Jesus said to his Apostles in today’s gospel:
“Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves. Beware of men …”
I must confess that I am a little bit niave. My children were sometimes able to, “pull the wool over my eyes,” when they were teenagers. That must be where this expression came from! It really wasn’t funny though, that I was so gullible.
Jesus said in today’s gospel that “children will rise up against parents.” That certainly happened when my thirteen year old daughter began telling me lies – and I believed it. I wanted to trust her, to always see the good in her. I loved her so much that it was a shock when I found out that she had told me a lie. It was a rude awakening to the reality that people (including my own beloved children) have both good and bad inside of them. By the time my daughter was fourteen years old, I wasn’t so niave though. I wasn’t so shy about questioning her truthfulness in the future.
To this day, I’m still a little bit niave though. I want to trust my neighbors, my coworkers, the folks in the community that I live in. I didn’t lock my car door at our new home in Oregon – until I forgot my iphone in my car overnight and someone stole it. I couldn’t believe someone would do such a thing! Our daughter was inn intensive care in the hospital and she almost died – and then when we got home, a thief stole my phone!
Our daughter got well though, and I started locking my car after that!
I’m sure you can think of at least a half dozen instances that someone took advantage of you too. Times that you trusted people, wanting to see the good in them, and then they betrayed your trust.
A lot of Catholics work hard at “holiness”, always trying to see the good in others. They refrain from any negative thoughts about other people, and try not to say anything negative about others. We are especially like that with our fellow Catholics.
Not all Catholics are worthy of this unquestionable trust though. The priests who are pediphiles is a good example of this. They are wolves in sheep’s clothing. We as a church, were too trusting of them. We wanted to believe that all priests were good and holy men.
But, this is also true with the laity. They can appear to be good on the outside too, but inside they are hiding something that is deeply, morally wrong. Just because they are members of your parish, it doesn’t mean that everyone deserves your complete trust. I learned this the hard way too.
To make a long story short, I volunteered with a woman in our parish for many years as a catechist. We watched our children grow up together ever since they were in kindergarten. One day, when our children were 13 years old, they wanted to spend the night at each other’s home. I let my daughter spend the night with this catechist’s daughter pretty often, until months later I found out that the mom allowed her teenage son to have his girlfriend spend the night with him on a regular basis. She also allowed both of her children to smoke marijuana and drink alchohal in her home. The mother never told her children “no” to anything and they were allowed to do whatever they felt like. After my thirteen year old daughter was exposed to this, the damage had been done. She no longer wanted to listen to me when I told her she couldn’t do the same. It took a year to try and undo the influence this family had on my thirteen year old daughter. I have beat myself up inside ever since then, that I could have been so gullible to trust this family, just because they were members of our parish that I had known for many years. The mother was a catechist for the children in our parish for goodness sakes!
To be holy as a Catholic, does not mean to go through the world with rose colored glasses, only seeing the good in others.
The gospel today shows us that holiness includes the ability to see both good and evil in the world. And not to trust everyone, even those closest to us.
