Trusting in God’s Providence and Grace, 11th Saturday (I), June 19, 2021

Fr. Roger Landry
Chapel of the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See, Manhattan
Saturday of the 11th Week in Ordinary Time
June 19, 2021
2 Cor 12:1-10, Ps 34, Mt 6:24-34

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• In yesterday’s section of the Gospel, taken from this 16-day annual treatment of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus spoke to us about what treasure our heart was seeking, whether we were attempting to amass treasure in this world or in his everlasting kingdom. On the heels of that distinction, today Jesus discusses how our actions flow from the treasure our heart is desiring: whether we’re planning to serve God or serve mammon and makes clear that we can’t serve both simultaneously, for we “will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.” This was a truth every Jew of the age knew because to be a slave at that time meant a total commitment; one was always at the Master’s call; there was no way to serve two masters at the same time because that would always be a situation of irresolvable conflict. One had to win. We can only have one supreme desire or aspiration. Once we determine that, then everything else becomes relative to that absolute.
• Why would people choose to serve mammon instead of the Lord? Why would they seek to store up fleeting treasure here in this world? Jesus gives an indication in his use of the word “therefore” which links what he said about serving two masters to everything that comes later. It’s not fundamentally about a “lust of the eyes,” as St. John would call it, a desire for material things for their own sake. It’s because of anxiety, specifically fear that one won’t have what one needs. Because of this fear, one begins to place one’s heart — faith, hope, love, security — in material things. That’s why he gives five different reasons to help them and us place our trust in God and in his providential care and two straightforward commands flowing from that trust. Let’s tackle them:
  •  “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?” — Jesus tells us that if God has given us life, he will give us what that life needs. He hasn’t brought us into existence so that we will starve to death, parched and naked!
  • “Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they?” — Jesus has us turn to the fact that we’ve never seen an uncaged bird die of malnutrition. If God makes sure they have enough food, he’ll give us even more fatherly attention.
  • “Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span?” — Worrying, in other words, accomplishes nothing positive and is useless. But dread can make the time we do have miserable, incapable of living happily in the present and often missing the gifts God gives us at every instant.
  • “Why are you anxious about clothes? Learn from the way the wild flowers grow. They do not work or spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them. If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith?” — When we learn the lesson of the wild flowers, the scarlet poppies and the anemones that are found on the hillsides in Palestine, we see that God invests them with extraordinary beauty but only for a day. The day after they bloom, they lose their beauty and they’re good for nothing but to be thrown as a dry grass fire starter within an oven. If God so fills them with such beauty for a one day existence, Jesus is asking, will he not invest far more attention in us, who are the summit of his creation?
  • “So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’ All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.” — Jesus’ last argument, to his Jewish listeners, is “Don’t be like the pagans,” meaning not only don’t seek what they seek, but trust like they don’t. Pagans were constantly worrying about material things because they believed that their pseudo-gods were capricious and even though they provided yesterday, they might totally change their mind and allow us to starve to death parched and naked today. Jesus was communicating a totally different lesson: we have not a capricious, non-omnipotent deity on whom we can’t depend, but rather an all-powerful Father who loves us as children on whom we can depend, who knows what we need and will provide. And Jesus is saying this about our true most basic needs: food, clothing, housing. If he’s saying it about all the other things in life would truly need as well.
• From that he gives us two imperatives:
  • “Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides.” — The only thing we need to worry about, he says, is doing God’s will, allowing his kingdom to come into our life, trying to allow his holiness to help us to hallow his name. As we do, we will see how God will never cease to provide, one way or another, for us. He wants us to strive to remain in communion with God and then we will see how he never abandons those who trust in him.
  • “Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.” — The flip side of seeking and serving God is that we won’t worry about turning our back on mammon. He tells us not to worry about tomorrow. Notice he doesn’t say, “Next year,” or “The rest of your life.” He says, “tomorrow,” encouraging us not merely to leave the “future” to God but actually our needs tomorrow, just like the Jews in the desert, for whom God rained down manna each day. A couple of days ago we pondered in the “Our Father” how Jesus taught us to pray each day for our daily bread and how God has never let us down. He really doesn’t want us freaking out about the next day, and, I believe with a smirk, he says, “Sufficient for a day is its own evil,” meaning that there’s enough evil, enough lack of trust in God, worrying about today like the pagans.
• These were lessons God was likewise teaching St. Paul. As a Pharisee, he had once trusted in his works but now he trusted in Jesus Christ and in the relationships with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit into which Jesus had introduced him. We’ve seen over the last couple of days the great litany of what St. Paul had suffered in proclaiming the faith. But God had taken care of him. In the midst of sufferings, he had given him a “transfiguration moment,” an ecstatic experience in which he witnessed something of the glory of heaven. He described how many of his sufferings — like the “thorn” in his flesh, the “angel of Satan” to beat him and keep him from pride, which many scholars think was likely malaria, because elsewhere St. Paul said he felt like pulling his eyes out, something that those with malaria occasionally feel like doing because of the pain to their eyes — were allowed so that he might trust more in God’s Providence. After having begged the Lord perseveringly to have this cross removed, God replied, “My grace is sufficient for you.” God’s grace, the gift of God himself, is all we really need. St. Paul came to boast gladly of his weakness, of what he lacked, because then the “power of God” is on full display. Likewise when we are in need, it is an opportunity for God’s providential love to be seen far more clearly.
• What happens each day at the Mass should renew and deepen our trust in God’s care for us more than the lilies and the sparrows. St. Paul told the Romans, “If God didn’t even spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, would he not give us everything else besides?” And God the Father didn’t spare his own Son but gives him to us each day. And compared to that, everything else is small change! God’s daily gift of his Son in love on the altar is the greatest downpayment on God’s providential care we could ever ask for or receive. And we have the privilege each day, in coming to Mass, to choose which God we’re going to serve, to lift our hearts, to place them in our true Treasure and to seek first God, his kingdom, and his holiness, as we prepare to taste and see the Lord’s goodness.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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