Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Mk 6:1-6) “One Size Doesn’t Fit All”
Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Mk 6:1-6) “One Size Doesn’t Fit All”
“Familiarity breeds contempt.” How often have we heard that little antidote. How true it can be.
The saying speaks to our willingness to put people in boxes. We interact with family members, coworkers, friends…...we then make judgements about what their capabilities are. When we feel people won’t allow us to take up a challenge because they don’t have confidence in us it can be devastating. When we tell someone else, they aren’t capable, when they are pursuing some project, we can do great damage to them. We might even take pleasure when they fail.
A word is used to describe our tendency to limit another’s capabilities. The word is procrustean. We might say that someone has a procrustean attitude about someone else. The word comes from Greek mythology. There was a Greek God named Procrustes. He was the son of the God Poseidon. Procrustes lived in a fortress on what was the sacred way between Athens and Eleusis.
Pilgrims would come along the road looking for a safe place to spend the night. When they knocked on Procrustes’ door, he would let them stay as long as they agreed to sleep in an iron bed he had. Procrustes would tell the visitors that they would have to fit into the iron bed. He would then tie them to the bed. Some visitors were too tall. Procrustes would amputate their limbs so they would be the right size. Some visitors were too short. Procrustes would stretch short people to make them fit. He enjoyed torturing people to make them into the right shape to sleep in his iron bed. He was finally stopped when someone tied him to his own bed where his limbs were amputated and stretched. He then learned about what he had done to others.
All this sounds like a bad horror movie, but we put people in boxes all the time don’t we? “You can do this much” we say, but “you can’t do anything more.” We can think of all kinds of examples. Albert Einstein, who some consider the most intelligent man ever to live, grew up in Munich Germany. Einstein was not a child prodigy. He had difficulty learning to talk. When he did learn to talk, he had a strange habit of repeating sentences to himself repeatedly. He earned the nickname, “The dopey one.”
When he went to school he had a hard time. He struggled with every subject but math. He was Jewish so his classmate’s made fun of him for that too. If he didn’t like a subject, he rebelled against learning it. He made his first scientific discovery while he was working in a patent office because he couldn’t get a job teaching at a university. His early failures didn’t point to what he later would become. If he would have listened to all the negative feedback, he received he would never have become the man he was. When he died, he was cremated, but his brain was preserved. Scientists are still studying it because they want to know why he was so smart.
Jesus went to his hometown. He was rejected. Why? Because people saw nothing special in him. He was supposed to live like them. People in Nazareth had watched him grow up. He was no different than they were. He had played with them as a child. He had learned the menial tasks that they had. He dressed like them. He ate what they ate. He was a barely educated peasant. The people who knew Jesus throughout his life thought, he should have the same expectation for life that they did. We get a sense that he wasn’t looked upon as gifted. In other words, he was a normal human being. He wasn’t a person who was full of himself. He had one attribute that no one seemed to see. He was holy. He didn’t limit his vision, but he saw the world as no one else ever has. Jesus never forced people to fit into a mold before he would befriend them. Perhaps it was because of the fact he had the experience of being judged that he never judged others. The rejection he endured from those closest to him must have hurt but he endured those insults and transformed them into compassion for others.
If we want to follow Jesus, we can do this by believing in ourselves. We can follow Jesus by encouraging others to be the best version of themselves. In that way, our familiarity won’t lead to contempt but to charity and a love of our God, of ourselves and others.
Reflection Questions:
1. Have I ever been told that I cannot achieve something? How did it feel?
2 .Have I ever told someone else that they are not good enough to be able to do something? Did that hurt them?
Dear Parishioners,
We are having a special program on July 31st at the Damien Center that will be about end-of-life planning. This is a difficult subject to talk about, but it is an important thing to discuss. A goal in life would be to die with dignity. To achieve that goal means that we need to think about our death while we have full control of our faculties. This will be appreciated by our friends and family.
On July 31st, we will discuss hospice and end of life care. There will also be an opportunity to discuss pre-planning a funeral. There will be a representative here from a cemetery, to share information about burials. Finally, Deb Patronagio and I will present information about planning the funeral liturgy.
Everyone involved will discuss options. No one is selling any service. There will be an opportunity to ask questions. This is a good chance to reflect and to look ahead to the last chapter of life here on earth.
I appreciated the fact that my parents planned what they wanted my sister and I to do when they faced death. That made our lives a lot easier. I invite you to come and hear more.
May Our Lady of Peace pray for us,
Fr. Mark