Homily for July 11, 2004
Year C - Cycle II
15th Sunday in Ordinary Time
by Fr. John F. Carney
Topic:  Racism and Prejudice
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Gospel Reading:  
Luke 10:25-37

"...'And who is my neighbor?'  Jesus replied, 'A man fell victim to robbers as he went down from Jerusalem to Jericho.  They stripped and beat him and went off leaving him half-dead.  A priest happened to be going down that road, but when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side.  Likewise a Levite came to the place, and when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side.  But a Samaritan traveler who came upon him  was moved with compassion at the sight.  He approached the victim, poured oil and wine over his wounds and bandaged them.  Then he lifted him up on his own animal, took him to an inn, and cared for him.  The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper with the instruction, 'Take care of him.  If you spend more than what I have given you, I shall repay you on my way back.'  Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbor to the robbers' victim?'  He answered, 'The one who treated him with mercy.'  Jesus said to him, 'Go and do likewise.'"

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We’re all familiar with Our Lady of Guadalupe, who appeared to the Indian peasant Juan Diego some 500 years ago in Mexico.  And the reason Mary did that, I’m convinced, is because she wanted to teach us a lesson.  Now, at that time Europe had brought Christianity to the New World.  The Spanish had introduced the Indians to Christianity and Catholicism, and it was embraced, by and large, by the Indian people.  The story of the conversion is not always perfect, and indeed, there are events in that story that are very sad.  But it is true that many of the Spaniards had a genuine love of Christ, and wanted the Indians to share that love.  And it’s also true that the Indians were hungry for knowledge of the Savior Jesus Christ.  But one of the problems the Indians had was in relating to this God because he looked like he was European.  I’m sure the Spanish brought many paintings, and the paintings obviously depict Christ as very European-looking, and they depict his mother as very European-looking as well.  And so, although they wanted to embrace Christ, perhaps the conversion process was slow, and so Mary appeared. 

And the key thing about the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe is that she appeared as an Indian woman.  She looked like they did.  And after they realized that God looks like them, that they are really made in God’s image, then the religion really took off.  So Mary wanted to teach a lesson to the Indians, and perhaps just as much to the Spanish, that the dignity of every human person is sacred and perfect, that we are all made in God’s image and likeness, and we all are intended to look like God.

So if that was Mary’s lesson on human dignity and equality, this story we heard today from Luke’s gospel is Jesus’ lesson on the same subject – the story of the Good Samaritan.  To understand what he was telling and teaching, we have to understand something about the Samaritans.  When you hear the word Samaritan, you think “Good Samaritan,” and in fact, just the opposite was true for the Jews.  They hated the Samaritans.  They got along with the Samaritans like Palestinians and Israelis get along today with each other.  And there were some reasons for that.  After Solomon, David reigned for about 40 years over Israel, and then Solomon, his son, followed him.  Then the kingdom fell into two parts.  The northern ten tribes were known as Israel.  And the tribe of Judah, primarily, and small elements of the tribe of Benjamin, stayed in Jerusalem, and that became known as Judah.  So the kingdom was split between Judah and Israel. 

Not long after Solomon, one of the kings of Israel was Ahab, and he married Jezebel.  Now, Jezebel was a Canaanite woman, and she introduced the worship of the god of the Canaanites, Baal, to the people of Israel.  And this was the worst of evils.  Not long after that, and the Jews believe because of that, the northern kingdom of Israel was conquered by Assyria.  And so there were more threats to the Jewish religion, and to the Jewish people, as secretism occurred, as the Assyrians introduced their gods.  Now, the Samaritans were considered by the Jews as being heretics.  Their former brothers and sisters have left the tribe and are now against Yahweh, their God.  Suffice it to say they didn’t like each other. 

And so, Jesus tells us a wonderful story about the man on the way to Jericho.  We assume that man was a Jew, and he’s laying there dying and he is passed by two Jews, a priest and a Levite, who pay him no mind.  The priest couldn’t have touched him, or he would have contaminated himself, according to ritual.  There was a reason for the Levite, technically, not to touch him as well.  And so, this Samaritan comes along, the hated Samaritan, and he cares for this man.  What a beautiful story, and what a wonderful response to “Who is my neighbor?”  So, Jesus asks the questioner who is trying to trick Jesus, “Who do you think was the neighbor?”  Notice the man’s response didn’t include the word “Samaritan.”  He couldn’t even get it out of his lips!  He says, “Well, the one who showed him mercy.”  And He said, “You do the same.  Go and do the same.”  Wonderful story.  The lesson:  We’re equal under God’s eyes.  There’s no discrimination in God’s way of looking at us, and there should be no discrimination in our way of looking at each other. 

But there is discrimination.  Life has changed little since the time of Christ, and prejudice and racism are part of the human condition.  If you don’t believe in original sin, explain that to me.  I think racism is a proof of original sin, and its effects still exist in the world today.  Just look around the world.  Sometimes we Americans accuse ourselves of being the only racists.  We’re good at it, all right.  We’re human.  Look around the whole world.  I remember a few years ago, 60 Minutes did a segment on Palestinians and Jews in Israel.  Many of them hate each other.  They consider each other as less than human; as dogs.  And they interviewed some Palestinians and asked, “Why do you hate the Jews?”  And when they were finished giving their testimony, I understood why the Jews hated them!  And then they interviewed Israelis, “Why do you hate Palestinians?”  And when they gave their testimony, I understood why the Palestinians hated them!  Vicious, vicious judgments.  Of course, we Irish know nothing about this problem!  Some years ago there was an airplane landing in Ireland, and the stewardess got on the intercom, “We’re about to land in Dublin.  Set your watches back 400 years!” 

In the Balkans, formerly Yugoslavia, Croats and Serbs and Albanians have been warring for centuries.  Now, the Croatians are Catholic, some of you may have Croatian ancestry.  The Serbians are Orthodox, and the Albanians are Moslem.  And sometimes it would be the Croat Catholics and the Serbs against the Moslems.  And the next year, it would be the Croat Catholics and the Moslems against the Serbs.  And it just went on and on – centuries of hatred.  I visited Medjugorje, which is in Bosnia Herzegovina, which is primarily Moslem, but it’s a Croatian village, a Catholic village.  Even today, well, this story is a couple of years old, but nothing really has changed – the hatred is incredible.  In Rwanda the Tutsis and the Hutu’s were at war.  Many of them were Christians on both sides.  In some cases, Catholics are fighting Catholics, but they’re different tribes, and that’s the reason for the hatred.  Then just two weeks ago, Colin Powell, our Secretary of State, was in Sudan, and the Arab north is conquering the black south.  The Moslem north and the Animas and Christian south.  The article I read in Newsweek said this is really genocide, but the US can’t use that word because if you allege genocide, there’s a UN charter that demands certain actions, and the US probably doesn’t want to get into another fray at the moment.  And I know the UN never wants to get into a fight.  And so, Secretary of State Powell said, “Don’t worry about what it’s called.  Let’s deal with it and find a name for it later.”  It’s the same thing, though.  It’s racism.  It’s tribal hatred.  If you’ve ever been in Korea, don’t ever raise a Japanese flag – they don’t like each other.  There were race riots in Britain not too long ago.  Have you ever been to Mexico and turn on the news at night?  Now, most Mexicans, there are Indians and there are European Mexicans, and there are Mestiso Mexicans (which are mixed blood, both Europe and Indian).  But if you watch the people who read the news, half of them are blonde, and blue-eyed, and very European-looking.  And Swedish‑looking – where’d they come from?  And, of course, the reason is they’re more attractive, because of the racist idea even within Mexico itself.  The French and English in Canada, and African-Americans in our country, although things may be better, they still do not participate in the fullness of the American dream.

Now, I’m not an unsullied observer of racism, talking down to you.  I have been guilty of this tremendous sin in my life.  I grew up in New York City.  I remember Martin Luther King went to Chicago doing his work, and Mayor Daly gave him a key to the city, and King said, “I’m not here to get a key – I’m here to straighten this mess out.  Because you’ve got a problem in Chicago and we’ve got a problem in New York.”  I grew up in an ethnic neighborhood of Italians, and Irish, and Poles, Jews, and we got along – it was good.  We were all white.  I’ll never forget.  I grew up in a very prejudiced time against African-Americans.  I’ll never forget this one time I came home from High Mass.  We were like four blocks from the church and it took two hours to get home.  Stop and talk, stop and talk, or at least, my mother stopped and talked.  And I remember one Sunday, we had just come from Mass.  Maybe it was this Gospel, I don’t know.  And everyone was talking about the blacks who were moving closer to Flushing, as if some kind of plague of rats was approaching.  And even as a little boy I said, “What’s wrong with this?”, although I was a racist.  How could we come from Mass and talk about human beings like they weren’t fully human beings?  And I carried that with me into the service.  I gave black soldiers and young lieutenants (and of course, second lieutenants know everything – they’re very dangerous creatures) and I gave blacks a tough time.  I pre-judged the black soldiers as less than a white soldier.  I used to make them carry 90-mm recoiling rifles and the machine guns.  It was terrible, and I’m sorry.  I learned a lesson the hard way.  I was in Vietnam, not too long, and I was at a fire base, and I was waiting for a helicopter to take me to another base, and there were two men killed the night before.  I was asked to take these bodies back with me to the morgue in Saigon.  As I was waiting for the helicopter, I hadn’t been in Vietnam long, and I hadn’t seen a dead American, and I was young.  I pulled back the poncho and they were both African-Americans, both black.  It was as if God had slapped me in the face.  These were my brothers, who I had discriminated against, I had called names and treated like dogs.  They died doing what I was doing.  They were my comrades.  Thank God I learned the lesson. I wish I never had to learn the lesson. 

I mentioned my parents.  There’s a sad story that happened to them.  My parents moved to New Mexico, with my sister Mary who is down in Santa Fe, and my first nephew (my parents first grandchild)’s godfather was African-American.  His name was Jude Mason, and he was 6’4” and weighed 250 pounds.  I wonder what my mom and dad looked like, when they met the godfather of their first grandchild.  But, to make a long story short, a couple years later, Jude was living with my parents.  He was divorced by that time, and he needed a place to stay.  My parents said, “Move in with us.”  I came home from the Army, either Vietnam or Europe or something, and he had my room!  And my mother said, “That’s tough.  He’s our son now.  You’re just visiting.”  So it ended well.  He was the first African-American or black man they had ever met.  Apparently, we hated these people and didn’t even know them.  Of course, if we knew them, we couldn’t have hated them.  If we could see who they are; the good people they are.

There are still problems.  But we’ve come a long way.  Hopefully some of you kids don’t know what I’m talking about, and I hope you never have to find out.  I think we have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go.  About twenty years ago there were virtually no Mexicans in Albuquerque.  Now there are over 75,000 because of the economy in Albuquerque.  Those Mexicans report encountering quite a bit of prejudice, oftentimes from Hispanic New Mexicans.  My nephews grew up in Santa Fe.  I was home visiting.  There were three nephews and there was Jude Mason’s son, Jimmy, and they thought they were brothers.  And they really thought they were brothers – they were inseparable.  They were either at my sister’s house or at Aunt Leslie’s house.  And I said to my nephew, “You know, Robbie, you are so blessed that you don’t even see color.  Jimmy is truly your brother.”  And I confessed my story.  He said, “Uncle John, I can’t believe you were like that.”  I said, “Yeah, I’m sorry to say that I was.”  “Well, that’s terrible, Uncle John.  That’s shocking.”  “I know, I know.”  He said, “But at least you didn’t have to live with Chicanos.”  And I thought everything was better….!

The Mexicans are encountering trouble in our state.  I’ll tell you another little story that to me was shocking.  I was with a priest, and I was recently ordained.  A woman friend of his was married to a Mexican fellow, who was not a good husband; he wasn’t a good guy.  He beat her and he was very abusive.  And she died.  And my priest friend, and all the priests said, she was a wonderful woman because she befriended the priests.  She would cook for them…a very nice, wonderful lady.  He said, “She didn’t have a good marriage.  She was married to a typical mojado (a typical “wet back”).”  And I said, “Father, did you hear what you just said?”  He says, “You don’t know.”  I said, “Well, I know something about you that I didn’t know before.”  That was a priest.  This is a problem that exists today, even closer to home.  I wonder how some of our families would react if their daughter came home and was in love, saying, “I met the greatest guy in the world – I think we’re going to get married.  He’s from the Valley…”

Racism is deeply sinful, and it’s seldom confessed.  I can count on two hands the number of times anyone has gone to Confession and said, “I have been a racist.  I prejudged someone.  I discriminated.”  Now having said that, and I prepared these notes yesterday, I did hear a Confession today.  And a man said, “I’m sorry.  I have pre-judged people.  Father, this is a sickness I have and I need to stop it.”  And I said, “God bless you.  The Lord will give you the grace to overcome this sickness.”  What can we do about this?  First of all, we realize that it’s a problem that still exists.  We need to resolve to speak with loving care about people – speak with loving care about people.  We need to act justly.  We need to challenge others, even superiors, when there are incidences of racism.  We need to use every opportunity that comes our way to set the record right.  We need to have compassion.  The Levite and the priest walked by that man – maybe they felt pity, but they didn’t suffer.  Compassion means “to suffer with.”  Sympathy is the Greek version of the word meaning “to suffer with.”  We need to have compassion for people.  A drop of help is worth an ocean of pity.

In the end, we will be judged, you and I.  We will not be judged according to the Creed we profess.  We will be judged on how we love God, and how we loved our neighbor.   And who is your neighbor?  Every one is your neighbor.