My mother worked for many years as bookkeeper at the B & S Electric Auto Service on Front Street in Woonsocket. Even after I was born she continued to “do the books” at our home for this small auto repair business.
Across the street from the B & S was Jolicoeur’s Furniture Store, now long gone. A cherrywood end table in the window of that store caught my mother’s eye and she made arrangements to purchase it “on layaway.” My mother probably paid a dollar or 50 cents a week until she could proudly take that richly grained table home where it still stands in our living room supporting a lamp and a couple of Wedgwood vases. My mother was certainly justified in her desire to make her home as comfortable and attractive as possible for her husband, son and visiting friends. Yet personal desires had to bow before spousal and maternal obligations. Her whim could be fulfilled only when more pressing debts were satisfied. Hence a word rarely heard nowadays: “layaway.” Today if a table in a furniture store caught her son’s eye, he would whip out a credit card, purchase the table, take it home immediately and pay for it at his leisure. Instant gratification has replaced prudent planning in everything from furniture purchases to sexual relations. Modern man waits for nothing.
Some would say that my mother’s choice was between duty and happiness. But actually her choice was between two kinds of happiness. My mother knew that her primary earthly obligations were to her husband, son and our home on Highland Street. Paying the insurance man, having money for Neville’s Market, and making sure my tuition was paid on time at LaSalle would secure a more profound happiness than that table in Jolicoeur’s window. Most families in the recent past thought in terms of their long range happiness rather than their immediate happiness, and certainly many still do. But modern society increasingly embraces immediate happiness, that is, indulgence in preference to long-range happiness, that is, duty. In my parents’ day, church, marriage, business, home-owning, and family placed challenging obligations on people.
For example, the Kiley family was not whisked off to Mass every Sunday at St. Charles Church on a wave of breathless spirituality. Father, mother and son went to Mass because it was our duty. My parents were faithful to one another not because an enduring honeymoon buoyed their relationship but because fidelity was a duty they had assumed for themselves at God’s altar. And frankly, their son did not become a priest thanks to some innate longing for the divine. I became a priest out of a sense of duty. God was calling me; I was not choosing him. Ultimately these wise choices led to a deep and enduring happiness, although initially they involved much discipline.
The difference between duty and indulgence is that duty takes into account the world outside oneself – the other. Indulgence has to answer to no one other than the self. Duty is rooted in objective truth. It is Sunday, therefore I have to go to Mass. I am married, therefore I have to be faithful to my spouse. I made some purchases, therefore I have to pay my bills. I am a citizen, therefore I have to vote. Indulgence on the other hand does not reckon with any ultimate consequences. It is Sunday; I can go to Mass or lounge in bed. It’s entirely up to me. A woman is pregnant; she can deliver the baby or get an abortion. It’s entirely her call. An individual is a homosexual; he or she can respect the natural institution of marriage or can completely revise this cultural foundation. It’s a personal call. Citizens are free to vote – or not. Taste, not truth, becomes the arbiter of right and wrong.
In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus challenges some of his novice followers to assess their native instincts in the light of a higher law. One young man wants to bury his father; another recruit begs to say goodbye to his family. Both requests are certainly legitimate desires. Yet Jesus insists that there is a higher obligation than even parental and familial demands. Mankind’s relationship with God through Jesus is humanity’s primary obligation. All other duties bow before man’s responsibilities toward God. This Christian sense of happiness based on truth allows mankind to become something larger than himself, to embrace a broader frame of reference, to comprehend a deeper scale of truth. Duty based on truth, not indulgence based on gratification, befits the true follower of Christ.
