Being better, or being better than others?

December 22, 2024: 

Today’s Gospel highlights the genuine and completely non-competitive relationship between Mary and Elizabeth.  Elizabeth is beyond child bearing years (Luke 1:7), and is much older than Mary who is just entering her childbearing years. And so, as is the culture in many countries, Mary goes to help and serve her elder relative Elizabeth. But Elizabeth quickly recognises in Mary a person who is blessed far more than herself, and that her own son would only be a precursor to Mary’s son - and she bears no jealousy because of that.  We find this same completely non-competitive spirit even between their children, between Jesus and John the Baptist. In last Sunday’s Gospel,  we have John acknowledging publicly that he himself is not worthy to untie even the straps of Jesus’ sandals (Luke 3:16)   Jesus himself had no problem with getting baptised by John.  And during his own ministry, Jesus says: “Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist ..."(Mathew 11:11)
 
And whenever there is this lack of competitiveness, there is an openness to learn from others. If we read up a bit we will realise that many religions have picked up elements from other religious sources.  Thus Christianity itself has struggled for centuries to distinguish itself from other religions, but the reality is that it has picked up a lot from Judaism - since after all the Old Testament is primarily a Jewish Scripture. Since Vatican 2, even the Catholic Church has started to reverse its long standing attempt to place itself on a higher and isolated pedestal in relationship to other religions, and so for some time now practices and insights that come from Hinduism and Buddhism have been brought into Christianity as it is practised in India at least. But this is true about other religions too. The Muslim Koran includes many references to Judaism and Christianity.  Hinduism and Islam have mutually fed so much into each other in India, that saints or poets like Sai Baba or Kabir are revered by people of both religions. Even relatively newer religions like Sikhism, have borrowed significantly from Islam and Hinduism.
 
This non-competitiveness is something that I have found in all genuinely holy persons.  Because a truly holy person who has experienced God, knows how ‘microscopic’ is each one’s experience of God, and how it makes absolutely no sense to get into a competition about whose experience of God is better or greater as compared to somebody else’s.  That kind of competition is reserved for their disciples!!!  Tony D’Mello, a Jesuit priest, tells this story in his book, Song of the Bird, that perfectly explains our limitations in our experiences of God:

An elephant was enjoying a dip in a jungle pool, when a rat came up to insist that he get out.

I won’t - said the elephant
I insist you get out this minute - said the rat.
Why?
I shall tell you that only after you are out of the pool
Then I won’t get out.
But he finally lumbered out of the pool, stood in front of the rat and said:            
Now then, why did you want me to get out of the pool?

To check if you were wearing my swimming trunks, said the rat

 
And Tony concludes:
An elephant will sooner fit into the trunks of a rat than God into our notions (or experiences) of him.  
 
But of course, this competitive spirit, as I have remarked in earlier blogs, is fostered in our entire social systems, and not just in the world of religion. Thus, in the world of education, on the sports field, in our neighbourhoods, in our careers, even sometimes in our families, and in almost every field we often give credit to ourselves only when we are better than others.  As is often said  in our world, Nobody remembers the ones who came second.
 
In this context, I have often suggested in my sessions to youth that there are three kinds of happiness.  First, there is the extremely ephemeral happiness that comes totally from outside of ourselves - when we enjoy an ice cream or  cake, when we enjoy a cruise, when we enjoy something that lasts for a fixed amount of time.  The second type of happiness occurs when we are judged better than others - like when we win at something, or we have a better job or a better life-style, or a higher status etc than others.  So a child who stands second in school just because he/she got just one mark less than the first ranking person is devastated because s/he lost.  Finally, there is the third kind of happiness that comes totally from within ourselves, when we do not compare ourselves with others, but just enjoy what we do, and who we are.
 
If we can live in this third way, then we will not have any need to prove our religion, or our children, or our culture, or our qualifications/career or whatever else is better than others in order to find solace and joy in it. And if we do not have to prove this to ourselves, we can rejoice in others’ ‘successes’ and genuinely empathise with them when they ‘fail’, rather than feeling a secret satisfaction that they have not ‘overtaken’ us.
 
What is it in us that makes us feel our own value is lessened, if somebody else does ‘better’ than us?  Does it make us feel less secure?  And as far as religion is concerned, why do we feel diminished if some other religion/ideology offers us some teaching, some insight, that perhaps we have not got in our own religion?  What is it within us that desires to claim that all goodness, all insights, all salvation, can only come through our own religion? 

 
The opportunities we are offered in our daily lives to learn from others, and to grow, are so vast, that we are really doing ourselves a huge disservice by limiting ourselves to being better than others.  And so perhaps we need to ask ourselves: What is it that makes us strive mightily to try to fit these elephantine possibilities into the trunks of a tiny competitive mind-set ?

First Reading: Micah 5: 1-4a

Marshal your troops now, city of troops, for a siege is laid against us.
They will strike Israel’s ruler on the cheek with a rod.
“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah,
out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel,
whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”
Therefore Israel will be abandoned until the time when she who is in labor bears a son,
and the rest of his brothers return to join the Israelites.
He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord,
    in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.
And they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth.
 
Second Reading: Hebrews 10: 5-10
 
Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said:
“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me;
with burnt offerings and sin offerings  you were not pleased.
Then I said, ‘Here I am; it is written about me in the scroll, I have come to do your will, my God.’
 
First he said, “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them”—though they were offered in accordance with the law.  Then he said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.” He sets aside the first to establish the second.  And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
 
Gospel: Luke 1: 39-45
 
At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth.  When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.  In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear!  But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?  As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.  Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!”