St. Maria Goretti

A few months ago, I was in barbershop getting a hair cut, while I still can. And I witnessed the most amazing scene. There was a little guy, he must have been four or five years old, waiting to get his haircut with his Dad. And while he was waiting, he kept going over to one of those glass, stand-up, gum dispensers. And this gum machine gave you a handful of gum for twenty-five cents. I watched the little boy put in a quarter, and get one handful. And then he put in a second quarter, and got a second handful. This guy was chewing hard on his mouthful of gum. He looked like a miniature major league pitcher, with a couple of big wads in his mouth. And then, the boy goes over to his father, and asks for another quarter. And you just knew, you just knew, this kid was going to buy more gum. His father was reading the paper, and without even looking up, he reaches into his pocket, gets a quarter, and hands it to his son. If he had looked up, he would have noticed that his son looked like a squirrel prepared for winter, with his cheeks packed with gum. The boy takes his third quarter over to the gum machine, gets another handful of gum. And I’m praying, I’m sitting in that barber chair praying, please don’t let that kid stuff any more gum in his mouth. Sure enough, in one sweeping toss, the third handful of gum when into his mouth. By now, this kid looks like his mouth, his cheeks, his whole head is ready to explode. So the kid sits there and just chews for a while. He’s got so much gum in his mouth, that occasionally it oozes out of the side of his mouth and drips down on his shirt and pants. And the barbers and all the guys getting their haircut are watching this kid. I mean, this better than most of the shows on TV. His Dad still doesn’t notice. I’m getting ready to give the Heimlich maneuver. Then, the kid asks his Dad for another quarter. And this time, I think that surely his Dad is going to look up this time. Nope. He hands over another quarter and then he looks up just in time to see his young son pushing the fourth handful of gum into his mouth. The Dad jumps up. The whole barbershop is laughing. And the kid spits this baseball-sized wad of gum into his father’s hand. The Dad gives his son a lecture on moderation, and saving some for later, and delayed gratification.

That’s really the problem, isn’t it? Delayed gratification. We live in a world today where everybody wants everything and they want it right now. Ours are the values of the moment. What happens tomorrow, what happens next year, what happens fifty years from now, that’s not our concern. That little boy in the barbershop certainly wasn’t thinking about later on. He wasn’t thinking about how nice it would be to have those four quarters later on. He wasn’t thinking that maybe he’d want some gum later on. He wasn’t thinking of the stomach ache that he was going to have from chewing all that gum. He was living for the moment. And it didn’t work out so well.

Today in our Gospel we hear the Beatitudes. And the Beatitudes require some delayed gratification. You see the Gospel is right when it says “blessed” are all those who are poor, or hungry, or weeping, or who are hated. But that’s in the long-range plan. You ask most people living according to the values and standards of today’s world, who are poor, and hungry, and weeping, or who are hated, just ask them how “blessed” they feel, and they’ll laugh at you. The Beatitudes are NOT talking about the values and standards of the world. They are in relation to God’s values and standards. They are the values and standards of Heaven! The passing world cannot ever go by such values. Just look at how the world, especially the media, is falling all over itself over the death of this porn star, Anna Nicole Smith. Anna Nicole Smith lived by every sick value that the world worships: money, sex, power, beauty, glamour, popularity . This woman was worshipped by so many in the world and in the media precisely because she lived by their values. And look where it got her. All that money! All that beauty! All of that popularity! She’s dead. And there’s nothing more when you live only by the values of this world. Instant gratification doesn’t work. We were not created for this world. We were created to live with God forever. God’s values are very different. God’s values don’t make sense to an out-of-control world that’s headed towards certain death. We’ve got to be able to see more than what that little boy could see in the barbershop. We’ve got to see the consequences of our actions, and that just satisfying our desires of the moment, is not the way to have lasting peace.

The Beatitudes challenge us to make a decision: Whose side are we going to be on? Are we going to belong to the world? Or are we going to belong to God?

May God bless us on this Sunday, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit… AMEN !!!

St. Maria Goretti… Pray for us !!!