August 31 is the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings: Jer 20:7-9; Ps 63:2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9; Rom 12:1-2; Mt 16:21-27

Paul Newman in The Hustler (1961).

It’s a classic scene in a number of movies. A young man comes into a bar and starts to drink a few beers. He’s new at this bar. He sees a man playing pool, very badly and says to himself, "I can take him." They start to play pool. The young man wins the first game and the second and the third. He says, "Why don’t we make this interesting and play for $20. The poor pool player says, "Sure." Beers are being drunk. The young man is drinking heavy beers. The other is drinking O’Doul’s. The young man wins the next game, then another, then another.

"This guy is a chump."

Then the chump miraculously wins a game.

The young man is stunned.

The stakes keep getting higher.

The chump wins again.

The young man’s macho pride has been hurt. Emboldened by the beer, he challenges the chump to a Sudden Death, winner-take-all $1,000 game. By this time there are a dozen guys looking at the game. Some are hiding their smirks. They had seen this happen many times before.

The chump breaks. . .Then he clears the table before the young man has a chance even to sink one ball. The young man has fallen for a hustler, a pool shark. Like a shark he carefully found his victim and stalked him with stealth. Who was the real chump? He had fallen for the oldest game in the book, "the rope a dope" "bait and switch game"

Do dope and dupe come from the same root word?

Today we hear in the first reading about the disillusionment of the prophet Jeremiah. God had called him "from his mother’s womb" to be a prophet to the nations. (Jer 1:4) Do not be afraid off them, for I will protect you."(Jer 1:8) "See I am giving you authority over the nations and the kingdoms, to uproot and to pull down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant."(Jer 1:9-10). It is a wonderful thing to be chosen as a young man to be the prophet to the nations, to have such a powerful experience of God. For us priests and religious this reading is often the first reading at the Mass of Profession or Ordination. It is a wonderful thing to be chosen as a young man, to be anointed and sent in the name of God. The whole experience of ordination, the music, the vestments, and the presence of the bishop, the sacred words and gestures, the culmination of years of preparation carry a young priest like the perfect wave carries a surfer. Then reality sets in.

Jesus promised us the Cross. If they have persecuted me they will persecute you also. Satan has asked to sift you as a farmer sifts wheat. But there comes a time, a time like it came to the prophet Jeremiah, when we feel that we too have been duped, made a fool of. Some translations are even bolder, ‘You seduced me Lord and I let myself be seduced." You took me for a chump, a fool. You roped me in with all those noble ideals. You let me win a few of the first games. Then you turned out the lights, you took away the flavor, the fun, the successes, the applause. "God, you are no better than the hustler at the pool table in the bar! And I was so stupid that I let myself fall for your game." Have you ever prayed like that? Honest, from the gut, pouring out your heart to God, even when the sentiments are not pretty?

I can remember our formators telling us, that the "real" decision to be a priest, or to remain a priest will come sometime in the future. It will come not in a blaze of glory, but as a hard fought fight. That is certainly what happened to Jeremiah. "I say to myself, ‘I will not mention him, I will speak his name no more.’" Then here comes the key moment that all who have wrestled with God and with a vocation. "But it (my vocation) becomes like a fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grow weary of holding it in, I cannot endure it."

Abraham Lincoln
16th President of the United States

Most people who have done great things have wanted to give up, to throw in the towel. Dark nights are not just for vowed religious or the ordained. George Washington had some initial victories in 1776 driving the British out of Boston. The rest of the year was a series of defeats and retreats.

Abraham Lincoln carried an unbearable burden during the years of the Civil War. He ran for reelection, not because he needed the presidency for an ego trip, but because he believed he was called to begin to bind the wounds of the nation as the war came to an end. "With malice for none, with charity for all."*

In the dark moments of disillusionment, may we find the fire imprisoned in our bones.