Presume nothing

Below is the 'Thinking Anew' column in today's Irish Times. The column now appears on the free digital version of The Irish Times.

Michael Commane

In my late 40s I applied for a job as a journalist on a newspaper. During the interview the editor said: "I presume you were once a priest". I immediately replied that it was dangerous to 'presume' and went on to explain that I was still a priest in 'good standing'. 

I got the job and the incident became a standing joke in the newsroom. 

A journalist can never 'presume' anything. 

But it's something we can all be prone to doing. We presume about things but maybe more insidiously we presume things about people. We create images, we develop hunches, often knowing nothing about the people in question.

And we can do that without ever having spoken to the person, without ever having the slightest communication with them. It happens all the time, probably in its crassest and most dangerous form in war where opposing soldiers fight against one another, convinced that they are fighting their enemies. They have been fed a line and actually believe it.        

But in reality they are presuming  that the people they are killing are their enemy, when in fact they know nothing about them. If they got to know them they might in fact find that they could be their closest friends.

In tomorrow's Gospel (Matthew 22: 1- 14) we see how a wedding guest is dismissed from the festivities because he was not dressed appropriately. Maybe an explanation is to be found in the fact that the guest presumed all was OK before first checking it out.

It's so easy to presume. Presumption is lazy. It suits us, it shields us from asking too many questions. It allows us create scapegoats and remain surrounded in our own ignorance.

Presumption is a sin against hope. It's when we take things for granted. The theologians will tell us that it's not a clever idea to presume the mercy of God. But that being said, surely it makes more sense to err on the side of 'leniency' when it comes to God's mercy than on 'strictness' and 'harshness'.God's mercy knows no bounds.

Nevertheless, we can't fly in the face of God's mercy and disregard all forms of goodness and still expect God to embrace us. 

Tomorrow's parable is another way of saying, don't take God's mercy for granted, we should be God's adult people, strengthening compassion in the world, alert and active in that sense. 

Relying on God's mercy, the onus on us is to be merciful ourselves.

If presumption is a sin against hope in that it takes for granted God's mercy, then despair is also a sin against hope in that it considers everything to end in failure, that  not even God's mercy will rescue us.

Maybe the lesson in tomorrow's Gospel is that the virtue of prudence, call it practical wisdom or 

good sense, gives us the tools to reach our potential in the best possible way. Prudence steers us away from both presumption and despair.

Far too often there is the temptation to get lost  in theological minutiae. Maybe instead more emphasis should be placed on practical wisdom or 'cop-on'. 

Presumption and despair lead us down alleyways that do nothing to enhance our lives or the common good.

That job interview has stuck in my mind. Yet, somehow or other, we are always presuming. That's why it's important to continue relying on God's grace.