Last Newspaper Clipping

Taking time to know ourselves and examine our lives

10/16/2017

Romans 1:1-7 Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called to be an Apostle and set apart for the Gospel of God, which he promised previously through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, the Gospel about his Son, descended from David according to the flesh, but established as Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness through resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord. Through him we have received the grace of apostleship, to bring about the obedience of faith, for the sake of his name, among all the Gentiles, among whom are you also, who are called to belong to Jesus Christ; to all the beloved of God in Rome, called to be holy. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

            Rare is the person who truly knows himself or herself. That is, to be able to treat your sins as well as your successes with an even hand, and not take either too seriously. Rudyard Kipling wrote in his poem called, “If,” these lovely lines: “If you can dream and not make dreams your master; / If you can think and not making thought your aim; / If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster / And treat those two imposters just the same.” In other words, we are usually not as bad as our blunders, nor as we as saintly as our successes suggest. We’re somewhere in the middle of those two imposters. Archbishop Fulton Sheen, the great Catholic communicator of the last century, cautioned us from collecting our newspaper clippings. He said: “The proud man counts his newspaper clippings, the humble man counts his blessings.”

              Of course, our last newspaper clipping will be our obituary, which usually shines a very forgiving spotlight on our life. Have you noticed? Mark Antony was being sarcastic and not serious in his eulogy for Julius Caesar, when he said: “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. / The evil that men do lives after them; / The good is oft interred with their bones” (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, III, 2). As a matter of fact, Antony had not come to bury Caesar, but rather he wanted to bury Brutus and the other conspirators of Caesar’s assassination. The Greek Temple at Delphi to the god Apollo had two simple words inscribed on the door as you enter: “Gnothi seauton,” meaning “Know thyself.” And that is what prompted the Greek philosopher Socrates to write: “The unexamined life is not worth living” (Plato, Apology, 38a 5-6). But how many people take time to examine their lives, really to “know thyself”?

            In the first reading today, we meet one of those rare men who knew himself well: St. Paul of Tarsus. He begins his great letter to the Romans with the line, “Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle.” If you were asked what one word best describes you, “slave” would not be the first word to pop into our heads! But Paul does. Paul is at the peak of his powers as an apostle and as an author. He’s almost 50 years old when he writes this epistle in the year 57 A.D., and he’s writing his magnum opus, his crowning work, and there he calls himself a “slave.” In other words, Paul has thrown away his newspaper clippings, he has treated Triumph and Disaster as imposters, he has thoroughly examined his life, he knows himself and he sees clearly he is both a slave and an apostle. Rare is the person who achieves that level of self-awareness in this life.

             Here are three suggestions on how to live a more “examined life.” First, listen to your spouse’s comments and criticisms, take him or her seriously and don’t brush them off. A friend of mine said “our spouse holds a mirror up to us so we can see ourselves as we really are.” That’s another good reason why priests shouldn’t get married! Our spouse sees us without our make-up, before we put in our dentures, and don our bow-tie and cumber-bun. I sometimes wonder if some divorces – of course not all – but some divorces occur because we cannot bear such self-examination. Secondly, go to confession. In humble confession, we don’t need our newspaper clippings (although some do drag in their clippings into confession!), and instead we see how we are slaves to our sins and vices. When asked for a one-word description of himself, Pope Francis answered, “I am a sinner.” Gnothi seauton. And third, spend time in quiet prayer. Besides Holy Mass, and the rosary, and spiritual reading and meditation – which are all good and necessary – also spend quality time in the quiet, in silence and stillness and solitude, and listen. You will be entering into the “interior castle,” which is how St. Teresa of Avila described the soul, where we find both God and ourselves.

            Rare is the person who can truly know himself or herself as they in the eyes of God. One day when we stand before God, maybe the two words we’ll use to describe ourselves will also be “slave” and “apostle.”  That will be our last newspaper clipping.

Praised be Jesus Christ!