Thursday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
The ability to receive criticism is an invaluable skill, one that is in short supply. Everyone has their flaws, and we owe our communities and especially ourselves the effort to improve our shortcomings. This is not a demand for perfection or a pronouncement of shame but an acceptance that we are imperfect and that our imperfections harm ourselves and others. There is a strong movement today to love oneself just as one is, a reaction against destructive perfectionism and self-loathing, but to reject personal growth and improvement is not an act of love. To love is to desire the good, and the rejection of improvement is a failure to desire good for oneself or for others.
The king of Israel and the upper class could not receive the criticism of the prophet Amos but, instead, persecuted him out of hatred. They could not accept their imperfection – their sinfulness – blind to the goodness they could receive if they chose to love and care for their neighbors rather than cheat and oppress them. Their worldly gain led to their ruin. It appeared that they loved themselves as they treated themselves to pleasures and accrued treasures for themselves, but they were sowing their own reckoning, producing evil for themselves rather than good. If we truly wish to love ourselves and others, we will embrace our brokenness and seek God’s grace to grow and improve.
Reflection by Fr. Victor Schinstock, OSB
Posted in Articles for Ordinary Time, Daily Reflections