From pastor’s desk on the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, year C
We live in a world that loves success. Most of us enjoy watching shows in which we admire truly gifted individuals like those in America’s Got Talent. We like to read stories about people who made a great career while starting from scratch and ending up in a leading role of some major business operation. The fact that we like the stories of significant accomplishments reflects our longing for something meaningful and beautiful in our lives. We all want to succeed in some way and have a sense of fulfillment. It is an authentic human trait to try to reach the impossible. It is part of who we are as humans: to achieve, to be independent, resourceful, responsible, and successful in this life. However, when it comes to the spiritual life, things are not quite the same.
When we try to apply the mere human standards of accomplishment to spiritual life, nothing seems to work. We must remember that Christian spirituality is more about emptying ourselves than accomplishing something in the worldly sense. It is about embracing the cross and allowing God to work through us. In this way we avoid a deception that we can do something for God. Rather, we acknowledge the things that God does for us. The greatest example of this spiritual approach is the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was well aware of God’s grace in Her life, for She sang, “The Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is His Name” (Luke 1:49). Like Mary we can only receive God’s grace and cooperate with it in order to become spiritually fruitful, not successful. Thus, what we can do is to learn how to become recipients of God’s grace. For this reason, we surrender to Jesus so that He can work in us and through us.
But even if we immerse in a genuine pursuit of spiritual life, we also must be aware of some spiritual dangers. Namely, if I feel too “successful” in spiritual life, that is, if I begin to think, “I pray very well, I have great spiritual gifts of healing, prophecy, preaching” etc., we may easily fall into pride. Yes, I can be prideful of “my” spiritual gifts and these gifts can really blind me. In that case, instead of focusing on the Lord I may enjoy only His “presents.” I may become like a Pharisee who was boasting about himself before God in the Temple of Jerusalem (Luke 18:11).
In this context, Saint Paul recognized this danger very quickly in the growing Christian communities, even in himself. So, he wrote to the Galatians (the second reading of this Sunday):
May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. (Gal 6:14)
This is an invitation from the Lord to all of us to put on Christ and boast in the Cross of Jesus, through which we have been redeemed and saved. We should know that we are all spiritually weak like infants and not capable of doing anything good without God’s grace. Having said that, there is nothing to be afraid of, for our Lord Jesus knows who we are. He knows our feebleness and every weakness. He knows and comes to help us. What we need to do is to surrender to His Merciful Love so that He may do the rest.
If you would like to inquire more on this topic of surrendering to God, I strongly recommend you read “The Abandonment to Divine Providence,” which is a classic book of the Catholic spirituality by Jean Pierre de Caussade. May the Lord help you to embrace the daily cross and grow in holiness.
As we celebrate Independence Day let us remember that our true freedom is found only in Christ, who reveals to us who we ought to be—the children of God.
Happy Independence Day and a blessed week!
Fr. Janusz Mocarski, pastor