Monday of the Twenty-sixth Week in Ordinary Time
“Mirror, mirror on the wall. Who’s the fairest of them all?”
If martians were monitoring us exclusively through our media they would have a disoriented image of earthlings. They might say upon visiting earth, “We’ve been duped! Not all earthlings are successful, influential, or beautiful!”
No one is fairest of them all. The magic mirror lies.
Many these days want to be “fairest of them all.” Reality TV scores big ratings on who’s the biggest loser, who’s
the most appealing potential mate, who’s the best dancer, who’s the best talent. There are job titles given to demonstrate who’s number one. “Pecking order” matters. The world tells us to climb over one another to get to the top.
In Disney’s Mickey’s Christmas Carol, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come (Peg leg Pete) shows Ebeneezer (Scrooge McDuck) his soon to be forlorn and cold open grave. As Scrooge is hurled into its abyss by the ghost, Pete laughs, “There you go Ebenezer! The richest man in the cemetery!” Power and prestige are fleeting. Death is the great equalizer.
Dayton’s most famous residents, Wilbur and Orville Wright, desired simple grave markers at Woodland Cemetery. And initially that was so. But the citizenry would have none of it. So their plots became more elaborate. Maybe the brothers were on to something.
Even we who claim the name of Christ can chase after what is fleeting. Landfills are chock full of trophies. Sadly, what the world sees as greatest often trumps what the Gospel teaches.
While I served as faith formation director for a Cincinnati parish, certain well meaning parishioners sought to restore some of our older traditions. May Crowning was first on their list. They chose an 8th grade girl who was “prettiest, smartest, and most popular.” As such, they reasoned, she was “most Mary-like.”
Certain all-male Catholic high schools would devise classroom seating charts by order of academic rank. This shamed and embarrassed the boys who brought up the rear.
Jesus confronts jockeying for position, bringing a child into their midst to demonstrate who is first in the Reign of God. Children in the ancient world had no rights or privileges. They were at the “bottom rung.”
There is a big difference between being childlike and being childish. The Twelve, all grown men, were acting childishly in their argument overheard by Jesus. The childlike are open, trusting, guileless, simple, and unpretentious.
What can we do? We might make the prayer of Saint Paschal Baylon our own, “Give me the heart of a child before my God, the heart of a mother for my neighbor, and the heart of a judge with regard to myself.”
-Timothy J. Cronin
The early church was widely accepted by the culture of their day as the “least fairest of them all.” Our Wednesday evening series on Revelation @ 7pm continues to encounter this church until Oct. 18. https://www.youtube.com/user/imedayton/live