THE ROOT OF DISCORD

What is it that sometimes threatens personal and community stability? We find a clear and unequivocal answer in the second reading of today’s liturgy (cf. Jas 3:16-4:3). The apostle has before him a community with serious internal problems. In fact, he speaks of wars and quarrels. He immediately highlights the cause: passion (hedoné). But what is meant by hedoné? The immoderate desire for enjoyment? The affirmation of oneself at the expense of others? According to Mussner, “the concept of hedoné includes that moral degradation that displays the widest variety of passions. It manifests itself in the soul as boasting, greed for money, ambition, quarrelsomeness and slander and, in the greedy body, as eating and devouring and revelling alone”. In short, passion is a fire that generates internal and external imbalance in the person, with consequences that we do not hesitate to define as tragic. James identifies some of them. First of all, hatred. Passion leads to hating one’s neighbour (cf. James 4:4). Why? Simply because it is perceived as an obstacle to one’s desire for power and domination. The second consequence is the internal struggle, as the passions (hedonai) fight in the members (cf. James 4:1) trying to impose their dominion. If one does not react, the disintegration of the subject and consequently of the community follows. Deeply divided people inevitably bring fractures within the life of the community, they are like dislocated bones that slow down and sometimes – it is not an exaggeration – deviate from the community path to the point of annihilating it. The final consequence is the bitter perception of a defeated existence. Failure, more or less recognized by the subject, inevitably leads to depression, with all its sad implications. Within all of this, the relationship with God appears difficult. In fact, James writes: “You ask and you do not receive” (James 4:3). You do not obtain, not because God does not respond, but because faith has become so insipid and inconsistent that it no longer shapes life and no longer offers meaning to living and dying. The worldly man, the apostle seems to tell us, prays badly, with an inverted intention, without realizing it: he turns to God to support a life contrary to His principles. What therapy is possible, then, at the end of this brief analysis on hedoné? James exhorts us to follow the true wisdom that comes from above, not that from below. How can we recognize it? The wisdom that comes from above is indulgent and tolerant, docile and obedient, merciful and non-discriminatory. True wisdom is above all anupokritos, alien to any simulation.

Commentary by b. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Praglia (Italy)

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves,
Prinknash Abbey