"Eat your heart out!" That's what the boy said to his buddy. It was the day of his graduation, early 60's, high school graduation. And his parents had a lot of money. IBM was a big thing then in Poughkeepsie, and his parents had a lot of money. Right after the graduation ceremony his parents gave (I'm making up the names, but the stories are true.) .... the parents gave this young man, senior in high school, a Corvette. It was red, and he was sitting in the car. And I was snoopervising, as usual, from a window, and I heard Damien say to his buddy, Mike, as he turned on the motor of his new Corvette, "Eat your heart out, Mike!!" He didn't mean it maliciously. They were both laughing. "Eat your heart out!"

It's a great description of something we just heard in the first reading, to me, anyhow. It's a great description of jealousy. "Eat your heart out." Jealousy. And, in that first reading (And I want to say again how glad I am to have the readings read so well in this parish, with feeling and pauses.) Anyhow, in the first reading, Paul is talking about Christ and people are listening. And Paul's enemies get together and they try to shut him up. And, in the Bible, in the Acts of the Apostles, it says Paul's enemies were "filled with jealousy." Jealousy.... envy. Now maybe I was in high school and college too long as a teacher, but in my opinion envy and jealousy cause more misery than all the other sins. That's just my opinion, especially when you're young. I've known kids that all four years of high school and some, all college, destroyed by jealousy.

St. Thomas Aquinas, way back in the thirteenth century, says that ("Eat your heart out," my phrase) is the one sin of the seven capital sins (the seven big sins).... it's the one sin that doesn't give us any fun at all! Eating your heart, it doesn't give us any fun. The other sins, at least you can boast about..."Boy! Did I tie on one last night!" or "Since I got my hair piece, I have had more love affairs than a movie star!" But jealousy, you can't even brag about it. It's a good phrase, "Eat your heart out."

I'd like to divide today into three quick sections: Scripture (the Bible) about jealousy, and then the sufferings of jealousy, and finally, a couple of solutions that I've heard from very smart people about how to cope with it....

"Well, jealousy has nothing to do with real problems. The Pope is now meeting with the Orthodox Church. And there are the horrors of capital punishment and the killing of the unborn. What is jealous....." I know.... I know. But in each individual life that I have worked with for forty years, it causes so much misery. And it's in the reading today. They tried to shut Paul up because "they were filled with jealousy." In the Bible, jealousy. It runs like a thread through all.... It's right in the first book of the Bible. Adam and Eve are told by the serpent... (I know that you know these are metaphors, but for something that really happened.) And Adam and Eve are told, "If you eat the fruit, you'll be like God." Oh-h-h! Just like... It's the one thing we haven't got, is God's kind of power. Let's do it! Jealousy! The first murder in human history is a few pages later in the Bible where Cain murders his brother, Abel, "out of jealousy!" It's written right there. And when you read about Our Lord getting arrested, in John's Gospel, it says, "Our Lord's enemies turned Him over to the Romans out of jealousy." It's right in the Bible.... And it's no fun at all. OK, that's the Scripture.

The next is suffering. Now, it's only a sin when (And I looked this up in the Dutch Catechism that the Vatican has approved!).... It's only a sin when you want to grab the thing that the other person has, whatever it is, money, or the job or the lover or the good looks, whatever.... take it away by unjust means and hug it to yourself. Rob it. Most of us, it's not a sin. It's a suffering. Pride is the worst sin, according to Catholic theology, because it destroys everything, but jealousy, in my opinion, causes a lot more misery. The kind of pride the Bible and the Church talks about is so awful, it is rarely met. OK.

Three quick examples. It's the only way I can do this. In a classroom that I taught in for thirty years, I would have a senior high school class first, and then freshmen would come in the same classroom. And there was a three minute break and I was straighten.... It was in the Spring, I remember, like this. And I was straightening out the chairs before the freshmen came in. And on the back of one of the chairs in this classroom was something scrawled into the back of the chair about a senior girl. Very colorful.... and I knew the girl.... totally untrue legend about this girl. And I thought, "Oh, God! And the freshmen are coming in in three minutes, and I just discovered this, in May. So I ran to the bathroom of the faculty and I got a Brillo pad and I tried to scrawl it out. I couldn't. Whoever had put it there had put it there for posterity. I thought, "Oh, God! How many freshmen have seen this thing about this senior girl, and I knew her. I'd known her since she was a freshman. It was not true." Later on, just before graduation, again, in the Spring, some of these senior guys were on a retreat. (Now I've gotten permission from these people to tell you these things.) It wasn't confession. It was sitting in a circle on a retreat, and this senior guy began to break down and cry and say, "I wrote something about .... Tallulah." And why?! Because he was being eaten alive by jealousy. He had (old fashioned term) "a crush" on her and she was interested in somebody else, and he was going to punish her. If you could have seen him sobbing, it was he who was being punished.

The second example is medical school. A boy wrote to me from a very famous medical school, and he said that he found out that some of the kids in the previous exam (It was an exam where you go from microscope to microscope, and the professor comes and he taps you and you tell him what you see on the slide.) And this guy that I had in high school was in Group B. And they come right in after Group A, because the prof. can't change the slides that fast. And they found out later that some of the kids in Group A had put a kind of a goo on a lot of the slides, so you couldn't possibly get the correct answer. This was not so they could stay alive. This was so Group A would get better grades to get better residencies. Let's get ahead. Let's get ahead no matter how we get ahead.....

And the third is about myself. Frankly. I've admitted this before. That has been my characher defect, to put it pompously, all my life. JEALOUSY! Why can't I look like him or have sports like him, money like him.... hair like him.... In '92, I started to come out from my job on Wall Street, and have vacations in Menlo Park. There's a seminary there that doesn't charge rent. And I would stay in Menlo Park, and I love this California.... Anyhow, one Saturday, I was walking down Market Street. I came from Menlo Park on the train. I got off and I was walking down Market Street, a beautiful Saturday, spring morning.... summer morning.... and out of the Embarcadero BART came a couple, very tall, beautiful woman, very handsome guy, and behind them, people with cameras, and tripods and lights and stuff, obviously on a magazine shoot. And I looked at those two. I mean the woman was gorgeous and the guy was "Mr. Hunk of the Universe." They didn't walk down Market Street. They shimmered down Market Street. Now, this is 1992. I am an aging clergyman, but I wasn't dressed as a priest. And once these two, the guy and the girl models, got past me, I turned around and, to their retreating backs, I did this ("made a face").... aging priest.... When I got back to New York, (I've told you about this priest. He used to be a business man and his wife died and his kids got married. He was a "late vocation." He was a priest. And he was dying.) .... And I went to see him four times a year for what we call "spiritual direction." And I went to see him right after that incident. And he was in bed and he was dying. But he was so smart and kind. He said, "Sit down, Michael. I want you to make a list." So, I immediately, "Ten things?" He said, "No. In your case, twelve. Twelve reasons that you should have an attitude" (his words) "... an attitude of gratitude to God for blessings you DO have. Not eating your heart out," (And he used the phrase.) "... not eating your heart out about what you DON'T have." I said, "OK." I hope you don't think that was cute or childish because it WORKED.... for me. And it worked for some people that I told about in confession on Wall Street. I can tell you that. What he told me was to write down twelve blessings, on a little piece of paper, put it in my wallet, and keep it for a couple of weeks. And when I was "eating my heart out" because I didn't have this or that, to read it. I got to tell you it helped. It didn't wipe it out, because we've all got feelings until we die, but Oh! It helped. And it helped some of those people who'd come to confession on Wall Street because some to them came back and said "Yeah. OK. All right! It did help." Didn't wipe it out, but it helped. By the way, can you imagine what would have happened if those two, the guy and the lady models, had turned around and caught me? Can you see the TV bulletin "Magazine Models Maul Maniac Monk from Menlo Park!" with me in the slammer....eating my heart out cause of what I didn't have.

Finally, some suggestions that I've gotten from other people, including adult women and adult men, giving me some suggestions, spiritual suggestions, for coping with this miserable, miserable feeling. The one that I told you about was what Father Laydon gave me before he died, about the gratitude list. And check it out.

The next thing, of course, is Christ. And I always save Our Lord for the last. Remember how, often, in the Gospels, we read that the Apostles, when Our Lord was Super Star, and the Apostles are popular with Him, and how they would argue (the Apostles), "Who, among us, is the greatest?" Remember? The night before Our Lord died, they're at supper. You remember. Our Lord strips down. He puts a big towel around Himself. And he goes to each of those guys, those Apostles, and He washes their feet and He dries the feet. And He says to them (because He's heard them debating, "Which of us is the greatest?" for a long time)...He says, "You see what I've done. That's what you do for each other." The night before He died... It's a big thing! And we've all heard it since we were kids. But when you see it brought into flesh, it helped. It helped me.

Final.... This really is a final example! Eric and Norman (I'm making up the names, but it's true.) Eric was a senior in April and he hadn't gotten into any of the Ivy League Colleges to which he had applied. And a lot of his buddies did. This was an honors class in high school. And he was eating his heart out. It was really ruining his final few months of high school. A junior boy named "Norman" was a real... (Forgive my using slang.) but he was a real nerd, dork, klutz. You know, his clothes were always very sloppy and, when he talked to a girl, he'd come on so desperately and so needy and (I hate to use this as an example, but it's true.) he didn't know how to comb his hair, and he needed mouthwash.... All kinds of things! And I thought, "Will the Holy Spirit help me to get this idea? Why don't I bring these two people, Norman who is eating his heart out with jealousy of his confident other junior guys who are coming up to girls and saying, "Let's go to the prom!".... eating his heart out, he didn't have confidence; and Eric, eating his heart out, he didn't get into Princeton. Bring them together. And I got their permission. I said, "Eric, would you teach Norman how to dress, and how to speak to a young lady, and how to comb his hair, and how to...." And Eric, for the last two months (And, by the way, Eric came to this Mass, couple of months ago. He's grown now with kids in college. He loved this Mass and the parish and all.) But Eric, in those days, was seventeen. But, for the last two months of his high school life, he wasn't eating his heart out quite as much because he was telling Norman how to be less "dorky." And Norman wasn't eating his heart out because he wasn't as confident as his peers because he was getting the confidence. And then I thought, Jesus washing the feet, do a little service for somebody who is worse off than you.

If Our Lord isn't giving us practical lessons about how to get through the miseries of the day, then He's not doing anything. And He does, gospel after gospel. In any event, you'll never stop being jealous, now and then, of some people. That's just human. But, if you make an "attitude of gratitude" list, even one person at Mass today, keep it for a couple of weeks, look at it. Or do some service for someone who's worse off, at least this Spring, you'll, to some degree, stop eating your heart out!