All His

THE NOW WORD ON MASS READINGS
for June 9th – June 14th, 2014
Ordinary Time

Elijah Sleeping, by Michael D. O’Brien

THE beginning of true life in Jesus is the moment when you recognize that you are utterly corrupt—poor in virtue, holiness, goodness. That would seem to be the moment, one would think, for all despair; the moment when God declares that you are rightly damned; the moment when all joy caves in and life is nothing more than a drawn out, hopeless eulogy…. But then, that is precisely the moment when Jesus says, “Come, I wish to dine in your house”; when He says, “This day you will be with me in paradise”; when He says, “Do you love me? Then feed my sheep.” This is the paradox of salvation that Satan continually tries to hide from the human mind. For while he cries out that you are worthy to be damned, Jesus says that, because you are damnable, you are worthy to be saved.

But brothers and sisters, I also wish to say that the voice of Jesus in this regard is not like “a strong and heavy wind… an earthquake… or a fire”, but…

…a tiny whispering sound. (Friday’s first reading)

The invitation of God is always delicate, always subtle, as if He were bowing with His face to the ground before our human will. That in itself is a mystery, but one that teaches us to do the same—to lie prostrate, so to speak, before the will of God. That is really what the beatitude means when Jesus promised:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven. (Monday’s Gospel)

The “poor in spirit” is not the one who has everything together, but precisely the one who recognizes that he has nothing. But he will remain poor unless he brings this honest state before the Creator, and like a small child utterly dependent upon his parent, cries out: “I need you for everything, even to give me the desire to desire You!” That is the beginning, the mustard seed, as it were, that will grow in the soul like a huge tree if we but persevere on that path of utter dependence upon God. What does that look like?

God commands Elijah to go live in the Wadi Cherith.

You shall drink of the stream, and I have commanded ravens to feed you there. (Monday’s first reading)

And so Elijah did, but not before prophesying in the spirit that there would be no dew or rain during those years. As a result of fulfilling God’s command to prophesy as well as depend entirely upon divine providence, Elijah suddenly finds himself in a most contradictory situation. The very stream that God provided now begins to dry up precisely because of Elijah’s faithfulness!

How often have you said to yourself, “I have been following God’s will, doing what I can to be a good person, loving others, etc., and now this  or that happens to me??” This is the moment of testing, and we have to see it for that. For God never, ever abandons us.

Indeed he neither slumbers or sleeps, the guardian of Israel. (Monday’s Psalm)

But He does allow trials so that we do not begin to bow to the river or worship the raven. And sure enough, because Elijah is faithful, God blesses Him with something even better.

Know that the Lord does wonders for his faithful one… (Tuesday’s Psalm)

The purpose behind these trials, then, is not to hurt us, but precisely to leave us in that state of spiritual poverty, for “theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.” This is perhaps one of the greatest pitfalls for Christians trying to grow in holiness: we feel that we are advancing, becoming saints, standing in a holiness that we’ve earned with sacrifice and tears…. only to be blind-sided by a temptation and discover we are as poor as we were at the beginning! Look, we are dust, and that does not change. The Church does not upgrade her prayer every Ash Wednesday to, “Last year you were dust, but now you are nicer dust….” No, she crosses us with ashes and reminds us that we are truly, and always, poor; that without Christ, we “can do nothing.” ^[1]cf. Jn 15:5

…with him at my right hand I shall not be disturbed. (Saturday’s Psalm)

But then, we must also avoid a kind of fatalistic attitude, one that says I am really like a discardable coffee cup that God relishes for a moment, and then tosses away. No! You are a child of the Most High.To say that “you are dust” does not mean that your value is dust. Rather that, in and of yourself, you are helpless. No, the great mystery that drives Satan to envy and a bloodthirsty attack upon the human race is that we have “come to share in the divine nature.” ^[2]cf. 2 Pet 1:4 You are “salt” and “light”, Jesus says in Tuesday’s Gospel. That is, we are now partakers also in His divine mission to save souls. But in order to be salt that brings taste and light that penetrates darkness, we must truly enter into the state of being poor in spirit.

Thus, Jesus is calling us at this late hour to detach from everything and follow Him unreservedely. For “without cost you have received; without cost you are to give” ^[3]cf. Wednesday’s Gospel Like Elisha, who stopped ploughing his own fields, sacrificed his oxen on a fire built from his own plough, and set out to harvest God’s fields. ^[4]cf. Saturday’s first reading Like Barnabas and Saul who fasted and prayed to hear the tiny, whispering voice of God so as to follow His will, and His will alone. ^[5]cf. Wednesday’s first reading

Blessed are the poor in spirit—those who exchange this world for the next. The Kingdom of heaven will be theirs. And they will be all His.

Therefore my heart is glad and my soul rejoices, my body, too, abides in confidence; Because you will not abandon my soul to the nether world, nor will you suffer your faithful one to undergo corruption. (Saturday’s Psalm)