Homily for
Ordinary Time 26
September 25, 2016
Dead Conscience
St.
Dominic Savio, the schoolboy saint, one time came upon his friends all huddled
in a corner of the schoolyard looking intently at a magazine. He came over to
see what was up, and was horrified to see that the magazine contained impure
images. Without a second thought, he grabbed it out of its owner’s hands and
ripped it to shreds right there on the playground.
The boys
protested, saying, “Hey, that’s our book!”
But St.
Dominic replied, “Is that what God gave you eyes for? To look at bad pictures?”
One of
the boys said, “Oh, it was just for fun. What’s so wrong about looking at it?”
To which
the saint shot back, “If you don’t see anything wrong, that’s even worse! It
means you’re used to looking at shameful things!”
God gave
us our consciences in order to lead us to right and wrong. But it’s very
possible to ignore our consciences, or deaden them so that evil things no
longer bother us.
This is
what happened in today’s Gospel. I’m sure that at first, the rich man felt a
pang of guilt for completely ignoring Lazarus at his doorstep. He might have
been embarrassed by his riches, maybe feeling ashamed for being so selfish. But
after a while, as he continued to ignore his conscience, the guilt dissipated.
It didn’t even register on his conscience that this human being, this child of
God, was starving outside his door, having his wounds licked by dogs. The rich
man had killed his conscience!
Psychologists
today often say that guilt is a neurosis; they say that to feel guilty is an
unhealthy reaction. Although it is possible to have unhealthy guilt, most guilt
that we feel is quite healthy indeed! Guilt is our conscience telling us that
we need to change our lives and repent of our sin.
CS Lewis
once said, “If you live differently than you believe, then you will soon begin
to believe the way you live.” For example, let’s say that a person knows that telling
a lie is wrong, but does it anyway and feels guilty about it. He will soon be
faced with a choice: either stop lying, or stop believing that lying is wrong.
If it’s the latter case, then he changed his beliefs to fit his lifestyle.
I see
this all the time as a priest. People don’t go to Mass and feel guilty – so they
have to rationalize it and say, “Well, I don’t believe it’s a mortal sin to
miss Mass.” People commit impure actions and feel bad about it. They can either
repent or rationalize it away, saying, “Oh, it’s no big deal, everybody does
it.” If they rationalize it away, then they have killed their conscience!
So, what
are we to do to make sure our conscience is alive, leading us to God? First, we
must form our consciences. We must
study the teaching of Christ and the Church to know what is right and wrong. It’s
not the role of our consciences to decide right and wrong for ourselves –
rather, our consciences apply the teachings of Christ and the Church to
specific situations in our life. An example might make this clear: Christ
clearly teaches through His Church that gossip is wrong. Our conscience doesn’t
determine that. But our conscience determines whether this particular incident where we had to speak about our friend to
another friend was actually gossip, or whether it was a necessary conversation
we needed to have to ask their advice. That’s the role of conscience – to apply
moral teachings to particular situations.
Secondly,
we must examine our consciences
daily. Usually done before bedtime, that means going over our day to see where
we fell short of loving God and our neighbor. If we examine our conscience
daily, we will sharpen our conscience and discover small faults that we never
knew we had. If we take care of the small faults, they won’t grow into big
ones! Our conscience is like a muscle – if we use it daily, it will grow
stronger. But if we neglect it for a length of time, it will grow dull…and
perhaps wither and die!
Thirdly,
we ought to be wise about what influences
us. When I was a teen I fell in with a group of friends who were great
people, except they cursed…A LOT. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were
all destined for the military with their foul language! The first few times I was
around them, I found their language shocking…but little by little, I became
accustomed to it, and soon I found myself indulging in their bad words. That
wasn’t good! Our consciences can be dulled simply by what’s around us. If we
play violent video games, we will quickly stop being horrified by violence; if
we look at sexually explicit material, we will soon find it mundane. And that
is a terrible thing, because it means we’ve become so accustomed to sin that it
doesn’t shock us anymore! So, to keep our consciences alive and well, we ought
to control what we watch, listen to, and who influences us.
As
evidenced by the Gospel, ignoring our consciences comes with a great risk…the risk
of eternal damnation. For this reason, we ought to listen carefully to our conscience,
as it is the voice of God in our soul, leading us along the path of holiness.
No comments:
Post a Comment