Readings for 30th Sunday in ordinary time: EX 22: 20-26; PS 18: 2-4, 47, 51, I THES 1:5C-10; MT 22: 36-40.
Have you been following Puerto Rico's recent crisis? I'm talking about the aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria and the apocalyptic damage the island has suffered.
On September 7th Irma just missed a direct hit on the U.S. colony, but it knocked out power for almost a third of its 3.5 million people. Then less than two weeks later, Maria finished the job. The whole country went dark.
And now after more than a month, 50% of the island still lacks electricity, and over a million people have no clean drinking water. Overflow from toxic Superfund sites is contaminating available water sources, producing widespread gastrointestinal diseases. One in three sewage plants are still inoperable, and there is no cellphone service for 40% of the island.
Imagine yourself living there with our fellow Americans! (Remember, all Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens.)
So, how do you think our government has responded to the crisis? The response is five billion dollars IN LOANS! We're not talking grants here, but LOANS! And the $5 billion comes on top of the island's previously existing $74-billion debt that all agree is completely unpayable -- without even mentioning unfunded pension obligations that amount to an additional $49 billion.
Everyone in Puerto Rico knows that increasing the island's debt does not spell relief. Instead, it represents a heartless tool for further enriching the already super-wealthy, and for exercising control of poor people while further impoverishing a colony that has served ever since its annexation as a source of valuable minerals including gold. As well, the island has provided a major production center for the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, a source of cheap labor, a dump for chemical waste, and a bombing range-testing ground.
Puerto Rico has been effectively indemnified for none of this. Instead, rich U.S. banks and hedge funds are demanding austerity. They want islanders to sacrifice health, education, and social services including pensions, to pay back their creditors. This means that moneybags on Wall Street see misery in Puerto Rico as a business opportunity to further fill their coffers and perpetually control its destiny.
I bring all of this up, because it's relevant to today's liturgy of the word, which addresses the question of lending, debt and treatment of the poor.
Begin with a consideration of today's gospel.
There Jesus is asked a question consistently addressed to rabbis and to wise persons in all traditions. "Which is the greatest of God's commandments?"
The question is reminiscent of the familiar cartoon where the bedraggled seeker climbs up that mountain, confronts the guru sitting in front of his cave and asks him, "What's the purpose of life?" That's really the gist of the question presented to Jesus. What is life's purpose?
Jesus' response is not humorous as we're always led to expect from those cartoons. His answer is not even surprising. Instead, it's the standard one usually given by rabbis and wise people: "Look within," he advises. "Find Ultimate Reality and devote yourself entirely to it. And then love that Reality's every manifestation beginning with the people closest to you and finishing with the trees, soil, rocks, and cockroaches."
That's the meaning of Jesus' response in today's gospel. It mirrored perfectly the answer, for instance, of Rabbi Hillel, one of Jesus' near contemporaries. Both of them said, "Love God with all your heart, mind, and spirit -- and your neighbor as yourself. That's the greatest commandment," they agreed. "That's the purpose of life. That summarizes all the content of humanity's Holy Books. All the rest is commentary."
We get a snippet of that commentary in today's first reading from the Book of Exodus, which supplies practical content to the general answer about life's purpose invariably given by the wise. (And it's here that the business of debt enters the picture.) Today's 16-line excerpt from Exodus focuses on two issues: (1) treatment of the most vulnerable in the community, and (2) prohibition of taking interest on loans. Obviously, the two matters are intimately connected to the situation in Puerto Rico.
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