If you were a medical student you
would probably have heard of this ethical problem. Imagine that you
are in a supermarket and you notice that the person in front of you
in the checkout line has an ugly black spot on his neck. You know
enough to suspect this is a melanoma, but you aren't sure. The
person is a total stranger. What should you do?
If you say, “I think you have a
melanoma on your neck and you should get it checked out,” are you
acting as a physician, and if you are, do you now have a doctor
patient relationship with this person? Do you have to document that
you made a potential diagnosis and recommendation? If you don't
document, you could be in trouble. If you do, you are admitting that
you practiced medicine. And if you are wrong about your diagnosis,
you could end up being sued for causing mental anguish. On the other
hand, if you say nothing there may be no legal consequences but what
if the person goes on to die of something that might have been
prevented? What would you do?
When you listen to the gospel today,
Jesus is telling his apostles that there is no question in his mind
as to what you do when you see that your brother is heading down the
wrong path. You interfere. You first try to reason with him, one on
one. If that works, wonderful. If not, then you get help. And if
those you asked to help can't bring about a solution to the problem,
you involve the whole community. And if that fails, Jesus is saying,
kick him out, don't have anything more to do with him. Treat him
like a tax collector or a gentile. Isn't that what he is saying?
But probably not. Because the whole
thrust of Jesus' extended commandment is to do everything possible to
bring the offender back into the community. He expects us to go out
of our way to do this. And if nothing works, we are indeed to treat
our brother as a tax collector or a gentile – just as Jesus did
with Matthew, or Zaccheus; just as Jesus did with the Caananite woman
or the Roman Centurion – never cutting the bond between us, always
offering a loving response, even when it seems as though there isn't
a chance for reconciliation.
When I was growing up in Montana we
had a lot of Latter Day Saints, or Mormons, who lived in my home
town. My grandfather was a Mormon, although he stopped going to
church or participating in the faith when he married my Catholic
grandmother. The Mormons have beliefs which we Catholics would find
strange, and probably vice-versa. But they do have a strong sense of
being a community. If you are a Mormon woman you and the other women
in the parish get together every now and then to stock the church's
basement with food and clothing. The purpose is to always be ready
to help someone who has fallen on hard times. And if you are a
Mormon man, you might be part of a delegation whose job it is to find
out why someone didn't show up for the Sunday services. If the
person is in trouble you arrange help; if the person is losing faith,
you try to help them find it again. There aren't many Mormons around
here, but when I was practicing medicine I cared for a patient who
was active in the local church. He was being hospitalized because of
complications of treatment, and every couple of days the delegation
from the church would show up to ask him what he needed, how he was
doing, and then they would pray over him. The Mormons take community
seriously.
We Catholics, not so much. We can be
at the same weekend Mass every week and sit in the same spot in the
church. We can exchange the sign of peace with the lady behind us,
year after year. And then one day we notice she isn't there anymore,
and we don't know her name, and we briefly wonder what happened, and
that's about it.
Joan and I recently took three
grandsons on a trip to Colorado. Our grandchildren like to have us
take them on trips, but they know one of the conditions is that they
go to church with us – every day, if we can find a daily mass. But
we went to one church for the Sunday mass and observed a wonderful
custom. At the beginning of the Mass after reading the announcements
the lector asked us to turn to someone we didn't know and ask them to
pray during the mass for something we wanted from the Lord. If you
and I are praying for the same thing, Isn't Jesus there with us?
Doesn't Jesus guarantee an answer to our prayers? That's what he
promises in today's gospel. This church, which had six weekend
services, three priests and four deacons, and a full house for at
least the Mass we went to, also had a sign as you left the church:
It said, “You are now entering mission territory”.
Catholicism is not just about my
relationship with God, about the wonderful sacraments we have, about
the great intellectual tradition that has been handed down for two
thousand years. It's not just about the schools and universities and
hospitals and charities it runs. Jesus reminds us today that each
soul is worth extending ourselves to the fullest; it is a very
important part of our faith to look after each other, not just in a
traditional sense of extending charity, but also in terms of keeping
each other in the community.
There's a story about a man who
stopped going to church. His pastor went to visit. They were
sitting around a dying fire. The pastor asked why he wasn't going to
church. He answered that he could worship God by himself, he didn't
need the church. The minister said nothing, but moved the dying
coals closer together until a flame shot up.
I think one of the big problems we
have in our church is that we don't make a personal effort to bring
our fellow Catholics back to the sacraments. If we did, think of
what our parish would be like.
