Seek Goodness
Reflections on good, evil, and honest seeking based on today’s readings:
Once again, we receive advice from the Scriptures that is quite simple, yet we find a way to complicate it.
The prophet Amos tells us not only to seek good and not evil, but also to love good and hate evil. This mirrors the popular saying that we must "hate the sin and love the sinner."
Sometimes this type of advice gets a bad rap, not because it is bad in itself, but because this simple spiritual counsel, meant first to guide us interiorly, is often first—or only—externalized.
Said another way, when the prophet tells us to love good and hate evil, this is not—at least not in the first place—a call to judge whether others are good or evil and then love or hate them accordingly. Instead, it is a call to examine the goodness and evil within our own hearts and respond appropriately.
The call to "hate the sin and love the sinner" must first be applied to ourselves before we can ever approach others that way. We need to truly despise all that tears us away from the Lord, yet do so without ever falling into self-condemnation. We must be able to examine ourselves honestly, admit all of our failings and imperfections, and yet never lose trust that the Lord loves this very imperfect person.
Too often, we first apply this externally, and in doing so we distort the entire message. When we start from the outside in rather than the inside out, we fail to approach others with the tenderness and understanding they deserve.
It also often leads to hypocrisy. The sin we hate in others is usually not the sin to which we ourselves are most tempted, while we excuse and justify our own. In the worst cases, some even attempt to make a virtue of their own sin.
However, when we begin from within—when we seek goodness, love the God who is Goodness itself, and hate all that separates us from Him—when we grow in understanding the dynamics of sin and grace, we begin to become instruments of grace to others. But still, only instruments.
In the Gospel, we see the One of whom we are the instruments. We see that Christ not only loves good and hates evil, but also has the power to cast out evil and call others to goodness. He not only rids the town of demons, but draws its people to Himself.
It is this movement—being drawn into Christ and becoming members of His Mystical Body—that is the fulfillment of seeking goodness. And when we seek goodness, we come to realize that Goodness Himself has been seeking us all along.
But this becomes apparent only to the degree that we flee from evil—our own evil—and run toward the grace of the Father poured out through Christ on the Cross and ministered to us through the Church and her Sacraments.
May we all love the Lord and hate that which separates us from Him, and may we receive His grace and faithfully share it with others.