Readings for Saturday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time[1][2]
Readings from the Jerusalem Bible
Commentary:
Reading 1 2 Cor 12:1-10
St. Paul describes, in rather convoluted terms, an out of body experience where he was taken to heaven and in which he was given “Ineffable things:” privileged information that could not be repeated. The Apostle uses the Christ-like response to physical and rhetorical challenges by saying that through his weakness and humility comes the power of Christ to resist.
Responsorial Psalm Ps 34:8-9, 10-11, 12-13
R. Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.
Once again Psalm 34 supports St. Paul’s declaration of strength through the power of God. The psalmist sings of God’s salvation and how He raises up the lowly. It becomes an invitation to the people to become instruments of God.
Gospel Mt 6:24-34
As if the point about placing things of God before material things was not clear enough, Jesus continues is sermon, being very clear about what must be placed first in the life of his disciples. Here the word Mammon is used, an Aramaic word meaning wealth. The Lord does not deny that people need the physical things of the world (i.e. food, clothing, and water) but tells them that if they have faith in God and pursue the things of God’s Kingdom, the heavenly Father will provide for them. He goes further to say that if they are constantly focused on these things, they will not extend their lives even a little.
Reflection:
It’s almost as if the Lord did not like the humor posted yesterday. Today we return to the subject of what we must focus on in our lives. The key instruction in scripture comes in the last paragraph of the Gospel “But seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness”. If we do this, we are told, then all our physical needs will be attended to by God and more even than that.
Let’s think about that for a minute. It is important that we try to capture an image of what this must be like in its absolute application. Let us suppose that all that we did we did solely for God’s glory and we did not worry about getting paid so we could pay the mortgage, put food on the table, pay the utilities, make the car payment, oh, and save money (or spend it) so our children could go to college. If we concerned ourselves only with that one thing, how well would we accomplish that which God has given us gifts to accomplish? What ever we do, we do for only God’s glory and if we thought about it in those terms and were driven to excellence by our insurmountable love for God, our performance would be nothing short of incredible.
Readings from the Jerusalem Bible
Commentary:
Reading 1 2 Cor 12:1-10
St. Paul describes, in rather convoluted terms, an out of body experience where he was taken to heaven and in which he was given “Ineffable things:” privileged information that could not be repeated. The Apostle uses the Christ-like response to physical and rhetorical challenges by saying that through his weakness and humility comes the power of Christ to resist.
Responsorial Psalm Ps 34:8-9, 10-11, 12-13
R. Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.
Once again Psalm 34 supports St. Paul’s declaration of strength through the power of God. The psalmist sings of God’s salvation and how He raises up the lowly. It becomes an invitation to the people to become instruments of God.
Gospel Mt 6:24-34
As if the point about placing things of God before material things was not clear enough, Jesus continues is sermon, being very clear about what must be placed first in the life of his disciples. Here the word Mammon is used, an Aramaic word meaning wealth. The Lord does not deny that people need the physical things of the world (i.e. food, clothing, and water) but tells them that if they have faith in God and pursue the things of God’s Kingdom, the heavenly Father will provide for them. He goes further to say that if they are constantly focused on these things, they will not extend their lives even a little.
Reflection:
It’s almost as if the Lord did not like the humor posted yesterday. Today we return to the subject of what we must focus on in our lives. The key instruction in scripture comes in the last paragraph of the Gospel “But seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness”. If we do this, we are told, then all our physical needs will be attended to by God and more even than that.
Let’s think about that for a minute. It is important that we try to capture an image of what this must be like in its absolute application. Let us suppose that all that we did we did solely for God’s glory and we did not worry about getting paid so we could pay the mortgage, put food on the table, pay the utilities, make the car payment, oh, and save money (or spend it) so our children could go to college. If we concerned ourselves only with that one thing, how well would we accomplish that which God has given us gifts to accomplish? What ever we do, we do for only God’s glory and if we thought about it in those terms and were driven to excellence by our insurmountable love for God, our performance would be nothing short of incredible.
Guess what? If our performance of tasks, again using God’s gifts which we have discerned, is incredible, then those who profit from those gifts will be grateful. Their gratitude will extend itself to us and, through the Father’s influence, the things He knows we need. Those blessing will come to us.
Our difficulty, of course, is two fold. First, it is easy to say that the daily work we do is done ONLY for God’s glory. We might think it and pray it the first thing in the morning as we go off to the office, factory, store or school. But once there, it becomes labor, hard work and our focus and motivation becomes the task for the sake of the task or for how much compensation we will see from our employer. If these things were done with constant prayer and the love of God before us, would not our whole outlook change. We would be constantly cheerful; concerned only with pleasing the Father and the gifts he ahs given us would bear fruit like never before.
Our difficulty, of course, is two fold. First, it is easy to say that the daily work we do is done ONLY for God’s glory. We might think it and pray it the first thing in the morning as we go off to the office, factory, store or school. But once there, it becomes labor, hard work and our focus and motivation becomes the task for the sake of the task or for how much compensation we will see from our employer. If these things were done with constant prayer and the love of God before us, would not our whole outlook change. We would be constantly cheerful; concerned only with pleasing the Father and the gifts he ahs given us would bear fruit like never before.
The second problem is if something goes wrong in our lives and financial pressures begin to mount our focus on doing God’s will becomes distracted to getting more money (mammon). Once off track it’s hard to get back on.
Today we are reminded once more that we must keep the Lord squarely in front of us as we strive to make our lives pleasing to Him. Let us redouble our efforts to do so.
Pax
[1] After Links Expire
[2] The picture used today is “Behold the Lilies” by Leslie Wilson, 1943
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