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And the Pharisees and Scribes stirred up the crowd…
In his recent book called “Seeing with the Heart”,
Father Kevin O'Brien recalls St. Ignatius interpreting
how faith and tradition play a role in our lives.
He said that for St. Ignatius our tradition of faith
is less an anchor to hold safe in a habor
and more a rudder with which to navigate through the river of life.
Often, we think of our faith tradition as something that anchors,
that holds us steady in one place.
But St. Ignatius challenges that assumption.
He says that sometimes the anchor makes us immobile,
makes us unwilling to be able to move with what happens in our life.
Whereas with a rudder one is able to navigate the difficult waters,
the treacherous waters as well as the calm waters of life.
It is a wonderful metaphor to help understand our tradition and faith,
especially on this Sunday when we celebrate
one of our ancient traditions on Palm Sunday.
In every church throughout the entire Christian world,
people gather holding up the palm branches,
hailing Christ as king saying
“Hosanna. Hosanna. Here is the kingdom of David at hand.”
But this is what always strikes me as powerfully difficult to grasp.
It is the same crowd that we hear at the beginning of this liturgy
singing “Hosanna, Hosanna”
who then say, “Crucify him, crucify him” on Good Friday.
The challenge is how did that happen so quickly?
Were the crowds that fickle?
And the answer is, yeah!
Unfortunately, we can be that fickle, too.
How do we move from this,
how do we use our faith to steer us away
from the fickleness of our life
into being firmly for Christ and always choosing Christ?
There is no simple path for this,
but it does require us to be thoughtful
and realize how easy it is for us to, in a sense,
turn away from Christ.
We do not do it in necessarily bold and difficult ways,
but we do it maybe in subtle and not so dramatic ways
that have an equally profound effect.
The challenge is that we tend to think
there are good people in the world
and there are bad people in the world.
Of course, we are part of good people, right?
I mean, we do not ever consider ourselves bad, so we are the good ones.
And they, whoever they are, are the bad ones.
The challenge with that is that it is simply not reality
as much as we want to believe it.
It is nice and easy to think that way.
They, whoever they are, whether they are non-Christians or non-Catholics,
or whether they are non-Republicans or non-Democrats
or whatever tribe we hold onto, the “they” is other than us.
The challenge is that is simply not true.
The people who do the good and the evil in the world
is within every single one of our hearts.
Good and evil is in our hearts,
and whichever voice we listen to inside of our hearts.
It is not they versus us.
It is us!
It is all within all of us.
The potential for us to do evil
and to participate in non-good is equally within every one of us.
It is up to us to choose goodness and truth
with the rudder of our faith that which leads us to Christ.
That is what leads us to truth.
That is what leads us to beauty.
It reminds me of a great native American tribe,
a Cherokee parable about explaining this.
And it goes like this
“A chief was trying to explain to his grandson
this concept of having to choose between good and evil.
He said to him that inside your heart are two wolves.
And inside all our hearts are two wolves,
a good wolf and an evil wolf.
And they fight and one always wins.
The child is wide-eyed and asks which one?
The grandfather says, the one you feed will win.”
Which one do we feed inside of ourselves?
The good one or the evil one?
It is not they versus us.
It is always within us.
We need to fight that battle every day.
To whom do we listen to, who stirs us up?
And does it lead us to Christ?
Does it lead us to goodness?
Does it lead us to truth?
Does it lead us to beauty?
My friends, each and every day we need to choose Christ
by choosing to feed the good wolf and not the evil wolf.
Today we choose Christ again.
And the Pharisees and Scribes stirred up the crowd…
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