(Please read the Scripture passage before reading the homily.)
I look into a mirror to comb my hair. Then I go into the next room and put my shirt on, forgetting that that messes up my hair. I do not forget what I look like, but I forget why I look that way. Is it that we look into mirror in order to see what is not there?
Maybe we should be seers in the mirror so that we can become doers of the word. Perhaps we cater to the image in the mirror rather than to the reality of ourselves. We want to see a good image in our mirror and so we comb our hair and then go away to mess it up again. We want to photo-shop the image in the mirror so we can appear virtually what we are not in reality.
Religion for St James is not in the virtual image of a mirror, but in the actual caring for others. James mentions widows and orphans. Today’s widows and orphans clamor at our southern borders; appeal to us from the reservations where we have hidden them; or remind us that their black lives matter.
What we see in mirrors are reflections of ourselves. What we see in the orphans and widows is the reality of God, not the fantasies we have made. We need to embrace the reality.
If we live by the mirror, then we live in darkness and our religion is vain. God’s religion is in reality, in loving, and in caring.
Words without actions are empty words, words without life, lifeless and incapable of giving life. Faith is like words: without action, faith is lifeless and dead.