25th Sunday
St. James would have fitted well into the world of modern psychology. He has grasped a principle which is at the heart of current understanding of the human condition, namely that we have to look within ourselves for the root of many of our difficulties.
Searching for an explanation of conflict, James puts the question “Isn’t it precisely in the desires fighting within your own selves?”. Of course, many people are the victims of violence by others, but when we ourselves are roused to anger, or even rage, when we feel frustrated over what we don’t have, then we need to look within for the source of our dissatisfaction, bitterness, resentment, rather than blame other people, or ill fortune, for the way we feel.
It may well be, as the psychologists tend to suggest, that we are deeply influenced by what happened to us in childhood, or even in the womb, but we then have to take responsibility for our own response to these influences. We all have distinct personalities, shaped by nature and nurture, (or by heredity and environment, to use more technical terms) but God has given us free will in our living out of those personalities.
If we are honest, we have to accept that most of us are prone to selfishness, which is perhaps the root of all sin. From this selfishness arise the jealousy and ambition of which St. James complains, and which we see working out in the behaviour and attitude of the disciples. Rather than focus their attention on the Lord, and on His prophecy of suffering, death, and resurrection, they fall into an argument about which of them is the greatest, revealing their own jealousy and ambition very sharply.
From our viewpoint, with the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to criticise the first followers of Our Lord. We would like to think that, if we had had the advantages of seeing Him face to face, of hearing Him speak, of spending time in His company, our behaviour would have been very different.
Really? (Or “seriously?” to use the current expression.) We do hear Him speak to us in the Gospels, we spend time in His company every time we pray, we encounter Him intimately in the Blessed Sacrament, and is our behaviour really any better than that of the apostles? How often do we criticise other people? How often do we pass judgement on their faults? On the other hand, how rarely do we look into ourselves honestly and thoroughly, to recognise the selfishness and self-absorption which drive so many of our actions?
To give you an example: my computer frequently drives me to distraction. When things go wrong, I often fall into a blind panic. I catastrophise, as the experts would say, assuming that total disaster has struck; and then I expect someone to come and fix the problem here and now, making my needs their priority.
No doubt the shrinks would have a field day, with my reaction. But in all honesty, I don’t need them to tell me that I am indulging in pure selfishness, that I am making myself the centre of the universe, entitled to have everything run exactly as I wish.
I am also, strangely enough, displaying a lack of faith. St. James hints at this when he comments “The reason you don’t have what you want is that you don’t pray for it” or “You don’t pray properly”. If I had the trust, the faith, the gumption, to place the whole situation in God’s hands, my computer might not work any better, but I would have a sense of proportion, a realisation of how much or how little things really matter in God’s sight and in the context of His love for me.
That perhaps is the real issue. If only we could realise how much God loves us, we would lose much of our selfishness at a stroke. We would not feel the urge to compare ourselves with others, because we would be secure in knowing that we are loved, that we are infinitely precious in God’s sight.
Today take some time to reflect on the truth that God’s Son died out of pure love for you, to consider how intensely He must therefore love you. If only we could do that seriously and thoroughly, we would lose much of our insecurity, and be freed to love in return, with no need for that jealousy or selfish ambition identified by St. James.
