(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: https://brothersinchristcmf.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Mass-Blog-for-the-6th-Sunday-of-Ordinary-Time-2025.mp3)
Paul Simon (of Simon and Garfunkel fame) wrote so many songs with Christian overtones that a puzzled Paul McCartney once asked him, “Aren’t you Jewish?” Yes, by upbringing, but Simon has said he’s not a religion observer. Maybe like many of us, he’s a religious observer.
Living in this world, you can’t help but observe. The alternative is to lock yourself in a room and let the outside world go on without you. But as Paul Simon wrote in one of his earliest songs, “One Man’s Ceiling is Another Man’s Floor,” while you can ignore visible problems, you can’t shut out what you hear. Part of the song goes,
I heard a racket in the hall
And I thought I heard a call
But I never opened up my door
It’s just apartment house sense
It’s like apartment house rents.
What’s happening to that person on the other side of my ceiling?
That’s what Jesus seems to be asking us to ask ourselves in this Sunday’s gospel passage from Luke (Luke 6:17, 20-26). After reciting his beatitudes about the heights promised to those who’ve reached rock bottom, he turns his attention to those high-rise apartment dwellers seeking to protect their heightened and cloistered lifestyles from crashing to the outside pavement.
“Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will grieve and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for their ancestors treated the false prophets in this way.”
Such closed-in souls must rely on someone to deliver their life sustaining supplies. But what if this world’s service people were to go on strike? Such apartment dwellers would have to fend for themselves. They may soon realize their only remaining source of sustenance is outside—from the God who can only be found by opening their door and reaching out. That’s what the prophet Jeremiah teaches in Sunday’s first reading. Be like the nearest tree you see:
Blessed is the one whose hope is the LORD. He is like a tree planted beside the waters that stretches out its roots to the stream: it fears not the heat when it comes; its leaves stay green; in the year of drought it shows no distress, but still bears fruit. (Jeremiah 17:5-8)
That fruit must be shared with others, though—otherwise there will be nobody left on the other side of your ceiling OR walls. Such vacant buildings are usually condemned.
–Tom Andel
In these challenging times, we need to reach out to others more than ever
By doing so, we save ourselves too. Thanks, Ron!
This blog reminds me of the difference between the package and what’s inside. In so many ways we focus on the external, and pay little heed to what matters most, what’s inside.
As people we generally focus on our external. How do we look, what clothes we wear, are we stylish, is our appearance acceptable? Obviously, this misses the point of our existence. None of these external factors matter. Are we good on the inside, are we good with Jesus?
Good is God’s floor. For most of us, it’s a ceiling.