(Twenty-third Sunday of the Year (B): This homily was given on September 7, 1997 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I. by Fr. Raymond N. Suriani. Read James 2: 1-13.)

"St. James, the Realist!"

St. James was not afraid to face reality. He confronted life as it is; he did not live in a dream world. All this comes through quite clearly in his New Testament letter. There, in five short chapters, James deals with realistic and pragmatic topics like these: trials, temptation, controlling the tongue, conflicts with other people, materialism, and the subject we heard about in today’s second reading: discrimination based on social status or wealth. Now--since we should be reading Scripture every day, I don’t think it would be wrong for me to ask you to read the entire letter of James sometime during the coming week. Consider that a homework assignment at the beginning of the school year. And if you make the decision to do this I promise you: you will be blessed--because this letter contains a great deal of practical wisdom. And we all need practical wisdom for our daily lives!

Today’s second reading is taken from the second chapter of the letter, and it deals with a very common temptation that we all face at one time or another: the temptation to favor certain people for the wrong reason--either because of the power they have or the wealth they have or the worldly influence they have. And James is not shy about calling this type of behavior a sin. In verse 9 he says: "But if you show favoritism, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors." Now I’m sure that when people first heard these words back in the first century, they didn’t like what they heard. But St. James said it anyway, because it was the truth. As I said a few moments ago, he was not afraid to face reality. He confronted life as it is; he did not live in a dream world. He didn’t call sin "virtue."

I wonder what St. James would have said this past week, if he could have witnesses the worldwide media circus surrounding the death of Princess Diana. Personally, I’m convinced the man would have had a coronary!!! I don’t think I have ever witnessed a group of individuals so unwilling to face reality! Without a doubt, most of these media people are living in a dream world. I say that, because instead of soberly evaluating this woman’s life for us, they immediately canonized her a saint after her death! In fact, that was the headline of one of the newspaper articles I read: "She’s now a saint!"

Now please do not misunderstand me here: Diana’s death is a terribly sad and tragic event. Anytime a mother of two children dies in a sudden way at such a young age, it’s a horrible tragedy. But a saint? A saint is someone who is a model of holiness and virtue. A saint is someone that people are supposed to look at and say, "I want to be like that person." Now in all seriousness, how many of you parents would really want your daughters to be just like Princess Diana? Granted, she had many admirable qualities that should be emulated: compassion, concern for the poor and the suffering. But this young woman also had a number of serious problems that I personally don’t want anyone to have: she had suffered from depression, she had been bulimic for a time, she tried to take her own life. And, lest we forget, she had committed adultery during her marriage to Prince Charles, and she was presently consorting with a person to whom she was not married! (She followed her husband’s rotten example on that score.) But, in today’s wacky and topsy-turvy world, these are some of the qualities that get you canonized--at least by the media.

Thank God there were a few voices of sanity in the midst of this madness. One of them, not surprisingly, was Mother Teresa of Calcutta, before she herself went to meet the Lord on Friday. Earlier in the week she was quoted as saying this: "[Princess Diana] had come to my house, and I had been to hers. . . I remember her as full of compassion for the poor and disabled. . . . I am very sorry [to hear of her death.] All the sisters and I are praying for her and her family to know God’s peace and comfort in this moment."

Mother Teresa affirmed Diana’s positive qualities, but she also said that she was praying for the princess. That was an important qualification, because as Catholics we do not pray for canonized saints. We do not pray for people who are already declared by the Church to be in heaven. We pray for people whom we hope are in purgatory, so that they will be soon be taken to heaven.

Mother Teresa, praise God, was a realist, like St. James was. She did not live in a dream world. And so she did Princess Diana much more good by praying for her, than the media did by trying to canonize her. May we all follow the example of Mother Teresa and St. James.