The Imitation Game

Spending time in the transforming presence of the Lord

08/02/2017

Exodus 34:29-35 As Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the commandments in his hands, he did not know that the skin of his face had become radiant while he conversed with the LORD. When Aaron, then, and the other children of Israel saw Moses and noticed how radiant the skin of his face had become, they were afraid to come near him. Only after Moses called to them did Aaron and all the rulers of the community come back to him. Moses then spoke to them. Later on, all the children of Israel came up to him, and he enjoined on them all that the LORD had told him on Mount Sinai. When he finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face. Whenever Moses entered the presence of the LORD to converse with him, he removed the veil until he came out again. On coming out, he would tell the children of Israel all that had been commanded. Then the children of Israel would see that the skin of Moses' face was radiant; so he would again put the veil over his face until he went in to converse with the LORD.

           It’s funny how we imitate the people around us. Last year at my roast and toast, Jason and Michelle Wewers said they were worried when I was named pastor of I.C. They feared I would have a thick foreign accent, like some Indian priests do. But when they heard me speak, it was far worse than they imagined, because I sounded like Barak Obama, and they might have to change parishes. (Sorry for the political overtones.) I had heard the president speak so often I started to sound like him. Parents with small children know the princesses of every Disney movie, as well as their names, and even the color of their dresses. People in Fort Smith love to go to the rodeo, and horses and equestrians are a proud part of our parades, in case you couldn’t tell from all the “road apples” after a parade. We think and act and dress and do things like those around us.

           One of the most poignant examples of this “imitation game,” is found in Dostoyevsky’s great Russian novel, Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov, the protagonist, is a murderer and an atheist. But he meets a young lady, Sonia, a devout Christian, who slowly influences him to replace his hate and isolation with love and solidarity, and ultimately with faith. When he first meets Sonia he kisses her feet, like the sinful woman who met Jesus; he humbly looks at her feet than her face. Raskolnikov would be sentenced to prison in Siberia for his murder, and Sonia would follow him there, where Sonia would change Raskolnikov’s sorrow into a smile. The people around us change us profoundly and permanently.

             In the first reading today, Moses is changed not by other people but by God. Moses repeatedly went to talk to God, face to face, as one friend talks to another. And what happened to Moses? We read: “As Moses came down from Mt. Sinai…he did not know that the skin of his face had become radiant while he conversed with the Lord.” Just like I never noticed I sounded like Obama, and Fort Smithians don’t think twice about the road apples, so Moses was oblivious to how his face glowed with God’s glory after being in his holy presence. Archbishop Fulton Sheen once described being in Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament like staring at a glowing sunset. Our faces begin to glow with the glory of what we behold. Like Raskolnikov in the presence of Sonia, so too, when we look at Jesus in the Eucharist, we are changed profoundly and permanently.

            My friends, we have to ask ourselves whose presence we spent time in, and how it changes us. We all play a sort of “imitation game” mimicking those around us, whether we realize it or not. When I visit someone’s home, I love to look on their bookshelves and study what they read. I wonder in what books they bury their heads, because how we act and think and dress and decide things is influenced by them, however subtly or slowly. Children who bury their heads in their phones or Ipad’s have their souls shaped by what they see. Their faces glow, too, like that of Moses, but maybe not exactly with the glory of God. When we watch a particular news channel, do we sound more like Barak Obama or Donald Trump, rather than sounding like Pope Francis or Bishop Taylor? We’re playing the imitation game. When we can quote movies and songs and late night comedy shows quicker than we can quote the Bible and the Catechism, that’s the imitation game we’re playing. Our faces, like that of Moses, are also “radiant” because of those we “converse” with. The people around us shape us profoundly and permanently.

            Henri de Lubac, a great theologian of the last century, summed it up well, when he asked: “Do the unbelievers who jostle us at every turn observe on our brows the radiance of that gladness which, twenty centuries ago, captivated the fine flower of the pagan world? Are our hearts the hearts of men risen with Christ? Do we, in our time, bear witness to the Beatitudes?” (The Drama of Atheistic Humanism, 122-23). And if we don’t, then we know why.  We’re playing the imitation game and the people around us change us profoundly and permanently.

Praised be Jesus Christ!