12th Sunday in Ordinary Time: 6/19/16—All Masses except 11:30 AM
I have here a series of comic strips from one called “For Better or For Worse” that appears daily in the St.
Louis Post-Dispatch. Obviously by its title, you can tell that it is about a family: two parents, two kids, and a dog.
The older child is a boy of about 12 years old named Michael; the younger child is a girl of about 6 years old
named Elizabeth. This strip during the first week and a half of June was focused on baseball, Michael’s wish to
play with his friends without his pesky little sister Elizabeth getting in the way so they not only put her in the
outfield; they put her in what Michael calls the “out-outfield” so much so that, in some of the panels of this
strip, the game is pictured as being played on this horizon while Elizabeth is pictured on that horizon, so much so
that one panel shows her playing the ants and another shows her wearing her glove like a hat to guard against
the sun. Obviously she wasn’t a part of any of the action of the game. This comic strip of Elizabeth playing the
out-outfield came to my mind earlier this week when I first read today’s Gospel. By Jesus asking the question of
“Who do people say that I am?,” he is asking them and us, “How much of a part do I play in your life?” I wonder
if we often relegate Jesus to playing the out-outfield of our lives so that he, like Elizabeth, isn’t very much a part
of the game of our lives.
I have here four color filters like you’d use to cover a light on a stage: red, green, blue, and gold. They
represent the four basic ways we humans look at life. Red represents anger and fear. Those who look at life
through this filter see everything about life as win or lose, as good or bad, as all about rivalries, as always
needing to be first, as always needing to be on top, as always looking out for #1, as never letting myself to be
taken advantage of.
While red represents the filter of anger, green represents money and wealth. Those who look at life through
this filter see everything in life as being about what it costs, how much money I make compared to what you
make; it means having to have the best of everything because you only go around once in life so grab for all the
creature comforts you can get. The person who looks through this green filter has a very difficult time being able
to share or shares only very sparsely and grudgingly lest I won’t have enough.
If red is about anger and green is about money, blue represents depression and hopelessness. Atheists and
agnostics look at life through this blue filter, but so too do those who ask “Why me?” They ask: Why did this
happen to me? Why do I have this illness? Why can’t I win the lottery? Why should I try to change my life, why
try to give up this sin, because I can’t change? This person who look through this blue filter is the one who says I
have never achieved anything in life, the one who says my life has been a waste and no life is of worth.
If the red filter represents anger and fear, if the green filter represents money and wealth, and if blue
represents hopelessness and despair, what does the gold filter represent? It represents faith and belief in God.
The one who looks at life through this gold filter sees the presence of God everywhere, seeing that, as St.
Bonaventure reportedly said, “All creation bears the footprints of God.” The one who looks through this golden
filter sees everyone as his or her brother or sister, that every human life has worth, that all humans are temples
of God’s presence and that all people are to be respected, and ultimately seeing the other person’s issues and
hurts as being of equal importance or even as being more important than my own.
Now we, as the good Catholics we are, might all be tempted to say I am the one who always looks at life
through this gold filter and never or rarely looks at life through the filter of anger or the filter of money or the
filter of hopelessness. Unfortunately if we think that way, thinking that we always look at life through the gold
filter, we probably are fooling ourselves.
I have here a kaleidoscope. While it might’ve been some time since we’ve looked through one of these, we all
remember how kaleidoscopes work, that they show a mixture of various colors and shapes every time you turn
the outside cylinder. You and I are all kaleidoscopes, sometimes predominantly seeing red of anger and fear, at
other times the green of greed, at other times in the pits of blue, yet other times seeing with the gold of God.
Because we are all kaleidoscopes, all of life, every moment of our lives, is to be about constantly asking Jesus
and, with great humility, appealing to the Holy Spirit, to turn the cylinder of our lives, so that there will be less
and less of a temptation to see life through the red of anger & fear or the green of money or the blue of
hopelessness so that we may more and more look at life through the gold filter of seeing presence of God
everywhere, seeing that “All creation bears the footprints of God,” that everyone is my brother and sister, that
every human life has worth, that all humans are temples of God’s presence and are to be respected, seeing the
other person’s issues and hurts as being equally important or even as being more important than my own.