the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Does it ever seem to you like everyone is fighting with everyone else? To the devil’s delight.
The devil loves division, all kinds of division. Can’t talk to that uncle about politics. Satan giggles. Don’t trust those people who don’t speak English. He’s thrilled. How about the people who watch that other network? He’s love you to hate them, too! Or that person who always makes dumb decisions at work. Go ahead, the man with the little red tail whispers in your ear…destroy her.
The deeper the division and the more ferocious the hate, the happier the devil is. And on some days lately, he must be really happy.
As he was in the diaspora. The Greek word diaspora means division, the spreading of seeds across a field. So when, six centuries before the birth of Christ, the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem, including the Temple, and the enslavement and exile of “all the princes, and…men of valor, ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and smiths; none remained, save the poorest sort of the people of the land.”
According to the Prophet Jeremiah, the Jewish nation was utterly destroyed and made “an everlasting ruin…a ruin and a waste.” (Jeremiah 25:11)
The desperation of the Babylonian exile is recalled by the author of Psalm 137:
By the rivers of Babylon…we sat and wept, remembering Sion;
If I forget you, Jerusalem, let my right hand wither!
if I prize not Jerusalem above all my joys!
But, as we hear from Jeremiah and from the Psalmist this morning, all was not lost. For they dreamed of the day when the Lord, the Father of Israel, would gather-in the remnant of Israel, scattered across the face of the earth, and lead them back to Jerusalem. They paint a picture of the immense throng on a straight road: the blind, the lame, pregnant mothers and everyone else. They left in tears, but they would return rejoicing. They will be like men dreaming, their mouths filled with laughter, proclaiming the greatness of the Lord.
So it was for the Jews of the diaspora and so it will be for us.
Such was the promise of Jesus, to send the Holy Spirit to make us one. Do you remember the Lord’s prayer at the last Supper?
Ut unum sint! “…that they all might be one, Christ is one with the Father, that we might be one in him. (Cf. John 17:21)
It is what we pray for in the Eucharistic Prayer: “in your compassion, O merciful Father, gather to yourself all your children scattered throughout the world.”
But such a work will not happen magically. God will not wave a magic wand. Rather he has commanded us to be the agents of his in-gathering, by loving others as he loved us. It is like the old song, “Let there be peace on earth, but let it begin with me.”
And such peace, such unity will not come about when we figure out the best words with which to convince all those people to think like we do. It will come only with love.
So are you sick of all the division and of tickling the devil’s little red ears with our hate for each other and endless arguing.
Then love your neighbors, for even in the least of them is an opportunity to love Christ. “Whatever you do the least of them, you do to me.” Be willing to lay down your life for them. Even your enemies and your persecutors.
Seek out the good in them, rather than seeking their faults as reasons to reject them. Don’t compete with your neighbor, love him. “The greater divider,” the Holy Father reminds us, tempts us to seek out “the weaknesses of [our] brothers and sisters. He is cunning: he magnifies their mistakes and defects, sows discord, provokes criticism and creates factions.” (Pope Francis, 20 January 2021) But Jesus does the opposite. He teaches us not to see in our brother someone to compete with, but someone to love.
For if we love one another as he has loved us, Christ will gather us in from the diaspora of our sins and be make us one in him, that the “full number of the nations, gathered together in Christ, [might] be transformed into [his] one people and made perfect in [his] Kingdom.” (Rite of Ordination, Prayer for the Ordination of a Priest)
Jesus, son of David, make it so. Make us one in you.
