Drawing Hope from the
Future
October 30, 2016 THE THIRTY-FIRST SUNDAY OF THE YEAR C
Inventory
St.
Augustine defines love as wanting someone (or something) to “be and be
everything it can be” (esse et bene esse).
Is there any person or group or people I would just prefer not to have on the
planet? Or not in our own country? Or at least not living near me or working
where I work?
Is
there any category of people I am not interested in helping to get better? Is
there anything else God made that I am not concerned about preserving or
developing? Shall we save the whales? The rain forest? How about the Bronx?
Input
What
if you changed the Entrance Antiphon
into a plea addressed to yourself instead of to God, and spoken by some person,
group of people, or something else God made whose existence is in some way
threatened: “Do not abandon me, [your
name]… Hurry to help me, [your name], my savior!” How would you answer that plea? Would you
answer, no matter where it came from?
The
fact is, every Christian in the world is consecrated by God as a steward of Christ’s kingship and charged
with responsibility for all creation. We may not be very conscious of this — because
it may not be what was emphasized in our religious instruction — but it is
Catholic doctrine. The fifth Preface
for Sundays in Ordinary time proclaims it: “You made us the stewards of
creation.”
In
the Opening Prayer(s) we acknowledge
that everything we have received or see or use comes from God’s “fullness.” We value everything as coming
from God and in some way expressing his goodness. But we are very aware that it
is “only
with God’s help” that we can recognize this and offer “fitting service and praise”
by responsible care for all God has made and entrusted to us. We ask God to
keep the “limits which our failings
impose on hope” from “blinding us ”
to God’s presence in all he has made so that we can “trust in your promise” to give “eternal
life” to all who ask him for it, and in the “fullness of time” to “gather
up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.” Today’s Mass is
a summons to confident stewardship.
1
1See Genesis 2:15; Ephesians
1: 9-23; Colossians 1: 9-20; Philippians 3:21.
Every
sight a site
Wisdom 11:22 to 12:1 defines the attitude
Christians should have toward all God has made by declaring God’s attitude:
For you love all things that are… for what you
hated, you would not have fashioned. And how could a thing remain, unless you
willed it?
We
did not make this world, and it is not for us to declare its value except by
recognizing the value it has for the One to whom all things belong: the One who
made them and preserves them in being.
Christians
never just see trees, flowers, animals or beer. Christians see these all beings
as be-ing, here and now, because God
is in them, giving them existence, sharing with us, through each one’s nature,
some characteristic of his own goodness translated into physical being, sight, sound,
touch, taste and fragrance. For Christians every “sight” is a “site”: a place
where God dwells and manifests himself.
You spare all things, because they are yours, O
Lord and lover of souls, for your imperishable spirit is in all things!
This
is the foundation of Christian stewardship:
we recognize that nothing is truly ours, but that God has entrusted everything
that is his to us, to manage it for him. To do this well, we first need to
recognize the value of everything that is.
An
excellent first step toward this would be to re-read the Vatican II document,
“The Church in the Modern World,” whose real title (in Latin) is “Joy and
Hope.” The document is too rich and exciting to summarize here.
This
stewardship is a special responsibility of the laity, whose identifying mission
as “sharing in the priestly, prophetic and kingly office of Christ,” is to
“penetrate and perfect the temporal sphere of things through the spirit of the
Gospel…. since it is proper to the laity’s way of life to spend their days in
the midst of the world and of secular transactions… as a kind of leaven.”
In
particular, the Church declares it is “desirable, and often imperative, that
Catholics cooperate with other Christians…. and with other people who, though
not Christians, acknowledge certain human values held by all humankind….
Through this cooperation… the laity bear witness to Christ the Savior of the
world, and to the unity of the human family.”2
To search
and save
The
Responsorial Psalm (Psalm 145) reminds us to grow in
appreciation for people and things by expressing it in praise: “I will
praise your name forever, my king and my God!”
Luke 19: 1-10 shows us Jesus recognizing and affirming the
goodness in a man everyone had written off. Zacchaeus, the “chief tax
collector” had become “a wealthy man” through exploitation and graft. Jesus
shocked all the bystanders by inviting himself to dinner at Zacchaeus’s house.
When
they “began to murmur, ‘He has gone to a sinner’s house as a guest,’” Jesus
said, “This man too is a son of Abraham.” By acknowledging that truth even
though Zacchaeus’s conduct denied and obscured it, Jesus was able to “search
out and save what was lost.” This is the spirit of the true shepherd, who takes
responsibility for the sheep. We need to consciously appreciate and love
everything and everyone we are responsible for. A practical means to this is to
form the habit of deliberately praising what is good in everything we see: “I will
praise your name forever, my king and my God!”
Faithful to the end
In
2Thessalonians 1:11 to 2:2 Paul is
exhorting the Thessalonians to be faithful — to “stand firm and hold fast to
the traditions you were taught (2:15)” — so that “God may make you worthy of
his call” to be faithful stewards of the word Paul has preached to them.
The
Thessalonians, as often happens in times of persecution or crisis, were getting
focused on claims and prophecies that the “day of the Lord” was at hand. Paul
says to stop wondering when the end of the world is coming and to concentrate
instead on persevering in responsible stewardship, working to establish the
reign of God on earth for as long as it takes.
When
Christ comes in “the glory of his power” he will “be glorified among his holy
ones” who have believed and persevered in faith (1:9-10). Paul prays that “the
name of the Lord Jesus may be glorified” in them and in all of us now, so that
both we and the world can see God bringing “to fulfillment every good purpose
and effort” inspired by faith. The more we see this happening now, the more it
will encourage us to persevere.
But
it will always seem that the deck is stacked against us. Even though we know
that God loves everything and everyone he made, and that his “imperishable
spirit is in all things,” working in the best and worst of us alike to “deliver
us from evil,” we still find it hard to love everyone and to keep striving to
establish the reign of God over every area and activity of human life on earth,
without exception. But this is what stewardship is all about.
In
times of special difficulty, persecution or any trial, what motivates us to
faithful stewardship is a cultivated awareness of the “end time,” when Christ
is going to come in glory, having triumphed over everything that blocks or
resists the reign of God on earth. We know this is going to happen. We know it
is happening now. To keep ourselves conscious of this, we keep singing now what
we will sing then, “I will praise your
name forever, my king and my God!”
2Vatican II, “The Laity,”
nos. 2, 27.
Insight
What is
your strongest reason for affirming the essential goodness of every person and
product of God’s creation on earth?
Initiative:
Never stop
with the “bad news.” Whatever you see or hear that discourages you, always look
deeper into what is there (make every sight a site), and always look beyond the
present, to see what will be when Christ’s victory is complete.
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