3rd Sunday of Mathew - The hardships of life
But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you. (Mat 6:33).
Dear Beloved,
The Gospel we read today ends with these very words "seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you". I chose to start with these words because this is the essence, the distilled of today's lesson. If you wil go home at least carrying these words into your hearts, and with the will to fulfill them, then I have not spoken in vain today.
But in order to appreciate their true value we need to discover together their meaning: what is the Kingdom of God? How is His justice manifested and why we need to seek these first?
A simplistic interpretation of these words would be to stay put, not doing anything and wait for God to do anything for us without moving a finger. Total freedom from responsibility. But how is this interpretation matching with what says St. Apostle Paul "we commanded you this, that if anyone would not work, neither should he eat"(2Th 3:10)? We know that the Holy Scripture does not contradict itself, so there should be another explanation.
In order to enter into the Kingdom we need to find the royal way. The Holy Fathers say that this is the midway. Is it by any chance the way of the compromise? Absolutely not, but it is the way of moderation and right judgment into everything we do. We know from the Church teaching that salvation is achieved by working together with God, it is a theanthropic effort. Man exert his own will into following God according to his limited powers and God sends down His grace to fulfill and sanctify man's effort into perfection.
Let's take an example. Can man live only with prayer? In the Paterikon we have many examples of saints that were eating ridiculously small quantities of food, but no matter how small the quantity, they still needed it. In the same way a soul cannot be satisfied with steaks and baked potatoes, but needs prayer and a permanent link with God. All this because man is not a bodiless creature, like the angels, but it is made as a duality: body and soul and both should be nourished and satisfied.
Today's Gospel says not that we should only live for the Kingdom of God, but we should seek it in the first place. It should be the top on our priority list. If we don't do this and we seek the things of the body first, these have the tendency of becoming hurdles in our quest for God. We hear many people say: I am not coming today to Church because if work overtime on Sunday I'll make more money, I'm not coming to Church because I have exams and I need to study, I am not praying tonight because I am too tired and will pray in the morning, which also never happens because we wake up late. All in all we are too busy and God at the end of the day simply does not fit into our schedule. I am too busy with myself to think of God or my fellow men.
If we put God first however, when we leave the house to work we say a short prayer and make the sign of the Cross upon us and we go to Church and we work, we don't expect God to work for us. If we consider that our first duty is to God we realize that other things can wait when is time for prayer. As we take lunch breaks for the body, we should learn to take lunch breaks for the soul and pray. We need to learn to stop and praise the Lord, and like this all our never-ending daily efforts receive a meaning. All are full of purpose when God is in the center. All are fulfilled in Him and our life has a purpose and a defined goal.
If we work from youth until old age without a goal, we can rightfully question the meaning of our life. What am I living for, when I was young I worked, I work today and I will work tomorrow until I reach retirement, and sometimes even after that. When I am going to live then? So here comes the great idea: I will take advantage of every free minute I have and I will celebrate, I will try to satisfy my body so I can feel that I truly live, So we go to the movies, parties, football games, social gatherings because we only have on life and life needs to be lived right?
It is true, we only have a life, but the bigger question is what are we doing with it? Part of it we work, the other we have a good time and the last on we sleep. And in this way God is pushed out of our lives and maybe we'll remember Him for Christmas and Easter, maybe. We are born and we are living in this world like we never were. "As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourishes. For the wind passes over it, and it is gone; and its place shall know it no more." (Psa 102:15-16)
The body that we take so much care of is made of dirt and into dirt it will return. All the beauties of the world, all the powerful of the world, all the wise of the world will eventually end up in a small grave and the worms will rot their bodies. Grass will grow on top of them and who knows if anyone will stop to light a candle for them. Only the body lasts forever, even when our bodies rot in the ground the soul lives and is lifted up to its Creator in heaven at the judgment seat. If during his life man has served God He and took care of his soul will enter to rejoice with His Master, if he served Mammon, he will go into the gnashing of teeth.
It is true we have on short life, but upon the way we live it depends our salvation. We cannot be the slaves of pleasure and in the same time be servants of God. As the Gospel says "No one can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other."(Mat 6:24)
The ones that don't want to know God follow the temptations of the world, for them life is only this brief second we live on earth. These are the ones that do not realize that this life they so passionately try to live at its limit, is only a drop in the ocean of eternity. It is only the beginning of what we are truly meant for if we choose to fulfill our spiritual potential. They don't understand that man has a higher purpose on earth, higher than eating, sleeping, pleasure and reproduction.
We as Christians know that man is more than this. It has to be! Man was given rationality, will and senses so he can use them, properly. Rationality to recognize God, will to follow in Christ footsteps and feelings so he can enter into God's love. This is the true image of Gd in man and this is the goal of our existence: to live joyfully in communion with God
Man was created for this communion, without it man is empty, without a sense of His life. People that break their link with God live in water but are still thirsty, in the granary but are still hungry, indulge pleasures but are still hurting.
Is it God who wants to break this communion? No, it is man's choice, through sin. We know the holy history. We all have heard of Sodom and Gomorra and we know their fate: the wrath of God was unleashed upon them when they were indulging the most in their pleasures. How did they got there? Following a similar path like our society today: valuing the body before anything: eating the most sophisticated foods, warring the most expensive and comfortable clothes, luxury houses, pleasures without barriers. And God did not fit anymore into any of this. Are we far from this today? Has our society that legitimates sin anything holy? Does our world know the direction we are doomed for? No, because most of its leaders are themselves blind and without knowing they lead everyone into disaster.
We, however, beloved brothers in Christ, have the duty to clean the enlighter of our bodies which is our mind. We need to lift our mind from our daily struggle and sinful thoughts and gear it toward God.
There is a Latin saying "mens sana in corpore sano". A healthy mind in a healthy body. We generally use it to say that a healthy body leads to a healthy mind. But we only use the part of the saying that has been popularized by the society, The whole phrase is " Let us pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body". Running on a treadmill or pushing iron is not going to make us smarter, is not going to make our mind healthier, but only through prayer we can obtain from God the wisdom that will bring us closer to Him, body and mind.
Let us pray to the Lord to give us this gift, because our mind is accustomed with the worldly thinking and has been perverted, as Father Arsenie Boca, a hieromonk from Romania once said: "through a crooked mind everything seems crooked". Let us try to straighten it and see things as they are, as they were meant to be.
We have hope because the light of Christ is in front of us leading us like a light house on the sea of life; we have the Church that's carrying us to the quite shore of salvation, we have each other in need, but also in joy. Let us therefore use all these gifts we have as Christians for our spiritual edification in the love of Christ, glorified together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and forever and unto the ages of ages. Amin.