14th Sunday in Ordinary Time: 7/3/16—All Masses except 9:30 AM
This summer of 2016 marks the 20th anniversary of my feeble attempt to learn Italian. I was planning to spend three months in Rome at the North American College sabbatical program in 1998, so my sister Dianne told me, “If you are going to spend three months in Italy, you need to learn some Italian!” Very good advice. At the time, I was at a parish in Richmond Heights, only about five miles from Forest Park Community College, so I registered for a Thursday evening Italian class that would last two hours each Thursday. In fact, I took four such classes, one a semester until right before leaving for Rome. In fact, too, I had the same teacher for each of those four classes, a woman who born in Italy and still spoke with a moderate Italian accent. One night toward the end of all those classes, one of my fellow students asked her to compare the two languages, English and Italian. I’ll never forgetwhat she said which was that English is very easy when came to grammar because there is so little grammar in English, but Italian is very difficult when comes to grammar because it has so much grammar. On the other hand, Italian is very easy when it comes to the pronunciation of Italian words because everything is pronounced and every letter is always pronounced in the same way,but English is very difficult when it comes to the pronunciation of words because not every letter is pronounced nor is every letter always pronounced the same way. If you think about it, she was right. Just look at the letter “e”—there are short “e’s” and short “e’s” and “e’s” we don’t pronounce. When it comes to things not being pronounced the same way, a great example is the name of a street along Carondelet Park in South St. Louis. It’s spelled LOUGHBOROUGH and is pronounced as “LOFF-BORO” which, if we were consistent, it should be pronounced either LOFF-BOROFF or LO-BORO. Despite those four semesters, I never was very good at Italian, but I could, at least, make myself understood if I had my Italian-English dictionary along with me.
While taking those classes, one difference I noticed between the two languages was Italian’s way of making simple statements about oneself. For instance, instead of saying “I am hungry,” Italian says “I have hunger.” Or instead of saying, “I am afraid,” Italian says “I have fear.” “I am” versus “I have.” “I am” stresses “essence,” the heart of “being,” like the philosopher Descartes’ famous statement “I think, therefore, I am.” “I have,”on the other hand, stresses “possession,” things that I possess, things that are secondary to what I am in my heart.
When Jesus sends out the 72 disciples in today’s Gospel, he encourages them to take only what is essential and to not be burdened by all sorts of stuff that can get in their way as proclaimers of the Good News. In a sense, they are to become the message that they are bearing, that message of God’s life and God’s love; they are to become God’s life and God’s love. Jesus is also telling those 72 that anything else is unimportant and unnecessary.
It strikes me that we, as ones who are told the very same thing as were those 72 disciples, often get burdened by all sorts of stuff, extraneous unimportant stuff, and we lose the essence of what we are. For example, look at the labels we use for ourselves. We say, “I am a Democrat; I am a Republican.” Or “I am black; I am white.” Or “I am a liberal; I am a conservative.” Or “I am gay; I am lesbian; I am straight” and the like. Is the essence of our being one of those labels? Aren’t these labels something that we have and possess rather than being the essence of who I am? By confusing what we possess with what we are gets us into big trouble because we then so often forget what we are as we try to live for something less than what we are.
What is our essence? It’s not that we are Democrat or Republican; it’s not our skin color; it’s not our sexual orientation. Our essence is what we are in the heart of our hearts. Our essence is that we are loved by God, that we are brothers and sisters of Jesus, that we are brothers and sisters of each other. Our essence is that we are people for whom Jesus gave his life, that we are the family of God, that we are living Body of Christ, that we are people touched by and filled with the Holy Spirit. Our essence is that we are destined for eternal life with God. Sadly we often make the qualities that we possess more important that what our true essence is. That practice of confusing our labels with our essence only divides us, and it keeps us from truly listening to each other and from truly loving each other.
Please be aware of the tendency to confuse the two: “I am” and “I have” lest we wind up living for less and settling for less than what we truly are: people loved by God, brothers and sisters of Christ, people whose lives have been purchased by the Blood of the Lamb.