A Reflection for the Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings: Sirach 27:4-7 1 Corinthians 15:54-58 Luke 6:29-45
One could write a book about the many ways that science now supports what the faith has always taught. Of course, one would need to keep rewriting that book because the sciences pursue an ever-shifting world of realities. And even theology can never claim to have written the last word about God.
In Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives (2020), Daniel J. Levitin insists that we live under a triad of constant influences: genes, culture and opportunity. In consequence, even as you look toward life’s end, how your life began still matters greatly.
Professor Levitin offers a chilling example about how important physical contact is for infants.
Harry Harlow, a psychologist, performed some of the most harrowing experiments ever conducted. He raised infant monkeys in isolation for up to twenty-four months to see what the effect would be; the young monkeys emerged profoundly disturbed and many never adjusted after the isolation ended. In another study, he put baby monkeys in a cage with two wire monkeys. One wire monkey had a milk-dispensing bottle in it. The second wire monkey had a terry-cloth blanket wrapped around it. Harlow hypothesized that the infant monkeys would want to spend more time with the wire monkey that gave milk—the nutrition they needed to satisfy their hunger. But in fact, the baby monkeys clung to the wire monkey with the soft terry-cloth blanket. The videos of the experiment are heartbreaking. There is one video in which a baby monkey continues to cling to its terry cloth wire mother while straining to reach over and drink some of the milk from the adjacent wire monkey.
Professor Levitin concludes: “Mothering is about more than just providing food. It’s about soft touch and warmth, about creature comfort.”
The sacred Scriptures also insist that our current actions come from long gestating conditions.
The fruit of a tree shows the care it has had;
so too does one’s speech disclose the bent of one’s mind (Sir 27:6).
Trees are planted in place; we think that we are not. But Jesus insists that so much of what happens today is rooted in yesterday’s decisions.
A good tree does not bear rotten fruit,
nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit.
For every tree is known by its own fruit.
For people do not pick figs from thorn bushes,
nor do they gather grapes from brambles.
A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good,
but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil;
for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks (Lk 6:43-45).
For centuries, the church has taught that virtues reinforce themselves, while vices spread like weeds. Biology now confirms that neuro-pathways form in the brain, making our repeated actions simpler and new behaviors more challenging. This disciplinary congruence should not surprise us. Both religion and science observe human behavior, and religion has been at it much longer than science.
To be a creature is to have an origin, one we neither fashioned nor chose. To be a child of God is to have a destiny, one we freely choose, a gift we are given to cherish.
Of course, when it comes to our behavior, science cannot begin to address the question of who is responsible for what. We can blame our parents for a lot of things, but they in turn can blame theirs. This chain of fault-finding only reinforces another church teaching, the doctrine of original sin: Before we even begin to act, we are thrown into a world that wounds us.
Trees flourish where soil and weather conditions are good. It is only collectively that they can be said to choose those factors. Humans are, supposedly, much freer. But we do not plant ourselves. At least, not originally. We inherit our genes, our parents, our culture.
Yet deep within each heart the freest of seedlings ferments. It is our great desire to grow, to change and to flourish. It comes from God.
St. Paul wanted his little community in Corinth to know that God has vindicated that bud in the resurrection of Christ from the dead:
When this which is corruptible clothes itself with incorruptibility
and this which is mortal clothes itself with immortality,
then the word that is written shall come about:
Death is swallowed up in victory.
Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting? (1 Cor 15:54-55).
To be a creature is to have an origin, one we neither fashioned nor chose. To be a child of God is to have a destiny, one we freely choose, a gift we are given to cherish.
Therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters,
be firm, steadfast, always fully devoted to the work of the Lord,
knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain (1 Cor 15:58).
