Sunday's first reading says something about Isaiah's psychology, that is, the prophet's take on the psychology of his audience. He reveals what he thinks will attract them and motivate them.

Their situation, and why they needed to hear a prophecy, is a familiar one. Leaders of Judea and its capital, Jerusalem, had bet on the wrong geopolitical horse and got defeated by Babylon. Their penalty was exile in Babylon for about two generations. That's over and they're back home, such as home is. Their homeland had been devastated and neglected. The tasks that might return things to normal were overwhelming. They were deeply discouraged.

So Isaiah announces a message for Zion (the hill where their beloved Temple had stood) and for its host city, Jerusalem. But he doesn't give a rosy picture of a renewed city. He emphasizes instead how the nations (hostile tribes nearby and empires not so near) will soon come to admire Jerusalem and Zion.

He does this by prophesying how Judea will be "vindicated," which is to say its reputation will be restored. To quote, "No more shall people call you 'Forsaken,' or your land 'Desolate,' but you shall be called 'My Delight,' and your land 'Espoused.' (The latter titles mean God's Delight and Married to God, making Judea even more admirable.)

The prophet takes the last image in an even lovelier direction: Your God-Bridegroom will rejoice in you (while your envious neighbors pout).

(Isaiah also takes it in a more earthy direction: There was a famine compounding Judea's problems, and the land-as-spouse-ready-for-fertilization image was an imperative to get out there and plant crops, for God's sake! And do it with all the vigor of newlyweds!)

Appealing to reputation is brilliant psychology. And maybe we can make it work in our favor today.

First, let's admit how fiercely we defend our reputations and how zealously we promote them. Very high among our priorities, it seems, are bragging-rights. On the individual level, did you not curry your teachers' favor, shoot your hand up when you knew the answer, cram for exams, spend lavishly on prom outfits? Later, didn't you wear your lieutenant's bars proudly, frame your certificates and diplomas on your office wall, move to nicer neighborhoods when you could? (And don't some of us send our opinions, mostly unsolicited, to hundreds of innocent people?)

Now we don't just promote our reputations. We dare to ask how the gospel would have us moderate those tendencies. So we declare that blessed are the poor in spirit, we accept that Jesus did not come down off the cross to prove he was the Son of God. We believe the greatest virtue is the one making us patient, kind, and quick to forgive. If you made the Spiritual Exercises, you even prayed to share every humiliation that Jesus endured. (And just when we were getting all this down pat, along came Facebook, which fans into flame the inner juvenile braggart in so many.)

In a community, one can automatically become another champion of its reputation and prestige. [1] But community reputation-building is also subject to measure by gospel values.

The early church of Rome had a good reputation. Ignatius, late-first-century bishop of Antioch, wrote to it, "You rank first in charity." (Ignatius was writing to several other local churches at the time. He reserved this praise for Rome.) The church in Rome went much further, of course. It got rather impressed with itself over centuries, so that in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, two bishops of Rome worked to seed the College of Cardinals with numerous outsiders, bishops from the Third World. That helped the College elect Pope Francis. I see him as challenging the whole church to reclaim its early reputation for charity.

A true story on a much less grand level: A Catholic soccer mom once asked me for a certificate of her son's baptism. He needed it, she explained, to get a picture-ID with his verified date-of-birth, so he could play Catholic Youth baseball. Huh? She said some coaches were fielding older, stronger boys than were allowed by the league's rules. Picture-IDs would even the playing field. Oh, Okay then. Clearly somebody's cultivation of his parish's reputation (and of his own) had gone rogue.

If your community is made of refugees from an unsatisfying institutional community, you may not care about your reputation, per se. But you're still Christian, and that, per se, calls you to witness outside yourselves. Even if you're only known to a few, make your reputation one of charity, honesty, inclusion. Adopt a cause, or a poor family; do it anonymously--that will really keep you honest about the cultivation of your reputation. Reflect together on this regularly.

And if you lead, at any level, a community with a public presence, steer its reputation the right way. Ask members to take responsibility for this with you. Talk about. Dare to preach about it.

Finally, like any individual, a community eventually reaches the end of its ability to sustain itself. We don't normally try to fight off death on an individual level. You can say we coach people all their lives to prepare for death. But from what I've seen, we haven't applied that logic to our institutions. Some stubbornly refuse to face their corporate mortality. Given how we administer parishes (it's not really chiseled in stone like God's Covenant with Moses, but we act like it is), we know some parishes have to fold. We insist that ours is among the few to hold. This may be due to residual reputation-building. I know of a pastor who spent down some of his parish's savings on farewell dinners with parishioners, rather than leave it in the kitty that would go to the successor parish. (A minor quibble, I admit.) I heard another rue his assignment to a declining parish because he didn't want the reputation of a "closer."

In reply, I would ask what is more pastoral, more missionary, than preparing people to merge into something bigger than themselves, whether it's heaven or the new church of Saints Peter, Paul, Mary, Andrew, James, Teresa of Avila, Therese of Lisieux, John the Baptist, John the Evangelist and ... And as long as it's vital, shouldn't a parish be equipping its people with virtue and character, and yes, loyalties, that, as wine-lovers say, can travel well?