Fr Kevin Kilgore

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Halloween is my least favorite holiday.

It’s amazing how many people decorate their yards with goblins, ghouls, and monsters. In some cases, people are having fun; in others it seems like they’re literally trying to scare us! 

I for one get spooked, even disturbed, at how obsessed people have become with violence and the darker side of reality.

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At it’s core, Halloween reminds us that life can often be scary. 

For example, I can think of a young mother who was recently diagnosed with cancer, a young man who was nearly incinerated in a car accident, a young child who’s depressed.

Scary things – real things – that happen to us in life.

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But Paul reminds us in our first reading that nothing – no event, no person, no diagnosis, no demon can separate us from the love of Christ.

Rather, God stands ready to extend his loving help to anyone who calls upon his name. 

This is the mark of a true believer, as Saint Paul says, one who knows that in the end the victory is ours, for “we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.”

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Felicity Huffman.

Hard to believe the former “Desperate Housewives” star was just released from prison after pleading guilty to participating in the college admissions scandal.

And Lori Laughlin is next. The lady we once knew as Aunt Becky on “Full House” is facing years behind bars.

It was pay to play. Wealthy parents bribed university officials to admit their children into the nation’s top universities.

The lower part of ourselves relishes in the downfall of the rich and famous, people who bend the rules or break the law for their own benefit.

Think of OJ Simpson, Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, and Felicity Huffman. 

What scum!

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But to agree to such a statement means we’ve fallen into the trap in today’s Gospel – judging others for their sins without realizing our own.

If, for example, our mistakes were televised on the nightly news – aired before millions of judgmental eyes – how would we feel?

It must be humiliating.

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Lesson number one: stop judging lest we be judged. As Saint Paul says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Even the Pharisee in today’s Gospel, who walks into the temple offering God a personal piety report.

“Thank God I’m not like that tax collector…I pray! I tithe! I fast!” he says. In other words, “I’m so much better than he is!”

This guy doesn’t pray at all. Rather, he leaves the temple the way he entered it: blind and arrogant.

Unchanged.

Though it’s easy to criticize him, how often have we had a similar experience? We come to Mass or pray in private, but leave the way we came.

Unchanged.

It’s impossible to have an experience of God’s mercy if we do not know our own sins, meaning it’s possible to live a type of Christianity that never changes us.

It only scratches the surface, while leaving us broken within. 

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Perhaps what we’re in need of – I certainly am – is to model the behavior of the tax collector, who says to God simply, “Have mercy on me a sinner.”  

People hate the word “sinner” today.

It’s often used in a derogatory way towards other people like Harvey Weinstein and Felicity Huffman, or at best in a joking manner towards ourselves. 

People have said to me, for example, “Father, I can’t go to church. The roof would collapse! I’m a sinner!” 

But that’s precisely why I go. I come here looking to be changed. I come looking for God.

What about you?

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In fact, Jesus insists upon us seeing ourselves this way, as sinners; as a beautiful mess made in the image and likeness of God, but broken within.

Only then can the Lord make us whole.

I suppose the alternative is to see ourselves as a finished product, packaged and ready to go, ready to stand before the judgment seat of God.

Not me.

The more I see my own weaknesses, the harder it becomes to judge those around me, even Felicity Huffman. I need the Lord no less than the next.

A healthy level of self-awareness – not self-hatred – breaks that “us versus them” mentality of the Pharisee, who thought he was better than other people because he followed a few simple rules. 

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Two men entered the temple that day to pray. One gave God a personal piety report.  

The other made a cleansing confession.

God heard both men speak. But only one life was changed. 

Which one will we be?

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In his book, The Road to Character, David Brooks makes a distinction between résumé virtues and eulogy virtues. 

Résumé virtues are those things that define our lives externally – our test scores, the college we attended, the company we work for, our title.

Eulogy virtues, on the other hand, speak to our character – how kind, faithful, forgiving, and generous we have been.

This is what people remember at the end of our lives – how we’ve treated them.

This man in the Gospel dies condemned and alone because he only valued his résumé virtues – he valued his wealth –  whereas Jesus urges us to consider how well we’ve treated one another.

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What are my résumé virtues? And, more importantly, what are my eulogy virtues?

What do I want people to say about me looking back over my life?

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“Be rich in what matters to God,” Jesus says.

Namely, be rich in love, because people will not remember how wealthy you were; they’ll remember how well you treated them.