“Everybody Gets a Trophy” by Brian Flanagan

“Everybody Gets a Trophy” by Brian Flanagan

Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time

I was cleaning out my closet the other day and found some trophies from my days playing soccer as a little kid.  I was far from a star athlete though.  I’m pretty sure I only scored one goal in my entire soccer career, and that wasn’t until 8^th grade.

So how do I have a box full of trophies?  Well it turns out it’s not whether you win or lose, and it’s not even how you play the game; it’s simply that we all got trophies every year regardless of whether our team scored tons of goals or sat down in the middle of the field playing with the grass.

We often think of the spiritual life like that; we assume everybody’s getting a trophy.  Sure it’s great to score some goals and make some good plays along the way, but in the end we’re all getting into heaven, right?  Many people would sum up the teachings of Jesus like this, “Try to be loving and try to be a good person, and if you mess up, no sweat.  Nobody’s perfect…”

But in this week’s Gospel, Jesus says something entirely different.  He says “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  Jesus challenges his hearers to “love their enemies” and “pray for those who persecute them”, not to wish their enemies to be run over by a bus…um…I mean a camel?

Applying this Gospel to life in today’s world, Jesus might say, “Oh really, you held the door for an old lady? So what.  Even atheists do that.  That’s just basic humanity.”  He might say, “Oh, you like eating lunch with the people who think you’re cool and funny? So what, everybody does that.  How about eating lunch with the people who have no friends?”  If we’re claiming to be real Catholics, our lives should be noticeably different than the average person, particularly in the way we interact with others.

Jesus teaches us that living the Christian Life isn’t about loosely shooting for some ideal of being loving and charitable; it’s about actually living out the Gospel.  It’s about actually putting others first and dying to ourselves.  Sometimes that means doing things that the rest of the world would think to be crazy or even paradoxical like “loving your enemies”, but that’s what we’re called to do, like it or not.

Heaven is certainly the trophy, but not everybody gets one.  Being called to “be perfect as [our] heavenly Father is perfect” is a tall order, and all of us in some way or another will fall short of that.  It doesn’t mean that we don’t need to try though!

When we consider this Gospel passage, we also need to remember the Psalm from this week, “Merciful and gracious is the LORD, slow to anger and abounding in kindness.”  For the times when we don’t live up to the perfection we are called to, God’s mercy is of course abundant.

But the spiritual life is more like high school soccer than recreation soccer for little kids.  You don’t get a trophy unless you practice hard and play well, and when you win it, it’s more satisfying than all of the little token trophies put together.