Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
In my first few years as a priest, I would, from time to time, buy lotto tickets with my own money. Every time I would buy a ticket, I would remind God that I would give at least 10% to the Church, and how much good $15 million (I would usually only play if the jackpot were $150 million or higher) could do. And yet, I never seemed to win; I barely even won enough to pay for the tickets. So I stopped playing.
I’m sure some of you have done that, have told God that if He just gave you some money, or something else you want, how much good you could do with it. We tend to be, especially in our younger days, better at knowing what we want than what we need. Sometimes what we want is what we need, but not always, and often that comes with a certain level of maturity. As a kid at Christmas, it was always better to get toys than to get clothes (especially underwear!). But toys will fall out of favor or break, while clothes (even underwear) are more necessary.
In our first reading and the Old Testament prefigurement of John chapter 6, we hear about the Israelites who are not happy with what the Lord in the desert. They’re so ungrateful to God that they would rather go back to slavery than remain with God. It’s interesting to really think about that: they would rather go back to slavery, to barely making it, to being subservient laborers making the grand buildings of the Pharaohs, than stay with God, who had destroyed Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea while the Israelites passed through safely.
We also hear about the Jews in this week’s installment of John, chapter 6. Jesus knows that they are not following Him because they believe in Him, even after He fed more than 5,000 of them from 5 loaves and two fish. They are following Him because they thought Jesus was what we could call now a vending machine that gives out free food. And when Jesus pushes them to believe in Him, they demand another sign, another multiplication of loaves. Instead of giving them what they want, Jesus says that He is the bread of life, and if anyone believes in Him he will never hunger or thirst.
In both the first reading and the Gospel, the people want what they want, and reject what they need: God. And we might think it is silly for people to prefer slavery to God, and to not recognize that Jesus is God based on His miracles. But we have not always come so far; in our own lives we prefer things to God, and prefer slavery of our favorite sins to God.
So many times in our daily lives we think about things that we want, things that we think will make us happy. Maybe it’s a person, maybe a boyfriend or girlfriend that we’re convinced we can’t live without. Maybe we want lots of money, because we’re convinced it will make our life easy. Maybe we want a better home with more space, or maybe a pool, or maybe that cottage up north on a lake. There are so many things we can want, and focus our attention on, that we think will make us happy. And none of those things are bad in themselves. But they all come second to God, and not even a close second. The person who has nothing but who has God can still be filled with joy. The person who has everything but does not have God is never filled, and always feels that emptiness in his heart. St. Paul encourages us in the second reading to put behind us the old way of life, the way of life where we focus on what we have and on what we can get, and to live in the new way of life where we recognize that we have all we need in Jesus.
In fact, St. Augustine of Hippo, one of the saints depicted in our icons, says that virtue and holiness is found when we order rightly our loves, with the love of God first, and the love of everything else in its proper place after God. It’s not wrong to want things, but do we think about those things more than we think about God? Do we work harder to obtain those things than we work on our daily relationship with God?
There’s a beautiful Gospel hymn called “Give Me Jesus” that echoes this point. It starts out, “In the morning, when I rise / In the morning, when I rise / In the morning when I rise / Give me Jesus. // Give me Jesus, / Give me Jesus. / You can have all this world, / Give me Jesus.” The next verse starts, “When I am alone,” and ends, “Give me Jesus.” And the final verse starts, “When I come to die,” and ends, “Give me Jesus.” The Gospel hymn reminds us that, at all times of our life, and even at the end of our life, we should recognize our need for Jesus. The others are all wants, all desires that we may not really need.
That’s a hard prayer. I know that I’m not perfect in preferring Jesus to everything. But it’s my goal. I have friends that I prefer to Jesus sometimes; maybe not when I think about it, but in the way I act. But, if they are more important to me than God, then I’ve made an idol for myself, and I need to re-evaluate my priorities. Of course, just because we prefer God to other people or other things doesn’t mean that we will necessarily lose them. But we could if God asked us to, because God is enough for us. In these moments of silence, think about what you desire the most. What takes up most of your time and energy? The many things that you want in your life, or the one thing that is truly necessary: Jesus? You can have all this world, give me Jesus.