Eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time A-1
Entrance Antiphon Cf. Ps 18 (17):19-20 The Lord became my protector. He brought me out to a place of freedom; he saved me because he delighted in me.
Collect Grant us, O Lord, we pray, that the course of our world may be directed by your peaceful rule and that your Church may rejoice, untroubled in her devotion. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Scripture today: Isaiah 49:14-15; Psalm 61; 1 Corinthians 4:1-5; Matthew 6:24-34
Jesus said to his disciples, No-one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labour or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (Matthew 6:24-34)
Providence I suspect that most people come to think that the world functions ultimately just by its own laws. They know that the various catastrophes which strike us are due to the mix and interplay of laws unforeseen by us but which sweep us aside as they occur. These we call bad luck or ill fortune, and the modern person of normal education sees the answer to lie in a sophisticated mastery of the laws that govern the world. If there is a danger of tsunamis in one part of the globe, then we must endeavour to understand the laws that govern them, and put in place a strategy to know when they are coming so as to evade them. Or again, each person has a definite personality, temperament and range of capacities — and so in large measure, he might think, the course of his life is cast. Laws and patterns seem to govern the world, even if we do not know vast portions of those patterns. It all gets down, we might think, to how the world, and each of us in particular, seem to be “wired,” as some might say. The wiring determines all. Now, what is to be said of this understanding of things? There is much to be said for it. One of the distinguishing gains of the great age of science is that the course of the world was gradually discovered not to be the plaything of the gods. The turbulent sea is not due to the irritation of the god Neptune. Its explanation is to be sought in the laws of the sea and climate, and for the sake of shipping and many other projects, man now knows he should strive to understand those laws. There is the danger, though, of assuming that reality and its patterns is ultimately to be reduced to what we can discover by observation. We can assume that this world is all there is, or, granted that there is a God, that he governs the world only by the patterns we observe or can discover. God governs the world only in the sense that he sustains the laws that he has implanted in the world and in each human being. There is a general, but no particular providence. What might be thought of as necessity, blind fate and chance are overcome by mastering natural laws.
While such a view has strength as far as it goes, it is profoundly incomplete. In our Gospel today (Matthew 6:24-34) our Lord exhorts us to bear constantly in mind that our heavenly Father truly cares for us. Despite the appearances, it is revealed to us that he does not govern the world simply by general patterns and laws that take little or no account of individuals. His providence is not merely general but particular to the individual. “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” Just how the general is combined with the particular we are not told. God created and sustains the world from nothing. He leads his creatures towards their ultimate end. Consider this. St Paul tells us that we, each of us, was chosen by God before the foundation of the world to be in Christ, holy and full of love in his sight. I was chosen from all eternity. But consider the incalculable number of ephemeral and contingent circumstances that combined to my seeing the light of day. Had my parents not met in that very unnecessary circumstance, I would never have existed. But what of all the similarly chance circumstances that made up my entire ancestry? A moment’s thought will show that in every sense of the word I need not have existed — but I do, and that I do exist was intended by God from all eternity. His providence has been very particular to me. That I exist, through all the chance happenings that make up history, is a resounding proof of the infinite might of God’s providence, both general and particular. God guides history towards the fulfilment of his plan, despite the havoc caused by sin. We, sinful mankind, caused the havoc. He has made us free, and his vast and mighty providence draws good out of the evil that appears in his creation due to evil choice. His greatest act of providence was the sending of his divine Son, who, from his death — the greatest of moral evils — brought forth the greatest of goods, the redemption and ultimate glorification of the world.
What Christ has revealed is that the final goal of human history is the redemption, sanctification and glorification of man and his world. This is far beyond the capacity of the world’s laws, even though the world’s laws have their due place. It is the work of the overarching providence of God. We can play a part towards this ultimate goal by, as our Lord says in today’s Gospel, seeking “first his kingdom and his righteousness.” Our Lord saved the world by doing his Father’s will. By living in union with him and by following his example of doing the will of the Father, we contribute towards the fulfilment of God’s redemptive plan.
(E.J.Tyler)