Overview:

Thursday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time

A Reflection for Thursday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time

“Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?
No, I tell you, but rather division.
From now on a household of five will be divided,
three against two and two against three;
a father will be divided against his son
and a son against his father,
a mother against her daughter
and a daughter against her mother,
a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.” (Lk 12: 51-53)

Find today’s readings here.

When you let a prostitute wash your feet; when you hold up someone’s sworn enemy as the supreme model of charity; when you demand attention to the poor, the stranger, the imprisoned as if they were your own child; when you identify yourself as the only way to God, and that way as residing in the very least among us; when you do all that Jesus did, you will create division. 

Some will be scandalized by your shocking nearness to the “unwashed,” and others will be compelled by the shocking nearness of God’s mercy to everyone. Some will be consoled and energized by the prophetic witness of Christ, and others threatened by it.

But I think we can take this talk of division one step more. Maybe an equally profound rending Jesus has brought is the rending within ourselves. Within the hearts of us Christians: those of us who in theory accept his teachings. 

It is one thing to give assent to an idea. It is another to do something about it. It is one thing to agree theologically that Jesus resides in the poor, the beggar, the widow, the orphan, the migrant. It is another to act on behalf of that belief. 

Son against himself. Daughter-in-law against herself. Manifesting in all those simple, even mundane choices of daily life. Do I or don’t I? Give to a beggar or not; reach out to an isolated classmate or not; call a recently widowed friend or not. 

And at this wrenching, vicious hour in our country’s history, when we watch men and women being rounded up in the streets, flushed out of homes and workplaces, hustled away by masked federal agents and purified out of the country, do we do something about it or not? Do we take one step into the chaos that can seem too daunting to even contemplate? Or not? 

Should more Christians do things like accompany migrants at asylum hearings, as groups like Jesuit Refugee Services have done for years. Bring communion to migrants locked up in detention centers, as the Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership has done in Chicago, (or at least, in a high-profile demonstration, attempted to.) Pray outside detention centers; or any other thing large or small to defend our brothers and sisters.

Or not. And leave all of that up to journalists and social workers, to bilingual activists and lawyers, to priests and religious sisters who seem to do these kinds of things on a more or less professional basis.These are where divisions get real. When they hit close to the bone. Or close to the heart. What do we good-hearted Christians do? In agreeing that we should care for the suffering, we may be on the right side of words in a holy book. But when we consider actually doing it, are we on the right side of ourselves?

Joe Hoover, S.J., is America’s poetry editor and producer of a new film, “The Allegory.”