In the
course of my job, I often have to choose between what is good for the company
or “right” for the customer. Yesterday
was a good example.
I was assigned the
simple task of paying for, then recovering a trailer that was impounded by the
police when the driver of the car pulling our trailer was arrested for some
reason or the other. Long story short, I had the option of taking possession of
the goods in the trailer and taking them to a safe self-storage facility or
allowing the customer’s wife to unload the goods before I took the
trailer. Since she was a three-hour
drive away and I was in the high desert in temperatures well over 100º, I was
really leaning towards just getting my trailer and heading for cooler
temperatures in the 90’s. But when she
related some hard luck stories to me that she has been experiencing recently, I
wanted to make her life just a little more pleasant and hopefully show her a
Christian attitude. So I told her I would
wait. Three hours turned into four and I
was feeling a bit hot under the collar (and not due to the weather). When she finally did show up, she had the
audacity to ask me if I would deliver the goods to a nearby city that the
trailer was headed for when her husband was arrested!
There were two reasons why I agreed to help
her out: I had to go through the city to
get back home anyway, and she had brought along as company her elderly
mother! When I saw the old lady
struggling to walk and stay positive in the oppressive heat of the afternoon
and circumstances, I can’t call what came over me anything except a feeling of
compassion. I was going to help her to
help her daughter cope with the situation in any way that was in my discretion. So I basically wasted a day of the company’s
time, but somehow I think the outcome was worth it. By the way, so did my boss when I related the
story to him this morning. After all,
the two of us have been trying to get our teams to understand that in today’s
business world, we have to be advocates for the customer! Other colleagues in our company thought I
went too far. I don’t think so.
Would I do it again? I probably would, if I was put in the same
circumstance. Would I handle it
differently? Yes. I wasn’t as charitable in my thoughts as I was
in my deeds. In fact that phrase in the Confiteor
that we recite near the beginning of most Masses went through my mind as I
reflected on the experience: “I confess to Almighty God and to you, my brothers
and sisters, that I have greatly sinned—in what I have done and in what I have
failed to do…..”
We often
seek clear and straightforward guidelines that help us to know what is
important and to decide what to do. At the same time we are also aware that
such guidelines don’t exist, because of the complexity of the human experience
and of diverse Christian beliefs and values that address the human experience.
We know that simple guidelines are usually just that—simplistic—and can do more
harm than good. Throughout human history and the history of Christian
communities, individuals and groups, who took certain beliefs and values very
seriously, caused immense human suffering because they did not consider the
wider context of these beliefs and values as well as of their actions.
In the
Gospel (MK 12:28-34) a scribe who asked Jesus, “Which is the first of all the
commandments?” wanted a simple answer. Jesus responded saying that there are
actually two answers to this question. First, you should love God. Second, you should love your neighbor. We have
to recognize that a neighbor is anyone in need, who is in our reach, and who
can be supported by us. No commandment is greater than these two. And these two
commandments are inseparable, like two sides of the same coin.
You cannot truly
love God if you do not love your neighbor and you cannot truly love your
neighbor if you do not love God. These inseparable commandments also mean that
you love your neighbor through God and God through your neighbor. Ultimately,
the core commandment of our faith is to love. Saint Augustine of Hippo
summarized it saying “love, and then do what you will.” When love is the
starting point of all what we do, we will know every moment of our life!
A reading
from the book of Tobit, presents us with an example of what this means. (TB
6:10-11; 7:1BCDE, 9-17; 8:4-9A) Tobit
sent his son Tobiah to a distant relative, accompanied by the angel Raphael.
When Raphael and Tobiah arrived, Tobiah met Sarah, the daughter of his
relative, who was struck by extreme misfortune, was depressed and wished to
die. She had been married seven times but all her husbands died soon after the
wedding. Tobiah realized that marrying Sarah was the right thing to do, and
they got married. He recognized Sarah as his neighbor and showed her the
appropriate support and love. His action was embedded in his love of God. Sarah
and Tobiah trusted God, prayed and death did not harm Tobiah after the
marriage. This story illustrates how God cares for those who love Him and who
love others. It is a story of victory over hardship and deliverance from
suffering through loving God and loving our neighbor.
We need to
listen to our hearts, inspired by the Gospel, to discover what we should do
each day as we strive to love God and love our neighbor completely and without
reservation.
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