11th Sunday in Ordinary Time – B
June 16, 2024 5:00pm
Our Lady of Grace Parish, Parkton
Résumé Virtues and Eulogy Virtues
An American journalist named David Brooks has written a column entitled The Moral Bucket List – The Moral Bucket List.
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 workplace. The eulogy virtues are the personal traits that are talked about at our funeral.
The résumé virtues are things like management skills and jobs we have held. They also include academic degrees and different kinds of training we have received.
All of these definitely have a place in our lives. We need them to make a living, 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.
To state it in another way, we may be much clearer on how to build an external career than on how to build inner character. And so, Brooks argues that 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 compassion for those in need and an effort to understand the perspective of others who are different. The idea is that we have to be alert and work at these eulogy virtues.
David Brooks adds this important point. He says that good people “are made, not born” – good people “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, neighbors, employers, employees and everyone. We become persons with character, good persons only over the long haul of everyday living.
Only With God’s Power
Well, Jesus’ parables in today’s gospel offer two insights on these eulogy virtues.
In the first parable, Jesus is talking about the growth of seed that has been planted in the soil. He says that the farmer just goes about his life and work and in some way, “he knows not how,” the seed sprouts and grows.
Jesus’ lesson is that it is God’s power at work that fosters our personal and spiritual growth. It is God’s steady, maybe unnoticed power that helps us to grow in what we call the eulogy virtues.
This is one reason why we are to come to Mass on Sunday. Here at Mass, the Word of God reminds us to live out these eulogy virtues.
It deepens us in what they are to mean for our life situation. And then the Eucharist nourishes the growth of these virtues by God’s actual presence within us.
So, God’s grace is at work in us through our participation in Mass. God leads us to grow, much as the seed in the soil is led to grow.
Only Over Time
The second lesson from today’s gospel is that all of this doesn’t happen overnight.
Jesus uses the example of the mustard seed, which he says is the smallest of all seeds. But it ends up becoming the largest of plants.
The lesson is that it takes time for us to emerge as a person of character, of inner depth, the kind of person Jesus calls us to be. So, maybe a lot of things we do seem small and insignificant.
Maybe we don’t think about their value and how they are affecting us right now. But, 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. Little by little, we become the whole or holy persons that Jesus calls us to be.
