Invidia

Dear Friend,

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been making my way through a book entitled “Wounded Shepherd” (subtitle: “Pope Francis and His Struggle to Convert the Catholic Church”). It’s a good read, inspiring and challenging, as it breaks open the major themes of Pope Francis’s papacy – especially the theme of mercy - and traces them through his own pursuit of a Church more in touch with people’s suffering. 

Toward the end of the book, the author, Austen Ivereigh, reflects on a term that applies to this Sunday’s Gospel parable. It’s the Latin word invidia often translated as “envy,” a “looking in a hostile manner,” an actual “not seeing.” The author writes: “[Invidia] is what accounts for the Pharisees’ fear and suspicion of Jesus, a hostility that led them consistently to judge him as a threat rather than as a source of salvation.” (p. 279)  

This Sunday, it’s the chief priests and elders of the people, suspicious of Jesus’s motives, who refuse to enter into the wedding feast described in the parable he presents to them. The same folks would probably also be suspicious of St. Paul’s conversion, a change that, as we hear in the second reading, flowered into a radical trust in God’s abundant and merciful generosity.

Today, in the polarized atmosphere of our church and nation, we need a strong remedy for invidia. It would be equal parts generosity of spirit, humility, and hope.  It would be reflective of the Spirit of God that Isaiah echoes in the first reading, one that embraces “all people” and points them to communion with God. As we make our choices in the coming weeks – including the choice of our vote – let us do so with a commitment to a discipleship that draws us more closely to one another and to the suffering in our world.    

Gratefully,

 Fr. Dan ofm