11th Sunday in Ordinary
Time
Cycle B
June 14, 2015 4:00pm, 9:30am and 11:00am
Saint
Margaret Parish, Bel Air
Résumé Virtues and Eulogy Virtues
This
past week, I came across a column that was in The New York Times in April. I think it really has something to say to us.
Columnist
David Brooks writes that from his experience, he sees two sets of virtues. He calls these: “the résumé virtues” and “the
eulogy virtues.”
The résumé
virtues are the skills we bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the traits that are
talked about at our funeral.
The résumé
virtues are things like technological and management skills. They also include academic degrees and job titles.
All of
these have a place in our lives. We need
them to make a living and to make a contribution to our world and for our own
fulfillment.
But columnist
David Brooks says that our culture focuses so much on these résumé virtues that
we often forget the eulogy virtues. Our years
can pass by and the deepest parts of us can go undeveloped.
We may
be much clearer on how to build an external career than on how to build inner
character. And so, we need to be
attentive to these eulogy virtues.
These
include patience with others and faithfulness to our life commitments when that
is easy and when that is difficult. The
eulogy virtues include honesty in our work situations and truthfulness in our
relationships.
They
include care for those in need and an effort to understand the perspective of
others who are different from us. The idea
is that we have to be alert and work at these eulogy virtues.
David
Brooks says it so well: good people, he says, “are made, not born.” His
idea is that we achieve inner character and virtue by the day-in, day-out,
year-in, year-out stuff we do with family, friends, employers, employees,
clients, customers, neighbors and people we do not even know.
Why We Have Mass
I think
that remembering and working at these eulogy virtues is at least one reason why
God told us to “keep holy the Sabbath
day.”
It is
one reason why we are to come to Mass on Sunday. It is like what Jesus says in that first
parable in today’s gospel about the growth of the seed.
He is
teaching that it is God’s power at work that fosters our personal and spiritual
growth to happen. So, here at Mass the
Word of God refreshes us in these eulogy virtues.
It also
deepens us in what they mean for our life situation. And then the Eucharist nourishes the growth
of these virtues within us.
The Smallest…The Largest
The
last thing I want to say is that all of this doesn’t happen overnight.
It
takes time for us to emerge as a person of character, of inner depth, the kind
of person Jesus calls us to be. Again,
it is like what Jesus says in the second parable of today’s gospel.
The
smallest of seeds, the mustard seed, ends up becoming the largest of plants. So, maybe a lot of things we do seem small
and insignificant.
Maybe
we don’t think about their value and what they are doing to us. But, taken together and over the long haul of
life, they mount up.
From
all the things that we say and do, by working at these eulogy virtues, we
emerge as persons of character and inner depth.
We become the whole or holy persons that Jesus calls us to be.
