A few years ago, I had a friend who was a very respected and successful business man. He doted on his employees who loved for it. He told me: “There isn’t one of them, my employees, who wouldn’t give me the shirt off his or her back. I’ve been good to everyone of them.”His problem wasn’t there. It was at home with his family. He had a drinking problem and all the inconsistencies that come with that.
Simply put, he was never as nice at home as he was at the office. Here is how he would generally put things to me: “Everyone likes me, except my family. I suspect that it’s because they can’t deal with my popularity. I go to the office and there isn’t one person there who isn’t indebted to me, whom I haven’t helped specially. We have a good atmosphere there. We laugh a lot and I’m appreciated. Then I go home … well, everything changes! Half the time everyone is avoiding me. If I’m upstairs, they’re all downstairs; if I’m downstairs, they’re all upstairs. They’re forever on my case about one thing or another. If I come home late a couple of times or miss a family thing I said I’d be there for it’s as if committed murder in public. I am fed up with it, being the leper at home, just because I miss the odd thing. They don’t love and appreciate me like the folks do at the office. I’m not asking for much at home, just a little understanding!”
A nice guy at office and an angry alcoholic at home! He didn’t see the glaring inconsistency. For him, the problem was simply that his wife and children were not as appreciative of him as they should be and as he deserved.
Jesus once told a very similar story: Once upon a time there was a judge in a certain town who was well respected by everyone and, in public, people used to bring out gifts and give them to him because he had been good to them. Everyone respected him, except one widow to whom he hadn’t given justice. She hounded him, demanding her just due. Finally, he said to himself: “I fear neither God nor man, but if I don’t give her justice she will hound me to death!” He gave her her due.
The moral of all this, then, is that we are asked to hear God’s voice in the persons who upset us, that is, in those people who, for whatever reason, are not very impressed with us. Usually that is the people we live with. Obviously, the principle breaks down when that voice is an abusive one. The gospel does not ask us to let ourselves be abused, but it does ask us to make an option for the poor and that option, like the house of God itself, has many surprising rooms, some of which are not very romantic or much to our liking.
Thus, beware of the voice that humbles you: It might just be one of God’s widows, puncturing your persona, and calling you to justice and honesty. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Listening to Your Widows” July 1996]
