Hypersensitivity leads to problems for the especially delicate youth in our schools, even Catholic schools. I blew my top when my younger brother brought home a letter from his Catholic school that requested parental help in the project to shape the kids into “Christ-like” kids. The kids would be graded. I brandished this form in the face of our long-suffering mother and demanded she protest! She didn’t. I defended my brother against this insane doomsday weapon our school was about to launch at him and his little band of hellions. (They were hellions. They did things I won’t publish 30 years later. Worse things than my little band of delinquents did, which involved potatoes, cars, fast little legs, hiding places, a backyard chicken coop, and the darkness of night. Chuckle!)
“Christ-like” has always mystified me, the same way I’m puzzled as to exactly how I can be harsh on myself, but easy on others; how I should pray all the time, but not jabber “like the pagans do.”
How can we love the God we cannot see when we cannot love the person we do see? John says, impossible. I’m not sure it is impossible. A friend once said it’s easy to love the rain when you’re inside, and it’s easy to say you love people when you’re home by yourself. That’s more realistic than disingenuous. We all have our ideals we struggle to live up to.
When we see the poor, the homeless, the suffering faces, we see the Christ Who hungered, Who had the food (and therefore the hunger) His disciples didn’t know about, the Christ Who relied on the kindness of a Samaritan lady at a well, the Christ Who allowed the legion of demons to infest a field full of pigs so they ran off a cliff, and then was Himself run out of town.
When we see the misunderstood, we see the Christ Who was without honor among His own family, in His hometown.
At Mass this morning, the priest mentioned that Christ was beloved of God, and that we are all Christ-like because we are all beloved of God. That’s the best explanation I’ve heard of that idea.
A paradox of love is its blindness. People do horrible things, and their parents can’t believe it. “We made little Graham promise us he’d be a good boy,” XTC sings in “No Thugs In Our House.”
Love seems close-minded that way. One has a vision of who someone is, and interprets everything the beloved person does from that bias.
Love can also survive the eventual intrusion of reality into the picture, so that one can hate the sin, but love the sinner.
To love as God loves, as this priest explained that God loves each of us, is to be open-minded and generous, to accept in faith that any person is worthy (if not apparently deserving) of being treated with the dignity that God gives us and never takes away.
Once, a great rabbi visited a school. Some skeptical students wanted to test him. “Recite the 3rd chapter of Deuteronomy while standing on one foot with your hands behind your back!” they demanded.
“Fools!” the rabbi rebuked. “You haven’t even learned that you shouldn’t treat someone in a way you wouldn’t want to be treated. How can anyone teach you anything?”
Back in school, we kids, of course, were harsh critics of our teachers, as they were of us.
United in failure, united in struggle, may we have mercy on each other, and may God have mercy on us all!