By Msgr. Joseph Prior • Posted September 27, 2024

(See the readings for the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time)

When I was a seminarian at Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary one of our professors would require us to attend a session of a Twelve Step program, usually an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Years later, on returning to the seminary as a faculty member, the same professor was still requiring this for one of his courses.

One of the reasons for this was to encounter the courageous witness of people who, with God’s help, face their addiction and strive for sobriety. These men and women know the power of addiction and the lure of temptation. They face these challenges with the help of God and each other.

One aspect of Jesus’ teaching in Sunday’s Gospel might generally be regarded as temptation to sin. Obviously, sin is something that is not good. In varying degrees it robs us of life. Jesus wants us to live life to the fullest (cf. Jn. 10:10) and so, at times, he teaches us about sin. It may seem obvious but sin is to be avoided. One of the simplest exhortations to the moral life is, “choose good, avoid evil.”

This underlies the teaching today. Jesus gives us those challenging words: “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed than with two hands to go into Gehenna, into the unquenchable fire.” He speaks likewise for the foot and eye. The basic point of this teaching is one should avoid sinning by removing that which leads one to sin.

Now as I’m sure you’ve heard this many times before, Jesus is not speaking literally here. He does not want us to cut off our hands if we stole or are tempted to steal a cookie from the cookie jar, or even something much worse. He is using this language to get us to reflect on our relationship to sin and temptation. In many cases, if not most, sin is preceded by temptation. Something in us is attracted to something that might look good but is not really good. Something in us “wants” or “desires” or “is attracted” to an outcome that might be pleasurable to some extent but not good for us or others.

Jesus encourages us to look inward, into the depths of our souls, to recognize and face our temptations, weaknesses, points of vulnerability. He invites us to understand situations or circumstances in which these arise, then to address them so that they will not have power over us and lead us into sinful behavior.

If we do not recognize the temptation then it will be easy to fall into sin. C.S. Lewis speaks about the growth that can occur by facing our temptations. In “Mere Christianity,” (a work that originated in radio broadcasts during World War II, hence the reference below to the “German army”) he writes:

“No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting it, not by giving in. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later.

“That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it.”

As the Gospel passage for Sunday opens, we get a hint of jealousy among the disciples. Jealousy is a sin, probably related to an inordinate or disfigured sense of pride. The first reading likewise references this sin when Moses speaks to Joshua. One of the triggers for jealousy is a failure to recognize the blessings that God has given to each one of us. Everyone has different gifts. Everyone is of great value in the eyes of God.

If we fail to recognize our own worth and the gifts we have been given, we might be tempted to look harshly or with envy on someone else. In this case, the metaphorical act of “cutting off the hand” might actually be appreciating ourselves and the gifts God has given us.

Jealousy is a trap. It confines, limits one’s view – if extreme it might even blind us. In 2018 Harvard Business School undertook a study of over 4,000 millionaires. They were asked first how much money they currently had. Then they were asked how happy they were on a scale of one to 10. Finally, they were asked how much money it would take to get them to a 10. The highest group of responses, 73%, said they needed more money to be happy. Further questions were asked in reference to wealth and happiness.

In analyzing the data, the lead researcher suggested that the problem for so many millionaires is “comparison.” He noted: “So the question of happiness is not so much ‘do I have enough?’ but ‘do I have more than those around me?’” He continued: “If a family amasses $50 million but moves into a neighborhood where everyone has more money, they still won’t be happy. All the way up the spectrum of wealth, basically everyone says (they’d need) two or three times as much to be perfectly happy.”

One might suggest that comparing oneself to others and the envy that emerges robs one of happiness. In other words, it is not so much the wealth but the lack of appreciation that underlies the problem.

Sunday’s second reading deals particularly with greed and the many harms that it does to oneself and others. There are many sins that limit our freedom, impair our happiness and rob us of life. Every human being struggles with sin. Jesus is encouraging us not just to recognize the sins with which we struggle, but to look deeper at what leads us to these sins. He wants us to address these so to be better equipped to face the temptations and to avoid the sin itself.

This is all that we might have a fuller life, a better life, with serenity and peace. As he says elsewhere: “I have come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly” (Jn. 10:10).

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Msgr. Joseph Prior is pastor of Our Lady of Grace Parish, Penndel, and a former professor of Sacred Scripture and rector of St. Charles Borromeo Seminary.