The associated reading for this reflection can be found in your Every Sacred Sunday Mass journal or online here.
Reflecting on this Sunday’s readings was a little bit like reading the Flannery O’Connor short story Revelation.
In Revelation we meet Mrs. Turpin. She has gone to the doctor with her husband, and in the waiting room she sizes up the poverty, illness, and ugliness of those in the room with her and predestines them for hell. Mrs. Turpin credits her superiority to the fact that she is saved.
I will let you read the story on your own, but in the end, Mrs. Turpin is met with a vision, or rather, a revelation.
“A visionary light settled in her eyes. She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of white-trash, clean for the first time in their lives, [...] and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right. She leaned forward to observe them closer. They were marching behind the soldiers with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away.”
There is a moment of smugness I experience when Mrs. Turpin realizes that all those she has been ruthlessly judging are first into the Kingdom of Heaven, and that those like her are experiencing the cleansing fire of purgation.
And then I realize that this take makes me Mrs. Turpin.
The readings today at first glance seem to simply be all about God’s law. “If you choose you can keep the commandments, they will save you,” in the 1st reading. In the Psalm: “Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord!” And in the Gospel, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”
Like Mrs. Turpin, I can also say I follow the law. I am a faithful Catholic and have even been known to take my wild toddler and equally wild not-quite-a-toddler to daily mass. Christ however asks for more of us than just rule following: He asks that our hearts be oriented towards righteousness as well. If something is causing us to sin, to grow hatred in our hearts, we are commanded to sever it.
Personally, I rarely get off social media feeling more charity towards "the other", and I wonder what other places in my life are being infected with this mentality. Use this as a litmus test: "Is this making me kinder, holier, more loving?"
Lord, help me to love my neighbor better. Convict my heart of my own sinfulness in the times I am tempted to hatred or prone to thinking I know best. Jesus, meek and humble of heart, guide me. Amen.
Regina Gray, LPC works as a mental health counselor and artist in Austin, TX. She specializes in working with survivors of trauma and abuse, utilizing art and creative interventions to help her clients process their experiences. Regina loves to go on adventures around the city with her wonderful husband, Daniel, and two wild children, Ezra and Eloise. For more info about mental health counseling, you can reach her at https://www.reginagraycounseling.com/.
