The principal message of all religious proclamation must be that religious practice is not enough. Genuine religion demands of its adherents a permanent openness to do more and a willingness to be challenged to move beyond one’s comfort zone. Unless religion sows seeds of self-dissatisfaction, the performance of recommended good works is likely to lead only to smugness and superiority: “I fast twice a week and pay tithes on all I receive.” From this point, it is but a short step to making cruel judgments about others.
Religious practice provides a decorative wallpaper to life, but its demands may never be allowed to outweigh the obligations inherent in our humanity. A Good Samaritan may well miss Sunday Mass while attending to a wounded traveler, while the passersby arrive on time. However, compassion for the suffering is more Godlike than punctuality.
The Incarnation confirms that our humanity—wounded though it be—is something to be cherished. In ourselves and in others. Love and service of God are inseparable from our solidarity with the brothers and sisters whom we daily encounter; to turn our backs on them is an affront to our common Creator. What we invest in explicitly religious practice is meant to help us to become more conscious that it is God who calls to us through the mouths of the needy, and that our response to them is also our response to God. As it happens, our compassionate care for them makes us more fully human and, thereby, more fully divine.

Fr. Michael Casey