Homily

Dr. Paul Glanzer is a professor at Baylor University in Texas. It’s a Baptist school, and one of its specialties under Dr. Glanzer is conducting surveys of people’s ideas about religion, politics and culture. A few years ago, he wrote a short piece about a survey of college students, “When we asked Baylor students what the good life looks like to them 10 years from now, what they describe is the opposite of suffering. They do not want riches; they merely want one of the most dangerous idols of them all…(they want) to be comfortable.” And he quoted a priest who warned, “this current ideology of comfort is anti-Christian at its very essence.”

This kind of surprised me but the I began to think about it and realize how easy it is to slip into that way of thinking, we who live in richest country in the world. How easy it is to choose comfort as one of the highest priorities in life. Is there something wrong with comfort? Not in and of itself. If you’re cold, put on a sweater. If you have a craving for a steak, light up the barbeque. If you’ve had a rough day, then sing the blues. In fact, we just sang, “Heavenly King, Comforter….” Trying to get comfortable can be a fine and good thing.

But it can also be a source of sin and an expression of self-centeredness. If I am always buying sweaters because it makes me feel good; if I put a second steak on the grill for myself; if I am so busy singing the blues that I neglect my family, then those kinds of comforts are certainly wrong. When the desire to feel good results in actions that are morally wrong according to the Gospel, then comfort becomes an occasion for sin.

When I think about the great value that those Baylor students put on feeling comfortable, and I think about how comfort is found not just in the use of physical things, but also attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. I tell a lie because I don’t want to get into trouble, or because I am embarrassed. I get involved in gossip when it makes me feel superior to other people. I don’t speak up when I should speak up, because I don’t want to feel different from other people or I don’t want to be criticized for disagreeing with popular ideas, even if they go against the truth my faith teaches me. I am afraid of speaking up for Christian values because I fear I might offend relatives and friends, even if they don’t seem to worry about offending me.

Living a life of comfort can include things like ending an unwanted pregnancy, misusing alcohol or drugs, blaming others for my own failures, choosing a personal morality that is based on my own ideas of what is right and wrong; serving others only when I feel like it and making sure that I am as well taken care of as I can possibly be. This kind of life is based on a self-centeredness that goes completely against our faith. Where comfort is king, Christ is not. How far will people go to live this type of life? I think we are seeing that more and more as we look around at our society, where people seem to place greater and greater emphasis on the unrestrained freedom of the individual and yet, strangely enough, many of the same people who work very hard to try and silence and shame those who stand against their new-found more comfortable morality.

In his first letter to the Corinthians St. Paul talks about the many sufferings he has gone through because being an apostle was a tough vocation. Just as he was willing to imitate his Savior Who also was willing to take up great suffering for our sake, Paul urges us to do the same. St. Paul talks about a thorn in the flesh that afflicted him, and he begged the Lord to take it away. But when Christ said that it would be for his benefit, he accepted it in order to rely on the strength of Christ, rather than the ease of his personal comfort.

I remember a story told by a Romanian Orthodox priest who spent 21 years in a communist prison and how, in the midst of terrible, disgusting conditions he and two other cell-mates found mercy, love and grace in caring for their dying cell-mate who accepted his suffering for the love of Christ, and whose love for Christ, even in that terrible place, elevated the lives of his cell mates. They were extraordinarily uncomfortable taking care of this man who had tuberculosis but that did not keep them from helping him. The man himself was so weak they had to do everything for him and yet he, himself, was constantly in prayer. They suffered in that terrible prison in a hundred different ways, and yet they still found another, superior and undeniable comfort in the Lord.

So I have been thinking these past few days about the ways in which I seek comfort instead of virtue and service, and it is not always—dare I say it?—it is not a comforting examination.

But let’s believe the words of the Lord to Paul, that His grace is sufficient for us, even in our weakness, trouble and sorrow. Then we can exchange, more and more, our desire to feel good for the desire to be truly good … in Christ, our Lord. Amen.