Reflection at Mass on 3rd Sunday of Lent

Since many requested I post this online, here is my reflection for this weekend's liturgies.

The salesman asked the lady, “Cash or charge?” She said cash, and as she fumbled for her wallet, he noticed a remote control to a television in her purse.
 
“Do you always carry your TV remote?” he asked. “No,” she replied,  “But my husband refused to come shopping with me, so I figured this was the most evil thing I could do to him.
 
And that little episode leads us to consider a theme of today’s dramatic gospel:
an angry Jesus and anger itself.
 
Anger is listed as a capital sin. This doesn’t refer to the feeling of anger; after all, that feeling is profoundly human and perfectly legitimate as are, for instance, envy or lust. No, this refers to the destructive acting out: the brooding, the plotting, the hatred, the striking out. Cain had every right to be angry with his brother Abel, for example, but not to the point of letting it run over into murder.
 
Of all the aspects of anger we might talk about, let’s take the example of Jesus, and, for our Lenten reflection, hit a sensitive spot: not the things that make us angry, but the things that don’t make us angry. Now there’s something to prod our conscience.
 
The best example I can think of of not being angry when we should comes from a movie out a few years ago, “Mass Appeal,” which starred Jack Lemmon as a pastor who was more interested in trying to please his people than in trying to please God. But he has a conversion experience, and so this particular Sunday he stands up in the pulpit and begins:
 
 “My homily this morning will be exactly thirty seconds long. That’s the shortest homily I ever preached in my life, but it’s also the most important homily. I want to make just 3 points.
 
First, millions of people in the world are hungry and homeless. Second, most people in the world don’t give a damn about that. Third, many of you are more disturbed by the fact that I just said ‘damn’ in the pulpit than by the fact that I said there are millions of hungry and homeless people in the world.” And he sat down.
 
There we have it. We’re angry about a lot of things, but we are not angry about what we should be: the racism, the abuse, the prejudice, the exploitation, the child labor in sweatshops. And not just the feeling of anger, not just talk about how bad things are, but the anger that, like Jesus in the gospel, leads to action.
 
What we’re saying and what Jack Lemmon’s character was saying is that we may be vaguely concerned about the hungry and the homeless; but are we angry enough at such injustice that we, for example, tithe? Do we regularly tithe a portion of our income, build it into our annual budget, and make it a point to give so much to charity?
 
Some of you may remember Mayor LaGuadia, the fascinating mayor of New York City during the worst days of the Great Depression and all of World War II. He was a colorful character who used to ride the New York City fire trucks, raid speakeasies with the police department, take entire orphanages to baseball games.
 
One bitterly cold night in January of 1935, the mayor turned up at a night court
that served the poorest ward of the city. LaGuardia dismissed the judge for the evening and took over the bench himself. Within a few minutes, a tattered old woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. She told LaGuardia that her daughter’s husband had deserted her, her daughter was sick, and her grandchildren were starving.
 
But the shopkeeper, from whom the bread was stolen, refused to drop the charges. “It’s a bad neighborhood, your honor,” the man told the mayor. “She’s got to be punished to teach other people around here a lesson.”
 
LaGuardia sighed. He turned to the woman and said, “I’ve got to punish you…the law makes no exceptions. Pay ten dollars or spend ten days in jail.”
 
But even as he pronounced sentence, the mayor was already reaching into his pocket. He extracted a bill and tossed it into his famous sombrero, saying, “Here’s the ten dollar fine which I now remit; and, furthermore,” he said, his anger rising,
“I’m going to fine everyone in this courtroom fifty cents for living in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. Mr. Bailiff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant.”
 
So the following day the New York City newspapers reported that $47.50 was turned over to a bewildered old lady who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her starving grandchildren, 50 cents of that amount being contributed by the red-faced grocery store owner, while some seventy petty criminals, people with traffic violations, and New York City policemen, each of whom had just paid fifty cents for the privilege of doing so, gave the mayor a standing ovation.
 
And, so, are we angry enough at the mass killings in our country that we would join the student-led March for Our Lives on March 24 in DC to protest for school safety and gun control?
 
 Are we angry enough at human neglect that we send notes to the depressed, and volunteer to help, and visit the sick?
 
I remember visiting a man in a hospital right after one of his coworkers had left. I saw the man in his bed with tears in his eyes. I thought he was in pain or in sorrow at his illness, sensing my concern he said to me, “Oh, no, Sister, it’s not what you think. You know, John, who just left, told me two things that I needed to hear more than anything else.
 
I needed to know that I am needed, and he told me that.
And I needed to know that I am loved. And he told me that.”
 
Are we angry at abuse, crime in low and high places, bad government—angry enough to get out and vote? Anger’s a funny thing, and we should examine what makes us angry and how we handle it. But this Lenten morning I want to offer you another side, another aspect that is a matter of conscience for the disciple of Jesus: what doesn’t make us angry as sensitive Christians, and should?  What doesn’t make us angry enough to move us beyond words into action?
 
As St. Teresa of Avila expressed it centuries ago:
Christ has
No body on earth but yours;                   
No hands but yours;
No feet but yours;
Yours are the eyes through which he is to look out
Christ’s compassion to the world;
Yours are the feet With which he is to go about Doing good’
Yours the hands
With which he is to bless now.