WE are reminded of
this duty in the second reading of the Mass of the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B. It’s from the
Letter of St. James (2,1-5) There, St. James talks about the discrimination one
practices when he treats a rich man with a lot of favor and privilege while
asking the poor man to sit by the footstool.
Of course, to fulfill this duty is not easy, given our wounded
human condition. But we can always do something about it. And the first thing
to remember is that irrespective of our differences and conflicts, we are all
brothers and sisters, all children of God. We are meant to love and care for
one another.
This does not mean that we have to treat everybody in the same
way. That we are all equal in the eyes of God does not mean that we have to
treat everyone in the same way. What is meant is that we should love everyone,
but according to how one is.
Like, the way you deal with an elderly person would be different
from the way we deal with a youngster, or a child, or a baby. But it is the
same love that we should give them.
In this regard, it is important that as much as possible we learn
to really know each one we deal with. Our dealings should always be
personalized, not mechanical or generic. This will require of us a certain
open-mindedness that would enable us to be adaptive to how others are and to be
versatile in our dealings with them.
For this, we should be ready to deal with the unavoidable
differences and conflicts that we can have with others. In fact, we should be
welcoming to them for they can occasion further development of virtues and
deepen our capacity to live charity as expected of us.
Our differences and conflicts can give rise to the development of
patience and compassion, and the pursuit for the truth and justice is
guaranteed to be more authentic even if it is also arduous.
They can actually expand our world of knowledge and
understanding, and trigger the dynamics of a more meaningful unity among
ourselves, not in spite of but rather because of our differences and conflicts.
The unity we are speaking of here is not uniformity, but one that is richly
nuanced and capable of accommodating everyone.
Most importantly, they can give a tremendous growth in our
spiritual life, freeing us from being at the mercy of our personal, earthly and
temporal conditions. They contribute greatly in our effort to make ourselves
more and more like Christ who is the pattern of our humanity and the savior of
our damaged humanity.
Our differences and conflicts are a fact of life. They can spring
from all kinds of sources—temperament, culture, socio-economic and political
status. There are racial and religious differences, etc.
These differences and conflicts must be part of our human
condition and are an integral element in the providence of God over all of us.
We just have to learn to live with them and try our best to use them according
to God’s providence. The general pattern of how to live and make use of them is
given to us by Christ himself who had to go through the most extreme kind of
difficulty and conflict.
We may sort them out to simplify things a bit, but we should
never think that there will come a time when there will be no differences and
conflicts among ourselves. Instead, what we have to do is to refer them to
Christ to have an idea of how to handle them.
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