who could get things done. Our easy friendship with the powerful put us in danger, I felt of creating a nice little ‘club’, a closed circle of friendship and well-being among people who were well-off in the world.
Liberation theologians such as Gustavo Gutierrez have long pointed to the Church’s penchant for being traditionally attracted to the powerful of society. This, she believed, is the only way she could really promote and protect her divine mission. Pope Francis, too has been quite vocal in his criticism of this ‘nexus’ between the Church and the powerful. The Holy Father in describing what he calls this ‘temptation’ of the Church to money and power seems to root the problem more in the weakness of the human spirit, in the collective sinfulness of individual Christians than in any weakness of the institution. In a 2015 morning homily at Cas Santa Marta, he observed:
The church will always — always — suffer the temptation of worldliness and the temptation of a power that is not the power that Jesus Christ wants for her.”
When the church does succumb to this temptation and enters into “this process of decay,” he said the end result “is very ugly. Very ugly!”
“The power of Jesus was in his word, his witness, his love. And where Jesus is, there is no room for worldliness, there is no room for corruption.”
“This is the battle inside each one of us, this is the daily battle of the church: always Jesus, always with Jesus, always hanging on his words, to hear his word,” the pope said.
We can, innocently fashion a comfortable world where ‘you scratch my back, I scratch your back’ a closed circle of warmth and friendship. A social club. The call to be disciples demands far more from us. We are invited by Jesus to do more than simply be nice to those who are nice to us. We are called to move beyond transactional behaviour. As we approach the celebration of our nation’s sixtieth (60th) anniversary of independence, this is an important point to note. Too many of us invite only our ‘friends, brothers, relations or rich neighbours’ to share our table. We are comfortable of course, only with those who look just like us, same complexion of skin, same texture of hair, same social class. In spite of our reputation for hospitality, there is a fair deal of what we call ‘clannishness’ (we are friendly only to people in our group or social circle) in our population.
A couple decades ago, a cousin named Dave met a woman and became a father-figure to her daughter – in a stunning act of generosity. She was a poor single mom, with nothing to offer him. The arrangement at first brought suspicion on the part of Dave’s wife and family, for he was married. Dave however was moved by the plight of this vulnerable little girl and decided to become the ‘father’ that she never had. It was as if he “invited the poor, the crippled the lame, the blind, to share his banquet”. If I had to imagine, in real terms what Jesus is asking of us in this teaching, it would look something like this. We are to imitate the generosity of God, the generous giver.
Lord, help us to open our hearts so that there will be always room at our tables for the poor, the crippled, the lame the blind and all those who can do nothing for us in return. We hope to receive our reward when the virtuous rise again. Amen.
