8th Sunday, year "A"
HOMILY
Jesus compares us with the birds of the sky
and with the wild flowers. We have certainly a lot of needs in common with
them. We belong to the same biological or animal world. But there is something that
they don't have and we have: it is the capacity of expressing our need through
speech. When our need is expressed, it is no longer simply a need. It becomes a
desire, a petition, which establishes a presence, a relation‑ ship and,
ultimately love. When, as a human being I express a need to someone I do not
simply ask for something; I ask "someone" for something. I ask
someone to be the one who will answer my need. I ask someone to love me and to
show his or her love by fulfilling my desire.
We can, therefore, easily perceive all the
depth of the prophet Isaiah's message when he compares God's care for us to the
love of a mother. "Even if a mother should forget her child I will never
forget you or be without tenderness for you," says the Lord.
And in the Gospel Jesus compares God to a
father who knows everything that we need. Therefore we should not be concerned
about how our needs will be answered. The essence of Jesus' message in this
text is not to worry. Of course, Jesus is not opposed to our expressing to our
Father all our needs. On the contrary, he explicitly invites us to do so. But
he repeats over and over again: Don't worry!
Once again he speaks of the detachment that
must be the mark of a Christian. His words remind us of the beatitudes, and
especially of the happiness promised to the poor. A man has to be truly free if
he is to enter the kingdom; that is why it is easier for a camel to pass
through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom (Matthew
19‑23).
We cannot seek the kingdom, we cannot live in
a permanent conscious union with God if we are too much concerned about our
needs ‑‑ and not only our material needs. Real pain or hunger cry
out and, of course, cannot be evaded; our fears and our psychic wounds may fester
for years before we finally open our eyes to them. In all the areas of our
personalities and our human situations where we feel ourselves to be
individually at risk, there are our hunger and pain. And these needs, if they
are not clearly acknowledged can seriously limit our relationships with men and
women and with God.Expressing them to God is the best
means to become reconciled with them.
Then Jesus tells us that since the
relationship between the one who has needs and the person whom he expects to answer
these needs is a love relationship, there is a total antagonism between God,
whom he calls Abba, Father; and money, which he calls Mammon. Love is jealous,
and you cannot maintain those two lovers, or serve those two masters.
The prophet Ezechiel expressed that in a very
vivid manner, when he reproached the people of Israel for seeking their
security in human alliances rather than in Jahweh.
"My people have committed two sins, says Jahweh.
They have abandoned me, the fountain of living waters; and they have fabricated
for themselves cisterns, leaking cisterns that cannot hold water."
Let us have a walk through the garden of our
hearts and of our life, and we will probably discover a good deal of those
leaking cisterns that we have built over the years to protects ourselves
against any eventual need. If we let these cisterns dry, we will be rich with
God's tenderness that will never fail us. And right now let us approach with a
poor's heart the table where he is offering us the Bread of Eternal Life.
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