Whose Kingdom Are You Seeking?

Reflection for Sunday, March 2 -- The Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

By: Judy Morss

Gospel of Matthew 6:24-34

Jesus said to his disciples:
“No one can serve two masters.
He will either hate one and love the other,

or be devoted to one and despise the other.
You cannot serve God and mammon.
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life,
what you will eat or drink,
or about your body, what you will wear.
Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?
Look at the birds in the sky;
they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns,
yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
Are not you more important than they?
Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span?
Why are you anxious about clothes?
Learn from the way the wild flowers grow.
They do not work or spin.
But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor
was clothed like one of them.
If God so clothes the grass of the field,
which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow,
will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith?
So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’
or ‘What are we to drink? or ‘What are we to wear?’
All these things the pagans seek.
Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.
But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,
and all these things will be given you besides.
Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself.

Sufficient for a day is its own evil.”


Ash Wednesday is this week, and so we enter into the Lenten season. As I enter into the Lenten desert, I hope to draw closer and closer to our Savior, Jesus the Christ. The readings for this Sunday seem to have a common focus seeking the Kingdom of God and his righteousness. There we will find the love of God and His care for us. Isaiah 49:14-15 tells us that even if it were possible for a Mother to forget her child, "I will never forget you."

Our response to Psalm 62 is "Rest in God alone, my soul" and we are told that "Only in God is my soul at rest; from Him comes my salvation."  In Matthew 6:24-34 Jesus tells his disciples: "No one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other." He further tells us that we should not worry about our life or the day to day issues in our lives. All that we need will be given to us. Our focus must be on the kingdom of God.

We are not to worry about tomorrow; "tomorrow will take care of itself."  To stop worrying about tomorrow is not an easy thing. Jesus invites me to trust Him and know that He will give me what I need, according to His plan for me. Now comes the hard part. His plan for me; not my plan for me. I need to hear and receive this invitation to trust in a more personal, deep way. I need to feel the comfort that Jesus offers and accept and feel the bond, the special connection and the tenderness that God has for me.

God has a plan for me; He created me to achieve that plan. As I reflect on these readings, it becomes more and more obvious to me that I MUST decide who I will serve. When I focus too much on my wants and needs (security issues) then I am serving a false god. There is freedom in the decision not to worry about all of the external things, but to trust that God will provide for my needs. When I release myself from serving my own needs, I free myself to serve others. And that change in my focus, opens me up to all that the kingdom of God provides.

With peace and love,
Judy

Is Your Hope Full of Immortality?

A reflection for the Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time by Heidi Knofczynski

I call upon you, for you will answer me, O God

As I pondered the readings for the Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, which contain the passages from Second Maccabees telling the story of the hellish torture and execution of seven brothers and their mother, I was reminded that, in this world, sometimes places of horror and suffering are places where the Kingdom of Heaven emerges powerfully from those who call upon the Lord. Enduring hope is kindled in these places of earthly desolation, and true freedom, for God is the God of life, not of death, a God of freedom from fear and tyranny. Are you truly as free as you are meant to be?

…that we may be delivered from perverse and wicked people,

Fast forward to Luke’s Gospel account of Jesus’ encounter with the Sadducees -- the intellectual elites of their day  – and we see that even in Jesus’ time there were those who, even with the glorious witness of the seven brothers and their mother, (though it is said that the Sadducees did not accept anything other than the first five books of Scripture as authoritative), did not believe in the resurrection. They rejected the gift of true freedom which is rooted in eternal life.  It is a philosophy (not uncommon in our time) which binds us to only what we see and feel, and therefore, binds us to fear of losing those things. Fear enslaves all. God frees all who take refuge in Him. Jesus breaks through the superficial Scriptural interpretation of the Sadducees by showing them the truth that was always present in the Scriptures they dissect: God has made us to live eternally.

“even Moses made known in the passage about the bush,
when he called out 'Lord, '
the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob;
and he is not God of the dead, but of the living,
for to him all are alive."

 Contrasting the Sadducees weakness of faith (being so rooted in this world) with the faith of the seven, I guess, if you can't believe in something greater, the only thing you can do is ridicule what they died for. In the story, the seven brothers are tortured and executed one by one for not conforming to the king’s decrees to worship a god other than God. If the Sadducees really understood the story, they would have understood how ultimately free one is when the eternal God has been put first. When you really trust that you can hide in the shadow of His wings, not for temporal gain, but for eternal gain; the gain to behold His face.

It happened that seven brothers with their mother were arrested
and tortured with whips and scourges by the king,
to force them to eat pork in violation of God's law.

The king at that time was determined to abolish the Jewish faith by making it illegal to follow God’s laws and statutes. They could not legally offer pure worship to God! The obligation to violate God’s laws was enforced by terrifying displays of torture and execution! If the fear of losing worldly pleasure and comforts did not break devotion to our eternal God, then a more primal fear was invoked, fear of a tortuous death. Their highest hopes were to be placed in the powers of this world to keep them safe and sound, to preserve their lives. Fear was to rule over them.

"It is my choice to die at the hands of men
with the hope God gives of being raised up by him;”

Instead, the brothers and their mother placed their hope in the eternal; a reality more real than their earthly suffering. In doing so they were graced with the freedom to suffer all things, to not be reduced to their fear of pain and death, and thus to merit eternal life. Eternity is not for wimps!

…After him the third suffered their cruel sport.  He put out his tongue at once when told to do so, and bravely held out his hands, as he spoke these noble words:  "It was from Heaven that I received these; for the sake of his laws I disdain them; from him I hope to receive them again." Even the king and his attendants marveled at the young man's courage, because he regarded his sufferings as nothing

How horrifying! I am a wimp, I hate even reading about it! Yet, in this story of martyrdom, these young men and their mother demonstrate a hope beyond hope. They show us something that we already have an inkling of deep in our souls, but something that the “Sadducees” of the world are always trying to rationalize away: What we see -- even what we feel -- in this world is not all there is! This world is not the ultimate reality. It is not eternal. The young men refuse to allow their faith to be rationalized away…even under the threat of unfathomable torture. Enduring in this hope is a gift that we should pray to receive.

May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the endurance of Christ.

It is true, the “Sadducees” around us are always trying to reduce our faith to strictly earthly terms i.e., our most real reality is to depend on governing structures that will give us lots of good stuff, lots of assurances of safety and protection. We are to fear losing our lives, we are to fear losing our looks, we are to fear being a nobody, we are to fear being rejected, we are to fear…. and we are to look to the world to assuage our fears. As we do that we are enslaved to them and reduced to finding our “happiness” in material comforts and in ourselves. I ask you, and myself again, are we truly free? Is your hope full of immortality?

May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father,who has loved us and given us everlasting encouragement and good hope through his grace,encourage your hearts and strengthen them in every good deed and word.

I will leave you with this beautiful song "I Shall Not Want" by Audrey Assad which can be found on her newest album Fortunate Fall, it is a prayer that I think is appropriate for this post, enjoy!   Heidi

 

Freedom

As we make our way on our Lenten journey seeking to free ourselves from excessive worldly attachments Sharon Nelsen has submitted this chapter of a book by Abbot Jerome Kodell .  May it aid each of you in taking another step closer to the interior freedom that God wills for us.

by: Abbot Jerome Kodell, OSB, Life Lessons from the Monastery, Section 20, pages 89-91.

The story is told of the little boy who liked to watch his sister’s goldfish swim around in its home, a bowl of water.  But the more he thought about it, the more he didn’t like that the fish was confined to such a small space and had no real freedom.  So he got a hammer and broke the bowl to give the fish its freedom.

There is a lot of confusion about the meaning of freedom.  On the fourth of July, we speak about freedom and independence as if they were the same.  It is helpful to distinguish freedom as a condition of the person, and liberty as a condition of the environment.  There are many independent people who are not free and many dependent people who are.  Henry David Thoreau and Nelson Mandela were completely free when they were behind bars, though they did not have liberty of movement, but some of the people who put them there, though they were at liberty to come and go as they chose, were not free.

Freedom is the prize of human maturity.  It is meant for all but not achieved by all.  It permits us to live by norms that we have chosen and internalized.

For many, freedom means the ability to act without external restrictions.  This is the counterfeit of freedom that inspires bizarre ideas and activities associated with TV talk shows.  This understanding of freedom is partially true, but by missing a large part of the truth, it becomes false.

True freedom involves being unbound from internal restrictions.  Not being enslaved to those sometimes unseen masters that often drive our decisions and actions:  Those fall in the area of passions, fears, prejudices, resentments and insecurities.

These hidden internal masters can make us prey for the external masters:  opinion, fashion, social pressure, esteem of peers, influence of celebrities.

It is impossible for a human being to live without a master.  We did not create ourselves.  “You are not your own” (1Cor. 6.19).  The free person is one who has decided on and chosen God as master.  Slavery is serving a master you haven’t chosen.  St. Paul teaches that Christ has freed us from slavery to sin.  But he goes on to say, “Freed from sin, you have become slaves of righteousness” (Romans 6.18).  In other words, you have to choose one master or the other, sin or righteousness, or rather, sin or God.  True human freedom begins when we recognize God’s lordship over our lives and take the first steps to making god our master.  St. Augustine says, “Whoever is not bound by this chain is a slave.” 

The usual path to freedom begins from a desire for no restriction at all (better known as license); to a desire to answerable to no external norm (such as the laws and restrictions of church and society); to a desire for an internal norm that will direct our lives.

The role of the Ten Commandments or, the Ten Words, is helpful in illustrating the path to true freedom:   The Ten Words are external norms of behavior but they are meant to be far more than that. They are presented twice in the Bible:

I, the Lord, am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.”  (Opening words in Exodus 20.1-17 and in Deuteronomy 5.6-21)

Then follow the “Ten Words,” which tell us how to stay out of a deeper slavery.  The translation “Commandments” is unfortunate, because it puts a negative slant on these Ten Words of God to us.

They are meant to show us ways to live in freedom.  If internalized, they become part of our inner norm grounded in God, whom we have chosen as our master.  Until they become part of us, we are enslaved to our own egoism, living in the world as a dangerous place, where people are adversaries who must be taken advantage of and overcome.

The lack of freedom ultimately causes a deep insecurity, a void which must be filled.  It spawns jealousy and fear, and is the source of wars and quarrels, infidelities, and larcenies.  Because I am empty, I try to fill up the vacancy by control of others, by possessions, by power.  The more I receive of this kind of compensation, the more I need, because my insecurity is not being recognized and addressed at its source.

Ultimately, only God can heal us from insecurity and slavery and give us the gift of freedom, and God wants to do this—even “desperately”—and is very near and available.

In communion with the Creator who made us and loves us, we begin to know our own worth and the worth of others, and we are free to accept ourselves and everyone else as we are, knowing that we are accepted by our loving Father.   We are on the road to personal freedom.