February 20, 2022 (Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time)

by Fr. Bob Glynn, S.J.

[This text is a lightly edited version of an automatically generated transcript.]

I’ve noticed that Father Xavier does something rather clever. It’s too clever for me. But I’m going to take a little riff on this, which is he gives you the takeaway at the end of Mass. I’m just so happy I’m almost at the end of Mass that I would never think of this. But I’m going to give you one word to remember at the beginning of the homily, all the way through so that you remember the homily. So this is a very important word. I want you to listen carefully. The word is Albania. All right. Now please keep that in mind.

About two and a half years ago, must have been, well, whenever—right before the plague. Let’s say three years ago. We had just finished the summer retreat season at the retreat house where I live. Where that retreat house is is kind of brimming with people making the Spiritual Exercises for eight days or 30 days. And at the point when that is over, like you couldn’t believe, so fast, all of the priests who work on the staff desert the retreat house and run away for a holiday. Now I can’t blame them. But since I don’t work at the retreat house, it means I stay. So this time I stayed and one other Jesuit priest stayed. Now I will not say his name, okay, so I don’t get blamed later for whatever it is I say but so I was in the house, minding my own business as always, wandering around, experienced the joy that I had that no one is home except one other priest and me that the house everything is empty. The grounds are empty. It is my kingdom. When I run into a man who is wandering around where we live, now to wander around where we live, the Jesuits you can’t do by accident at our house. Because we live on the second floor of a building. We have signs saying do not enter. Those never work. Let me tell you, but so I thought well, so I said, Oh, hello. I’m Father Bob. And he said, Oh, hello, in what I thought was either a New Jersey accent or an Eastern European accent was one of the two. It was Eastern European. So I said are you visiting us? Either that or he was coming to rob us? I wasn’t sure. So he said Yes, I am invited by Father X—not Father Xavier, just the father I’m not naming, okay, Father Xavier can’t—well, I’ll stay out of this. Alright. So I said oh, is it Where are you staying? In what room? And he said I am in room such and that huh? Because it was a room in our community for to see and usually we only have Jesuit stay in those rooms, because they’re the bumpiest rooms and the retreat house. And we have three very nice guest rooms downstairs. So I thought was funny. He’s staying up here at now, he had a name I can’t say. But I was calling him by the closest fruit name that I could think to his name. So I called him Mr. Apple. And he seemed awfully amused by this.

So then I went and saw the priest and I said, you know, you didn’t mention that Father Apple was coming. And he said, Oh, right, I forgot. Now in Jesuit terms, that means I did not want you to know till the last minute so you could not stop me from doing what I wanted to do. So I heard he said, um, why is he staying up on this floor? Not that I have a problem with it, but it just seems unusual. He said, Well, he has a problem. Oh, why do I always have so I said, Could I know the problem? Is it something that might help me to know and he said, he’s from Albania. And I thought, well, that could be a problem. I wasn’t sure because I didn’t know much about Albania. So he said, How much do you know about Albania and I said, the capital is Tirana. We had to memorize at St. Philip Neri primary school the capitals of all the countries of the world. I know Tirana is the capital, and that Mother Teresa came from there. I said we’ve now exhausted my knowledge of Albania. And he said, Well, let me tell you one thing about Albania. It’s blood feuds. Do you know what those are? I said, Well, I could start to take a guess it doesn’t sound very nice. He said yes in Albania still and they have had since the 1400s.

These blood feuds and what happens is that if one Albanian does something to another Albanian, the Tribal Law argues that the other Albanian must do equal in return. Okay, so this is fairly simple. We know this An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but it’s apparently more complicated. So I had to do a little bit of reading up on it too. But I discovered that if you murder someone, so you’re an Albanian, okay, I’m sorry if there are any Albanians here and I’m telling this wrongly please, you may feel free to correct me. But if you murder someone then the person the victim’s family, okay? Must murder someone in your family. Or if you are related to the person who committed the crime, you may also murder that person. Or you can murder someone else in your family to count for that. Okay. Okay. Now, if you are the victim’s family, okay. You may murder obviously the person who murdered your family member or you may murder anyone else in that family. In fact, it’s not that you may do it, you must do it. So it’s not a matter of sort of this is an option A and B. This is you must do this or you will disgrace your family and dishonor your name for generations to come.

So apparently, our man Mr. Apple, had done one of these bad things. So I said so he’s hiding in our house in California, so that he’s not murdered in Albania. You got it. Is it? Can the murderers travel? Apparently they’re allowed to travel. So I said Could he stay down on the first floor? I’ll put his name on the door and very nicely. There’s well apparently. So what we discovered was that that yes, he was hiding out. He was a very nice man. He was kind of slightly furtive. And then he went now where he went, I don’t know. But I was just happy when he went for lots of reasons.

I was bothered by this thing of the of the this law. And I thought, Well, I suppose it’s not so bad if you’re the victim’s family, because you could just decide, well, I’m not going to kill the person. Well, in fact, you have two things that can happen here. If you if you are the murderers family, and you are not murdered. What you do is you either leave the country like Mr. Apple did, or you can’t leave your house. So I was reading an article on AlJazeera about some guy who’s 19 years old, who’s the only member of his family left, who has lived in the same room for 12 years because of a killing in his family. Now you think okay, it’s not so bad for the victim’s family, but it is because if you don’t, if you do not take Blood Vengeance you are treated incredibly. So that example was given that even if you say you you’re you haven’t done anything, but you go to a celebration you go to a wedding, and everyone’s tea is put on the table. Yours is put on the ground, because you have brought disgrace and you must lower yourself to drink it.

Well, we can think, Oh, silly Albanians. We don’t do anything like that. Thank God, we don’t have blood feuds. Okay, in a way we don’t but Albania... Albania in a way helps us very much to understand the idea of this not taking revenge because it is our hearts. Read big. Because let’s face it, I will take take a fairly safe bet that everyone in this church has at one time or another thought about a good idea of how to get revenge on somebody. Now, my preferred method is passive aggression. Okay, this works well because it’s harder to catch you. Okay, when you say, Well, I know not me. I harbor no gotta saw. But in fact, we spend a lot of time stewing about how we have been disrespected, maltreated, misunderstood, insulted, shamed in public or might be shamed in public and figuring out strategies to get even without getting in trouble.

Now, No, Jesus is very concerned about this. We always want to make Jesus those into some sort of deep be something. Jesus understands the mind and heart of God. And the thing that he understands best that we miss, is this idea that the person who wants revenge, we think that person has power that I just have to strike. That person has no power. That person is every bit as unfree as the people who have committed the crime. Why? Because if I don’t get even here, I will look very bad. People will say look, you’re perfectly justified. He’s made you look like an idiot. Yeah, nobody can blame you. Our friends are often very helpful for these sorts of things. Okay, you’re just gonna take that lying down. I can’t believe you let her say that to you, with other people there. What happens to my freedom? In the midst of all of that my freedom disappears, and as my freedom disappears immediately concomitant in our faith, my ability to love vanishes for Roman Catholics love and freedom go hand in hand they cannot be separate it I cannot love if I am not free. I cannot be free if I cannot love and therefore, Jesus is giving us a command that is so realistic. It’s not sweet. It is to understand what God means about love. It’s what God understands about mercy, because the moment that I do not need to get revenge I have experienced freedom and in freedom I experience the ability and possibility of having mercy on someone else. I experience how God loves. I know what it feels like to love like God loves. We don’t know it very much because we don’t do it very much. That’s the reason I want to feel God’s love. Well, yeah, but I just don’t want to do the things to help me feel that. At the end of the day, Jesus’s reality is the same as our reality. Well, I can say, well, it was easy for Jesus to forgive, He’s God. Well, why is he bother giving us grace? Why are we eating his body and drinking his blood if we are not sharing in that grace, if we’re not sharing that love, if he isn’t changing us and saying, Okay, this one time, Lord Yes. I am really insulted. Yes, this is the revenge I have planned. Give me the grace, please, not to do it. It won’t come without disgrace, because I am not God. But I begged for the grace to have it happened to me that my heart might be changed, so that will I enter that moment of judgment. The Lord will say to me, come good and faithful servant. Enter into your master’s joy.