One of my favorite retreats was given by Bishop Olmstead,
the Bishop of Phoenix, Arizona. Bishop Olmstead is probably one of the most
gentle human beings on the face of the planet. He even looks gentle. And he is
a very small man, short, thin, and giant glasses. He’s everybody’s grandpa.
Everybody loves him. Everybody wants to be around him. It doesn’t matter who
you are. Why? Because he radiates his love for everyone. Everyone who meets him
knows that he loves them, regardless of who they are. He naturally has an
amazing ability to show love for everyone.
The most amazing part of this
retreat was when this little itty bitty man climbed into the giant pulpit at
the seminary. He was so small that we could hardly see him over the pulpit. We
could see where he was because he was like a bouncing hat. He pulled the
microphone down and he said, “Gentlemen, never be nice!”
What? You are the
nicest man on the face of the earth. This is like Santa Claus telling us not to
be nice. He explained the meaning of the word nice. The word nice means “fake.”
You’re allowed to be charitable. You are allowed to be kind. Always be those
two things. However, we are never allowed to be fake.
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| Bishop Olmstead |
The Lord says we must speak the truth in love. The art of
debate has been lost in our society. Debate was valued in the early Church.
Argument was something that was part and parcel of being a Christian. And
arguing is not necessarily not being nice. In our day and age, we see an
argument and we think, “Oh, that’s not polite. We don’t argue in public. Oh,
dear,” and we get very uncomfortable with arguments, don’t we?
The most
important part of the Christian debate is that it has nothing to do with being
right. If you are arguing in a Christian debate, and you are only arguing for
being right, you are missing the entire point. A debate in the Christian sense
is a matter of truth. If is about truth, then it is ultimately about love. You
cannot separate the truth from love.
The Church fathers had debates constantly.
These are great minds, great bishops of the church. They were writing to one
another, and if you read their writings, they are hysterical. They always begin
something like this. “My most worthy, humble servant of God, to Bishop
so-and-so in an esteemed place, surrounded by the loving faithful of your
diocese, may you always be loved and praised for the goodness which you exude .
. . “ yada yada yada okay.
But the very next paragraph begins, “But this is
where your most grievous error has led you into stupidity.” What is this all
about? It’s about my desire to esteem your dignity and your goodness. However,
I believe that you are in error which means that, as your brother, I will
never, ever allow you to remain in error because I love you, and error is not
of God. Falsity is not of God. Anything that is not true is not of God.
God told the prophets to take heart and take courage because
he was sending them on a mission to proclaim the truth and to proclaim it in
love. Speak to the people the truth even though they don’t want to accept it.
You will be hated because of the message that I send you to preach. But that
message is, indeed, about love. The message, even though the people do not want
to receive it, is about heaven and about how God wishes them to be there. They
need to receive this message and repent. Does that make the prophet a popular
person? Not a chance. That makes him the least popular person. And yet God
speaks a word of assurance to the prophet, “Be not afraid. Go and preach
anyway, although you will be hated. I love you, and my love should be what
motivates you, not the love of the masses, not the love of the world. My love will
never leave you. Go and preach my truth.”
We remember the reading of St. Paul which makes us feel like
we are at a wedding. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is this, love is that.
This is a beautiful reading about love. But the truth about love is that love
is not ultimately a feeling. You cannot separate love from truth.
What is love
in the Christian sense? It is not making the other person happy. That is not
love. That is fakeness. That is niceness. That is the exact thing that Bishop
Olmstead warns us against. Because if we want anyone to be happy, then we not
doing them any good. It’s like having a child and only giving them what makes
them happy. Is that loving that child? No! It’s making that child a spoiled
brat. It’s not going to help them.
True love is wishing heaven for them. And
delivering that message in such a way that the person who hears it knows that
they are loved, that we put them even before ourselves, that we put them in the
center of our concern. The only reason we are talking to them is because we
wish heaven for them. It’s not because we want to be right.
The word of God will not always make everyone happy. Look at
Jesus. Jesus is really good at ticking people off. We see in the Gospels
constantly that he is making people angry, but you notice it’s not by the way
in which he says it. He doesn’t insult the people. He doesn’t call them stupid.
He doesn’t say, “Oh, you ignorant fools.” He doesn’t act pompously. He speaks
the word of God to the people, and they like that. Then he challenges them and they
get angry. What do we need to learn from this?
When we hear the word of God and
it doesn’t settle well with us, do we blame Jesus or do we allow ourselves to
be confronted and say, “We have to change.”? Are we allowing ourselves to be
uncomfortable? The Gospel is supposed to make us uncomfortable. It supposed to
convict us. It is supposed to point out our deepest faults and call us to
change out of love for Jesus.
Are we like the Jewish people who want to toss Jesus out of
our town? We do that when we, as Christians, deny the Gospel. We toss Jesus out
when we deny his word and say, “I want to live by my truth rather than by what
the Gospel teaches us. I know what the Church teaches, but I want to reject
that and follow my own opinion.” We throw Jesus headlong off a cliff. “Jesus, I
don’t want you in my town because you don’t think like me.” Instead we should
say, “Jesus, I don’t understand your word. Help me to understand it better. I
know there’s something there for me.”
People were angry because Jesus pointed out that God loves
their enemies. God loves everyone. That was ultimately a news splash to the
people of Jesus’s day. What were the Israelites always saying? “This is the God
of Israel. This is my God, the God who marches with my armies, and the God who
favors Israel above all things, the God who loves me and not you.” That was the
problem. Jesus said that, in all these hard times, God showed mercy and pity on
people who are not like you. God showed mercy to and loved people who were
outside of our midst. That should not make us angry. That should make us marvel
at the love of God.
So whenever we enter into a debate, what is our fundamental
premise? That the person with whom we are debating is loved by God just as much
as we are. We need to remember that Jesus never shied away from proclaiming the
truth even when it made someone else angry. But that never stopped Jesus from
loving the person with whom he got in a debate. Jesus died for every single
person on that hill who wanted to throw him off. It would be a grave error for
us to look at the Gospel and say “Oh, those stupid people of Jesus’s time.” We
do the exact same thing.
We need to be motivated like Jesus was and keep proclaiming
the truth. Even though people hate us, we need to keep proclaiming the truth.
Why? Not so that we are right, and we proclaim ourselves to be right. This
truth is not ours. It is meant for the world. If we truly loved people, we
should want them to have this truth.
Secondly we, we need to recognize that truth will not make
people happy. If you are making people happy all the time you’re probably not
proclaiming the truth. Truth is wishing everybody to go to heaven and
proclaiming the message in a way that is not rude but kind and loving. Remember
that whoever is on the other side of that debate is also loved by God and
should also be loved by us. Truth in charity. Truth in love. Let us all desire
to debate with purpose, not to be right, but that the truth may be proclaimed
in love.
Father Jacob Meyer, Visitor, Confraternity of Penitents
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