Dear Christ the King Family,
The passage we hear in today’s first reading from the prophet Amos reiterates a simple truth we know from the time we are very small children learning about God: God sees everything. This can comfort us when we are in pain, or when we are unfairly judged by other people who don’t understand the bigger picture of our lives, or when we meet a failure despite our best intentions at heart. And, at the same time, this can make us uncomfortable when, like the unfaithful Israelites mentioned in this passage, our minds are set on plots and motivations that only try to boost our own shallow pride, material gain, and our egotistical glory rather than God’s glory.
So, God sees everything. What follows then—ironic as it sounds—is that in order to grow in holiness, we must acknowledge those parts within us that are not so holy, those impure motivations that we can have the capacity to carry within us, even when it comes to our lived faith. I’m not saying that any of us came here to church this Sunday and chose to live out our faith purely for the wrong reasons—quite the contrary, we believe that it is the providential work God through the Spirit that has gathered us together as the Church. In fact, I’d venture to say that for the most part, we choose to say ‘yes’ and follow Christ for very noble and admirable reasons. Alongside that, however, I think I can safely say (since it is part of our broken human nature), that there are little parts of ourselves that still stand in need of purification. Speaking for myself humbly now as a priest and religious, I admit that in the beginning of my time in seminary there were parts of me that thought that through entering formation, I would be able to hide from some challenges in my life that I couldn’t seem to avoid. Part of me was even vain and prideful, thinking that embracing such a radical life would prove to others my ‘specialness’. I think these reasons, which weren’t the sum total of every reason why I entered Holy Cross, were still parts of my life that I needed to be honest about with the Lord, so that the wounded areas of life that those motivations shabbily covered up could be healed by God.
And this is not an easy thing to do—preparing a full account of ourselves in that way. It’s something that takes much interior work to admit and accept. But, I think there is hope for this challenge found within the Gospel we heard today. In the strange Parable of the Dishonest Steward, the master commends the steward at the end of the parable as he tries a pitiful scheme to do the right thing to others even for the most selfish of motivations. Unfortunately (or, perhaps, fortunately?), this is not a fable with a clear-cut moral lesson for action. Rather, the answer to this and all of the other parables is found not in hearing an answer, but in living it out ourselves in Christ. Perhaps, then, we can place hope in this: even when we have elements of impure motivations and selfish ambitions despite doing the right thing, perhaps the action of loving as God loves, can serve to transform our motivations and selves over time so that instead of dishonest stewards, we become more and more true disciples of the Lord, a people God has chosen as His own, a people after God’s very heart.
In Christ,
Fr. David
Comments are closed