PLEASE EXPLAIN 
THE DUMB MOVES

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this Tuesday in Holy Week is, “Please Explain Why the Dumb Moves?”

We  all ask that question in various ways in  the pages of our life story - especially when we or those connected to us make a dumb move.

How many times have we heard, “After all I did for you, you did this to me. Why?  Why? Why?”

Or someone says, “Why did my kid get mixed up with drugs - after we put her in Catholic School - worked hard to make our family work? Why? Why? Why?  And then this happens.”

We miss seeing the good stuff - and the bad stuff dumbs us and wipes us out.

Alcohol ….  Affairs…. Stealing …. Splits and not talking to each other in family ….  We humans can do a lot of stupid things with our lives.

The person who is being dumb keeps saying, “Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.”

The person who is watching or seeing the dumb moves is saying, “Why? Why? Why?”

IN OTHER WORDS: WHY DO WE SELF DESTRUCT?

We self-destruct. Why?  Motive? Why the shootings?  Why the craziness?

We scratch our heads. We bite our nails. We nervously bite tiny bits of uplifted skin on our lips - especially when we’re nervous and the cold outside is biting.  Does anybody here ever do that?

EXPLANATIONS

Lots of people have tried to figure out why we do what we do - especially self-destruct.

Genesis - the first book in the Bible - says right there in its first pages - the following explanation on how life works: We’re given paradise - but it’s never enough. We want more. Evil is pictured as a snake that crawls along the garden floor of our soul and hisses whispers into our souls.

The snake knows us and whispers: “Want more power? Want more control?  Want to be like God?”

Then the sneaky snake says,  “Eat the forbidden fruit and you’ll be just like God.”

Adam and Eve - the male and female in us and in every person  - takes the fatal bite - and bites into evil and we fall.

Then we turn the page and there’s a brother killing his brother.

Many of those people marching on Saturday are asking why?  Why did that guy start shooting - and killing in Florida, Virginia Tech, Columbine, Las Vegas, Charleston - and bombing in Austin and on and on and on?

Freud came up with the human having an ego, a super-ego and then the sometimes irritable  id.  Freud and Jung and Adler and many others talk about various other theories to explain why ids kill kids.

Some of us are old enough to remember the radio drama called, “The Shadow.”   Remember the opening question: “Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of us?  The Shadow knows.”

Shakespeare and Hawthorne, Melville and mystery novels, all  ask about the why of evil.

NCIS opens with the NCIS team kibitzing and then Gibbs says, “Get your gear! There’s been a murder.”

We’ve all heard variations of the  Cherokee story about two wolves. It’s a parable. One evening, an elderly Cherokee brave told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said, “my son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside us all. One is evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is good. It is joy, peace love, hope serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.”

The grandson though about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “which wolf wins?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “the one that you feed.”

Read enough literature and life and we find out we all have evil within.

Charles Baudelaire wrote, “There are in every man, at every hour, two simultaneous postulations, one towards God, the other towards Satan.” in Mon Coeur Mis a Nu [1887] XIX.

CONCLUSION: THIS WEEK

The title of my homily for today is,  “Please Explain Why the Dumb Moves?”

This is the question of this week: Holy Week.

One day we say and shout,  “Hosanna”  with and for Christ and each other - and then a  few days later we’re screaming, “Crucify him.

As we heard in today’s gospel - at the Last Supper - Satan is around - and Satan entered into Judas at a meal - and Jesus told Peter, be careful - the same thing can happen to you.

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Painting on Top:
The Last Supper
Simon Bening  (c. 1525-30)