Easy Living: A Christ-centered Life

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Though I don’t play, I love watching golf.  Lots of people make fun of me for this, saying things like watching golf is like watching the grass grow.  And I will admit that, on a Sunday afternoon after Masses, I do tend to doze in and out of watching the final rounds, but I attribute that more to my fatigue than to the game itself.  Probably my favorite golfer is Jordan Spieth.  He seems like a nice man, went to Catholic schools, and plays quite well.  Watching him play, even on tv, makes golf look so easy, though, from having tried to just hit the ball, I know golf is anything but easy!

Our life in Christ can sometimes seem like golf: the pros make it seem easy, but to the rest of us it’s quite hard.  Maybe we look at the saints and feel that they have set the bar terribly high, and those standards are not something that we could ever do.  But Jesus reminds us in the Gospel that “[His] yoke is easy, and [His] burden light.”  Living under the kingship of Jesus is something which is not meant to be a heavy burden on us.

I mention kingship because our first reading is a prophecy about the king, the Messiah, which was fulfilled in Jesus.  We hear this passage from the prophet Zechariah each Palm Sunday as it is fulfilled in Jesus entering His city, Jerusalem, on a donkey.  The donkey was not a sign of dominance for king (that would have been a strong horse), but a sign of humility and easiness.  A king who rode on a donkey came not to enforce his will by brute strength, but to invite people into his kingdom for its good.

Kingship also reflects that we owe our life to someone else.  As Americans we’re not so keen on monarchies and royalty (unless it’s the Kennedys or the younger British royals), but there was a relationship between king and subject, where they worked together to promote the kingdom.  We owe our life, really everything, to Christ, as I preached a few weeks ago.  And Christ our King, for His part, gives us everything we need to be saints, to be holy men and women, to be the best version of ourselves that we can be, so that we enter the kingdom of heaven.

But there is a prince working to undermine the kingship of Christ, and that is Satan.  He wants us to switch our allegiance to him.  St. Paul talks about that in our second reading.  When he encourages us not live according to the flesh, St. Paul means everything in us that is fallen, that gives in to the temptations of the devil.  Sometimes those temptations can be in our very flesh and blood, like the temptations to gluttony, sloth, and lust.  Sometimes they are more in the heart like greed, envy, or hatred, or even in the mind, like pride.  But they are not of the Kingdom of God; they are not the work of the Holy Spirit, who continues the presence of Christ our King in us.

Sometimes living the life of the Kingdom of God seems so hard, and living the life of obedience to Satan seems so easy.  After all, Satan lets us do whatever we want, because it enforces our selfishness, which keeps us from God.  Let’s be honest: it’s sometimes hard to make it to Mass, especially when sports, or even just vacation, is going on; it’s sometimes hard to hold back on amounts of food or even certain types of food, so that our stomach becomes the deciding factor in our life; given our sex-saturated culture, it can be very difficult not to engage in sexual relationships outside of marriage, not to ask for or send inappropriate pictures on Snapchat, not to live together before marriage; it can sometimes be hard not to hate or even simply hold a grudge against someone who has done something that we don’t like, or to speak ill of that person to others.  It can often seem very easy to give in to these and so many other temptations, and it can seem very difficult to live a Christ-centered life.

In the midst of those challenges, Jesus still says, “‘Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.’”  Living for Jesus makes for an easier life, and a life that prepares us for heaven.  Living a life where we give in to our temptations makes life much more difficult, and prepares us for hell.  A life spent trying to be a saint helps us to be more and more free; a life spent following our fallen passions wherever they lead us enslaves us.  Who lives the better, freer life?  The people who want the newest Lebron shoes, a Go-Pro, the newest phone, or Fidget Spinner, and who see if they really need it, and then, if they do, earn the money and buy it?  Or the people who steal it, get caught, then go to jail, then maybe can’t get the job they want, and are restricted to working less satisfying jobs?  

Life in Christ, a life lived by the Spirit of God, can seem tough and difficult, especially when we’re not living it.  And certainly sometimes following God’s will entails challenges and having to say no not only to bad things but also to lesser goods.  But just like watching Jordan Speith play golf, the more we live the life of Christ, the easier it becomes, and the easier it looks to others.  And the more others see a Christ-centered life, the more they will want that freedom for themselves where they live in the Kingdom of God.

It Would Have Been Enough

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Ok; be honest: how many of you asked God to win the $1.5 billion Powerball prize?  You don’t have to raise your hand.  There were probably some people who were bargaining with God: if you give me the $1.5 billion, I’ll give 10% to the church.  I told a number of people: I’m not greedy; I only need about $10 million; the rest I can give away.  Maybe you didn’t want it.  But I bet we could all imagine what we would do with that much money.

And all of us were disappointed who wanted to win the jackpot.  No one won the jackpot from the State of Michigan.  It’s as if God wasn’t listening to us!!  How could he leave us in such a lurch.  Think of the good we could’ve done with $1.5 billion!!

It might lead us to think that God is a bit stingy.  After all, here we are in church, trying to do God’s will, and He won’t even give us a little financial reward for worshipping Him.  But, our readings today give us a different story.  They give us a different perspective, which is the truth, not our petty idea of what God is thinking.  And what our readings reveal is that God is generous.  He is not stingy.  His gifts overflow in abundance!

Think about the first reading from the Prophet Isaiah.  This part of the Book of Isaiah was written after the Babylonian Exile, where the Jews had lost everything.  Their unfaithfulness to God had meant the loss of the Promised Land and the loss of the Temple.  But God does not rub their noses in their past failures.  Instead, He promises that their new status, after they have turned back to Him, will be even better than the beginning.  No longer will people mock the Chosen People for what they don’t have, calling them, “Forsaken,” but will honor them as the spouse of the Lord, and call them “My delight,” and their land, “Espoused.”  They will be like a crown that adorns God’s brow.  That’s not stingy.

And St. Paul has a long list of the gifts that God pours out through the Spirit: wisdom, knowledge, faith, gifts of healing, mighty deeds, prophecy, discernment of spirits, varieties of tongues.  All of these are gifts that God pours out upon His people.  And while there are a variety of gifts, it is the one God who gives them all, for some benefit for the church.  God is not holding back, but is pouring out gifts such that our cups overflow.

And the Gospel really talks about God’s generosity.  Jesus, through the intercession of His Mother, saves the poor couple of Cana from shame.  Imagine if you ran out of food at your wedding party, and some people didn’t get any.  That’s bad enough!  But if you ran out of wine, well that’s just downright degrading!!  But Jesus saves them from that degradation, and turns the water into wine.  And it’s not just any wine; it’s the best wine.  Jesus does not just save the day in a mediocre way; He saves the day and His generosity makes sure that His wedding gift of wine is the best wine there is.

Top of the façade of the church in Cana 

The temptation for us is to be stuck on water, and not want the wine.  Water is very basic, and we need it to survive.  Wine is not so basic, takes more work, and produces a better effect after drinking than water (once you’re old enough to legally drink it).  We are certainly called to assist each other with our gifts and talents and treasures so that everyone has the basic necessities.  We cannot ignore the poor.  But, at the same time, it can be an easy temptation to fall into to simply want more money, a bigger house, a better car, the newest phone.  Those are all water.  God wants to give us the best gifts, the gift of His love, the gift of His mercy, the gift of new life.  Money will run out; homes will eventually collapse; cars will stop running; phones will become obsolete.  But God’s love, mercy, and life are for eternity.  Those are the gifts we should be striving for.

God is never outdone in His generosity.  He does not simply give us water; He gives us wine.  During the Passover, the Jews have a song called Dayenu, and that word, Dayenu, literally means, “enough for us” or “it would have been enough.”  They recall God’s great deeds, and how that would have been enough: “If He had brought us out from Egypt, and had not carried out judgments against them–Dayenu!  If He had carried out judgments against them, and not against their idols–Dayenu!  If He had destroyed their idols and had not smitten their first-born–Dayenu!  If He had smitten their first-born, and had not given us their wealth–Dayenu!  If He had given us their wealth, and had not split the sea for us–Dayenu!  If He had taken us through the sea on dry land, and had not drowned our oppressors in it–Dayenu!  If He had drowned our oppressors in it, and had not supplied our needs in the desert for forty years–Dayenu!  If He had supplied our needs in the desert for forty years, and had not fed us the manna–Dayenu!  If He had fed us the manna, and had not given us the Shabbat [Sabbath]–Dayenu!  If He had given us the Shabbat, and had not brought us before Mount Sinai–Dayenu!  If He had brought us before Mount Sinia, and had not given us the Torah–Dayenu!  If He had given us the Torah, and had not brought us into the land of Israel–Dayenu!  If He had brought us into the land of Israel, and not built for us the Holy Temple–Dayenu!”  But that wasn’t enough for God.  He then sent His Only Begotten Son, to be one like us in all things but sin, and even to die for us so we could live.  

God didn’t give us the jackpot of the Powerball, but He did give us Jesus.  Is that enough for us?