Trouble, with a capital T and that rhymes with P

My apologies in advance for the lack of any further Music Man references.

Jeremiah’s tables have turned and he’s trapped on all sides. His friends have betrayed him and everyone’s watching and waiting for his downfall. The Psalmist takes us further into the darkness: I have become an outcast to my brothers. Our Lord prepares his followers for the difficulties that are certain to come as they begin their apostolates and the work of public discipleship. Don’t worry, He says, about the hardships ahead. You know, the kind that can kill the body. Fear instead the one who can destroy both body and soul.

You know, if I were invited to a friends house for dinner and, upon arriving, the friend met me outside and said “Do not be afraid of all the spiders in the house,” I would probably still go in, because this is my friend. I would also be certainly completely occupied by the thoughts of spiders waiting for me. I would try not to be bothered, but honestly, this lands squarely in “don’t think of a polar bear” territory. The trick is getting past it.

Our lives will always have problems, pain and suffering. We don’t do things that we should, and do the things that we don’t want, as St. Paul says. Sometimes we feel isolated and alone – even among those who are closest to us. We sin, repent, and try harder and sometimes the world continues to feel difficult. It would be lovely if baptism removed not only sin, but problems. It would be fantastic if confirmation included a guarantee of constant success in life. The Christian life is not about the passing things of this life, but rather about the permanent things to come.

We age, change, suffer, get sick. As for death, it entered the world as a consequence of sin. But even this consequence has been reversed by Jesus Christ. As Paul says - the gift is not like the transgression What we received is far greater than what we lost – remember at Easter, when we praised “the happy fault” which won for us so great a Savior!

So how do I get past the spiders? By remembering that the soul is immortal - We tend to think about the soul as something abstract – something we need to sort of take care of for the future. Like luggage. We put it in the closet and pull it out every so often when we need it. But the soul is what makes us alive. Death is what happens when the soul separates from the body.

Whatever can happen to the body here on Earth during life – nothing can damage the soul. Nor can any pleasure or power make the soul any greater: it is the part of us that is eternal. We are neither a body running on autopilot, or a spirit trapped in a cage: the human being is both, made for two worlds at once. We can only stain it, or turn it away from God. This is a great comfort, and also more than a little sobering. We’re stuck with ourselves in a very real sense.

If we turn out eyes outward, we may be startled into noticing something. You were made for eternity. So is everyone else.

Evelyn Waugh - who wrote one of my favorite books - was taken to task by the interviewer once: You don’t hold a very high opinion of ‘the man in the street’ in your books.

Waugh responded that ‘the man in the streets’ is a modern myth, that there is no such thing. There are only men, he said, individuals and each with an immortal soul. From time to time, these creatures have need to use the street.

We are frequently tempted to see others as groups – faceless, nameless, soulless. This has always been part of our modern world, but is even more of a problem now when we reduce people to words on a screen. This easy when we are angry, and reflexive when we are nervous or anxious, but always wrong because each person you meet or ever will meet has an immortal soul too, also called to eternal life with God. To reduce another to a mere member of a group, with nothing else to commend them to the world is to ignore this immortal, eternal reality.

Each of us is counted by the Father and precious in His eyes. Each of us is unique and exactly what He loved when He loved us into being, creating us for eternity. Fear no one. Do not be afraid of anything in this life – we were made for what is on the other side of it.

Postscript: I feel obliged to point out that after several references to spiders in my homily I came home after Mass to find several spiders in our bathroom. My next homily will be featuring big piles of money.