There is more to a house that its size or beauty. It is an odd truth today that though our families have decreased in size, the square footage of our homes has increased dramatically. The “great room” in some modern homes is larger than the entire house I grew up in, and some of today’s walk-in closets are larger than the bedrooms of old.
Despite all this luxury, we don’t seem to be any happier. Wealth can bring comfort but not happiness. There is more to a home than the building itself. The Book of Proverbs speaks to this:
Better a dry crust with peace and quiet than a house full of feasting, with strife (Proverbs 17:1).
The house of the righteous contains great treasure, but the income of the wicked brings ruin (Proverbs 15:6).
Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife. (Proverbs 25:24).
That last one may get me in trouble, but I’m sure women can adapt it for their use as well.
The commercial below develops the theme that a house is more than just the building. There are many things that make a home appealing beyond its size or the brick and mortar that compose it.
In his classic description of love, St. Paul says, Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (1 Cor 13:7).
I remember discovering this when I was in the 7th grade. A very pretty girl needed help carrying some heavy books; I had wanted to meet her and saw my chance. I gladly introduced myself and asked if I could help. Those were some heavy books, but I carried them gladly.
Love bears and endures all things. At that age it was just a crush or infatuation, but if even imperfect love can do that, how much more will love that is more mature and perfect gladly bear burdens and hardships?
Think about that as you view this amusing advertisement.
The commercial below reminds me of the fact that the Eucharist is our necessary food for the journey; it is the food of wayfarers. In John chapter 6, Jesus teaches that the miraculous manna described in Exodus and Numbers was the food that sustained the ancient Jews in the desert and strengthened them bodily for their journey to the Promised Land. While most of them did not make it to the Promised Land because of their unbelief, their children did. The manna was the food that fed them for that long journey.
Jesus then says that He is now the living bread come down from Heaven for us:
I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that anyone may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And this bread, which I will give for the life of the world, is My flesh (Jn 6:48-51).
If for some strange reason the ancient Jews had refused to eat the manna given them, they would have died of hunger in the desert. So, too, for us. If we do not receive Holy Communion, we will not have the strength to make it to the Promised Land of Heaven:
Truly, truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day (Jn 6:53-54).
So, the Eucharist is our true and necessary food to sustain us. Without it we are starving ourselves and do not have strength for the journey. Even if God has other ways to feed those who cannot reasonably know of or receive the Eucharist, that is no excuse for those of us who know better.
In the commercial below, a young man eats his oatmeal while staring dreamily out the window. Astride his bicycle and seeing a steep mountain before him, he feels strengthened for the journey, an epic journey. For us, the mountain is Heaven and the epic journey is the drama of our life through the hills and valleys of this world. We are wayfarers and our food is the Eucharist.
The video below, an ad for a carpet cleaning product, is masterfully done and has a surprise ending. In the ad, the horror caused by the carpet stain is palpable.
I’d like to relate this mere carpet stain to the growing and ominous stain that represents evil.
This stain (macula in Latin) should cause us revulsion and horror similar to that which we have for things that go bump in the night.
Sin ought to spook us! The horror of the stain of sin can lead us to the Lord, who alone can make us immacula (without stain).
In the Gospel of Matthew (Mat 12:1-8), Jesus is rebuked for violating the Sabbath. This reminded me of the video below, which illustrates how we sometimes follow smaller rules while overlooking more important ones in the process.
The Lord Jesus was often scorned by the people of His day, who claimed that He overlooked certain details of the law (often Sabbath observances). But those who rebuked Him for this were guilty of far greater violations. For example,
[Jesus] went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Stand up in front of everyone.” Then Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they remained silent. He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus (Mk 3:1-6).
Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone (Luke 11:42).
Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue ruler said to the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.” The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?” (Lk 13:14-16)
You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean (Matt 23:24-25).
Yes, they are straining out gnats but swallowing camels, maximizing the minimum but minimizing the maximum. Note that in the first passage above they are actually planning to kill Jesus for healing on the Sabbath!
Perhaps my all-time favorite illustration of this awful human tendency is in the Gospel of John:
Then the Jews led Jesus from Caiaphas to the palace of the Roman governor. By now it was early morning, and to avoid ceremonial uncleanness the Jews did not enter the palace; they wanted to be able to eat the Passover. So Pilate came out … (John 18:28-29).
They are plotting to kill a just and innocent man; indeed, they are plotting to kill God. They are acting out of wickedness, envy, jealousy, hatred, and murderous anger, but their primary concern is avoiding ritual uncleanliness! Yes, they are straining out gnats but swallowing camels.
We who are pious and observant need to be wary of this tendency. Sometimes in congratulating ourselves over adherence in lesser matters, we can either offend or neglect in weightier ones. Perhaps I attend Mass each Sunday (a grave obligation); perhaps I pray the rosary (a highly commendable practice); perhaps I tithe (a commendable precept). These are all things that ought to be done (one is commanded, one is commended, and one is a precept). But what if at the same time I am hateful toward someone at the office, unforgiving to a family member, and/or insensitive to the poor?
The danger could be that I let my observance of certain things allow me to think that I can “check off the God box” and figure that because I went to Mass, prayed the rosary, and gave an offering, I’ve “got this righteousness thing down.” Too often, very significant and serious things like love, mercy, forgiveness, and charity are set aside or neglected as I am busy congratulating myself over my adherence to other, sometimes lesser, things.
This oversight can happen in the other direction as well. Someone may congratulate himself for spending the day working in a soup kitchen, and think that he therefore has no need to look at the fact that he is living unchastely (shacked up, for example) or not attending Mass.
We cannot “buy God off,” doing certain things (usually things that we like) while ignoring others we’d rather not. In the end, the whole counsel of God is important.
We must avoid the sinful tendency to try to substitute or swap, to observe a few things while overlooking others.
We see a lot of examples of this in our culture as well. We obsess over people smoking because it might be bad for their health while ignoring the health consequences of promiscuous behavior, which spreads AIDS and countless venereal diseases and leads to abortion. We campaign to save the baby seals while over a thousand baby humans are killed each day in the United States. We deplore (rightfully) the death of thousands each year in gun homicides while calling the murder of hundreds of thousands of babies each year a constitutional right. The school nurse is required to obtain parental permission to dispense aspirin to students but not to provide the dangerous abortifacient “morning after pill.” We talk about the dignity of women and yet pornography flourishes. We fret endlessly about our weight and the physical appearance of our bodies, which will die, and care little for our souls, which will live. We obsess over carbon footprints while flying on jets to global warming conferences at luxurious convention center complexes.
Yes, we are straining gnats but swallowing camels. As the Lord says, we ought not to neglect smaller things wholly, but simply observing lesser things doesn’t give us the right to ignore greater ones.
Salus animarum suprema lex. (The salvation of souls is the highest law.) While little things mean a lot, we must always remember not to allow them to eclipse greater things.
The ideal for which to aim is an integrated state in which the lesser serves the greater and is subsumed into it. St. Augustine rightly observed,
Quod Minimum, minimum est, Sed in minimo fidelem esse, magnum est (St. Augustine – De Doctrina Christiana, IV,35).
(What is a little thing, is (just) a little thing, but to be faithful in a little thing is a great thing.)
Notice that the lesser things are in service of the greater thing—in this case fidelity. And thus we should rightly ask whether some of the lesser things we do are really in service of the greater things like justice, love, mercy, fidelity, kindness, and generosity. Otherwise we run the risk of straining out gnats but swallowing camels.
Enjoy this commercial, which illustrates how one rule (no loud voices in the library) is observed while violating nearly every other.
In the car commercial below every imaginable attack is waged on the driver by various nefarious figures, but the driver just keeps on driving. Similarly, we must just keep on preaching and teaching no matter what foolish or evil things assail us, no matter the obstacles. St. Paul reminds us,
I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry (2 Timothy 4:1-5).
I’m not quite sure what to make of the woman at the end of the commercial. Let’s just call her Mother Church. Christ and His bride will win! The wicked will wage their war, but in the end, they will turn on one another. Evil cannot endure. Jesus and His bride win! Viva Cristo Rey!
I am not sure what to make of the commercial below. On the one hand it celebrates the many creative acts that take place behind computer screens. On the other, there’s something sadly emblematic about all the solitary figures engrossed in their PCs.
Almost everyone in the commercial is alone behind his or her laptop. Today many people are almost obsessed with the virtual world while seemingly quite uninterested in the real world around them. It is most evident on city streets, on buses, and in the subways, where people stare at their smartphone screens with their earbuds in, only vaguely aware of the people and things around them. Even stranger is to attend family gatherings and see the teenagers not interacting with one another, but instead each plugged into his or her own device texting or playing video games.
I suppose it is a question of balance. Time spent focused on a computer screen can be enriching; it can be a time of creativity. As a writer, I spend quite a bit of time sitting alone at my computer mulling over the most effective way to communicate a particular article of the faith to my readers.
But when do we turn off the electronics and engage with the real people around us? When do we sit down together for dinner? When do we get together to play cards or board games, or even just to talk? When do we take a walk in our neighborhood and engage with our neighbors? When do we go out and attend community meetings? When do we call a friend to actually talk rather than just sending a short text?
Don’t get me wrong; I like my computer. But God and the people He has put in my life are much more important. The reality that God gives me is a much more beautiful place than what I can watch passively on my computer screen.
Below is the link to the commercial. There are a lot of solitary people doing creative things, but it is not clear for whom they are doing them.
There is an old saying that sometimes “less is more.” In other words, at some point excess becomes burdensome and pointless.
In the commercial below, the upgrades to mowing equipment begin as helpful, but end as silly and even dangerous. Meanwhile, the poor wife struggles with an “upgraded” watering can that is downright burdensome.
One of the secrets of life is learning to enjoy things in moderation. A glass of wine brings joy; a full bottle brings inebriation and a hangover. A nice dinner is satisfying, but too much food brings obesity and even disease.
What in your life has become excessive? Where have you come to realize that less is in fact more?
There is more to a house that its size or beauty. It is an odd truth today that though our families have decreased in size, the square footage of our homes has increased dramatically. The “great room” in some modern homes is larger than the entire house I grew up in, and some of today’s walk-in closets are larger than the bedrooms of old.
