A Country of Fear and Anger
Richard Rohr:
The Lord be with you. A reading from the Holy Gospel is written to us by Luke. “And Mary set out. She traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leapt in her womb and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, ‘Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how does this happen to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? The moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leapt for joy.’ Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would indeed be fulfilled. This is good news from the Lord.”
Many years ago I gave a retreat in Israel for the many Franciscans who worked there in all of the great shrines of the Holy Land. And we met in this very town where this happened, the little town of Ein Karem. And in this town there are now two huge churches, one on the site of Zachary and Elizabeth’s house, and then across the little creek there’s another huge church. And that was built on the site of where this actually happened.
The Jewish people, like many ancient peoples, had deep respect for women about to give birth. And on the edge of town they had a house that only women could enter. Men, frankly, weren’t welcome there because they wouldn’t understand what a woman was going through. And so she would bring the child into the world rested and happy and well-fed. She went there and during that period, her women friends and relatives would all make it a point to visit her and take care of her. How beautiful is that? But it was a part of the culture, and that’s what this story is building on.
Mary, who has just found out that she is to be the mother of Jesus. Now, I’ll be honest, if I found out I was going to be the mother of the Lord, I’d probably hire a PR firm or write my autobiography or say, “Look at me. Look at me.” But what does she do? And we assume Mary was only between 14 and 17. Women married very young because life was not long. And we assume she was a teenage girl, that she had enough caring about someone else not to think of herself, but to rush, on her own, we guess. “She traveled to the hill country in haste where she entered the house and greeted Elizabeth.” This is the only account in the New Testament of two women in conversation. And it’s been pictured in much Christian art, the meeting and the greeting of Mary and Elizabeth. And of course their birth stories are very similar.
They both are unexpected to have children, Mary a virgin, Elizabeth in her old age, both of them trust. Well, we can’t do it. We cannot bear a child, but trusting in God everything is possible. And that’s the story of both of these births. Today we’re presented with Elizabeth to prepare us for what’s going to happen in the Christmas feast this Friday. Brothers and sisters, as I think this story makes so clear, we’re not human beings trying to be spiritual. The question of your inherent spirituality, inherent dignity, inherent union with God is already settled. You are spiritual beings inherently. And when you operate according to that, you’ll always feel good about yourself because you’re true to your dignity that is inherent and given and forever.
And the question is much more, how do we be human? Look at our world today, just the inhumanity that has overtaken our world. It feels like there is nothing but anger and fear, anger and fear, anger and fear. The response to everything is anger and fear. Do we know any other emotions in this country except anger and fear? Is this the best we can do after having this wonderful gospel preached to most who call themselves Christians, Americans. They hear these things of people operating at more mature, spiritual loving levels like Mary does here. And in a moment of crisis, we all revert to the lowest level of motivation. The lowest level of motivation is fear. And this whole country is controlled by fear. Never has anyone had so much. The richest country in the world and we’re obsessed with not having enough or that we’re going to lose it, or those terrible immigrants are going to take it away from us. And yet we dare to call ourselves Christian when our response is low level response.
One deacon wrote me last week from the East Coast, he said he just dared to raise the question of the Syrian immigrants. And when he went to the vestibule all he got was hateful responses from Catholics who had just attended mass. It makes you want to cry, the level of immaturity, absolute immaturity of people who call themselves Christian and call themselves Catholic. Just on last night’s news, maybe you saw it, they were showing another boatload of poor immigrants coming across the sea and a woman stepped out holding a little baby in her arm and clearly pregnant with another. And I can’t imagine the courage that this woman is showing in the face of her fear. And it made me think of this gospel, what women have often had to go through, but of course we’re afraid of them, they might be terrorists. Let’s stop this pregnant woman with her child because she might have a gun. We’ve got to realize this is absolutely low level humanity.
To conclude and to sum up, we are not human beings trying to become spiritual. You are already spiritual beings. And as we see here, the problem is how do we be basically human? Just learn how to relate to one another with the dignity of human beings and give other beings that same dignity, even at cost to ourselves. If we can’t do that, let’s just throw this whole Christian thing out the window, it doesn’t mean anything. Because in the moments of crisis, so many Christians are exactly like everybody else. I know that’s not true of you, or you would not be here this morning, but let’s make sure it’s not true of us.