A Homily for the Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Numbers 11: 25-29 James 5: 1-6 Mark 9: 38-43, 45, 47-48
How do you deal rightly with those who believe wrongly? And let’s be honest. Everyone cannot be right on the very points where they differ, not if the pursuit of truth is truly possible.
Dealing rightly with those who believe wrongly could be called the subject of Erik Larson’s fascinating new work of American history, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War (2024).
Larson retrieves the immediate events and, most of all, the voices that led to America’s bloody Civil War. Consider, for example, the last celebration of George Washington’s birthday at Fort Sumter, the federal garrison guarding Charleston Harbor, just before the famous April attack of Confederate forces.
On Friday, February 22, Major Anderson broke his commitment to conserving ammunition and authorized his gun crews to fire a salute in honor of George Washington’s birthday.
This began at noon. The men fired 34 times, one shot for each state, including the seceded states, at 30 second intervals. “These were loaded with canister and produced a fine effect,” wrote Asst. Surgeon Crawford, who happened to be on guard duty. He directed the fire of the guns located at Sumter’s gate. Spectators crowded the ramparts of the opposing forts now in Confederate hands, Crawford noted, and “drew their inferences as to what shot and shell would do from the same sources.”
Diligent always, Major Anderson wrote a message to his superiors notifying them of the tribute, even as the guns were booming and gusting white smoke into the air.
It did not escape the notice of the inflamed population of Charleston that Anderson had counted 34 states in the Union, even though seven seceding states had already reduced that number to 27. They would soon be followed by four more, almost a third of the total number of states in the union.
The southern diarist Mary Chesnut gave ample expression to their sentiment: “The insolent wretch! Anderson fired 34 guns for all the original United States—in utter scorn of our ‘Confederate States.’”
A striking example of two sides in a most serious debate, one that would lead to the bloodiest of strife, and Robert Anderson deserves our attention because his inclinations and loyalties straddled the divide.
Anderson was born and raised in the slave state of Kentucky and had himself owned slaves. Committed to the Union and loyal to his army oath, Anderson did everything he could to keep hostilities from breaking out in his native South. How aptly his predicament illustrates our opening question: How do you deal rightly with those who believe wrongly?
The question is particularly poignant in an election year, but it has become increasingly prominent in contemporary life. We seem ever more inclined to vilify those with whom we disagree. Larson’s book is a much-needed tonic, describing an earlier time in American life when people felt free to think and say the very worst of each other. So much of what was said then could not be spoken today without shame.
How do you deal rightly with those who believe wrongly? In political life we need to remember that we never pursue truth as something that can be proven. The only proof politics ever achieves is stable progress and prosperity, which is something only time can tell. So when it comes to arguing who is right and who is wrong, we all need the humility to say that we do not know with certainty because, quite simply, we cannot know, at least not this individual at this moment.
How do you deal rightly with those who believe wrongly? Does this question apply to matters of faith? As Christians, we firmly believe that Jesus did indeed reveal the deepest of truths: He alone is the beloved Son of the Father, who through the work of the Holy Spirit offers salvation to all the world. So what difference in the truth is there to tolerate?
Quite simply, the difference between what Jesus reveals and what we as individuals receive. We need to recognize our own limitations when it comes to identifying the truth. When the truth is God’s own self, it exceeds our capacity to comprehend. Hence, for all that we truly know, there is yet more that we do not know.
And one truth that Jesus firmly taught is that sin blinds us to the truth and inhibits our adherence to it. So we are twice curtailed in our search for certitude. Our minds cannot grasp infinity, and they are singed by sin in their attempts to do so.
So yes, we firmly adhere to what Christ reveals through the revelation of his own self in the mystery we call the church. Church councils, papal edicts and even Scripture fall under this broader act of revelation. But one important truth the church teaches is that Christ is not limited by the church he himself established. Even in St. Mark’s Gospel, when told that another is acting in his name, Christ responds, “Do not prevent him” (9:39).
When it comes to other religions, the church recognizes that they have their place because they are expressions of the human search for God. In its “Declaration on the Relation of the Church to non-Christian Religions” (“Nostra Aetate”) the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council taught:
The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. Indeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), in whom men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself (§ 2).
In teaching thus, the council only echoed the early Fathers of the Church, who spoke of the Logos, God’s word, spreading its seed throughout the world even before the advent of Christ.
How do you deal rightly with people who believe wrongly?
You recognize that whether the question is political or religious, you are dealing with yourself. We all fall short of the truth, which is why we need to be patient and tolerant of those with whom we disagree. The truth will take care of itself if we seek it with humility and integrity. The last thing we want to do is to impede another’s search by our intolerance, our prejudices, our refusal to dialogue.
Major Robert Anderson knew what he believed when he fired those 34 shots to honor George Washington. He also knew that others, whom he could see from his ramparts, believed quite differently. He was being true to himself and his cause, but in the weeks that followed he would continue striving to avoid open conflict. So must we all, until we ourselves are granted full access to the mind of God.
