Simply living - or living simply?
The liturgical readings of last Sunday’s celebration of the Eucharist (the Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time of the Church’s Year) would seem to offer a helpful guide to the season of Lent. They are a fitting prelude, setting the score, as it were, for the theme song about following Christ more fully in living in harmony with the implications of his Paschal Mystery.
What is the underlying message in the passage from the Gospel of Matthew, taken from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, in which he addressed the crowds gathered to hear him on the hillside? He tells them what’s the point of worrying about basic human material needs, like food and clothing. To so many people suffering and dying of malnutrition, lack of medical care or exposure, as we are made aware of through the Media, Jesus’ words would seem rather odd advice, indeed quite inconsiderate if not callous. Is the sore need of people everywhere – not only both in the so-called “underdeveloped” countries, but also to an increasing degree in our own – to be ignored or left to political powers to sort out? To anyone with a grain of humane sensitivity the burning issue concerns finding an adequate solution to the distressing situation of others. What is a matter of no small serious concern is not only all this suffering in the world, but also, more insidiously, the growing extent of what Pope Francis calls the “global indifference.” Isn’t it this that creeps like a dangerous contagion everywhere, destroying both the will to change and even corroding a sense of the need for change and improvement of the present situation of our world?So, what’s Jesus’ point? And how can his words provide a context for our approach to Lent? A clue to appreciate and apply his advice can be seen in the second reading of the liturgy of this same Sunday. St Paul describes in a few words the vocation of all to be “servants of Christ” and “stewards of the mysteries of God.” These words have, quite rightly, been applied to the sacramental ministry of holy orders. (In fact, I had them inscribed on the invitation to my priestly ordination.) However, it must be remembered that their scope of application is much wider. For Paul wasn’t focusing on a specific concreted group. In fact, this Apostle, like Jesus, was adamantly an opponent of a mentality smacking of clericalism, absorbed in cultic specialization of ritualistic observation, inwardly turned on preserving the complicated rules and clinging to the privileges of their club! But, rather, he was addressing the whole community of Corinth, a busy commercial seaport city comprising a motley cluster of people from different social strata. Later in the same letter, it will be recalled, he severely upbraids these people for their selfish disregard and neglect for their poorer members as a contradiction of the very sense of what they celebrated in the Lord’s Supper. Thus, his words pertain to all as called to be Christ’s servants and stewards of God’s mysteries.
The significance of this consists in serving Christ in others in faithful stewardship, that is, being responsible in caring for creation mysteriously manifesting God’s wonderful design. In this perspective we can discern the point of Jesus’ message in the Sermon on the Mount. The profound sense permeating his words is, then, surely about a far wider, deeper concern than about being anxious merely for oneself. His message has a vast outlook that encompasses and opens up the narrow scope of our habitual way of looking at reality. For it enables us to perceive and relate all circumstances of personal living to and within the magnificent providentially wise plan of God for all his creatures. This ‘plan’, however, is not just something academic or theoretical. It is imbued with the personal attention and tenderness of a mother, stretching beyond even some women’s shortness of memory, as the first reading from the prophet Isaiah puts it, in caring for their children, seeing them as a gift from God.
Is this tenderly caring attitude of God reflected in the way we draw up our programmes and projects and planification when endeavouring to tackle the urgent problems of the world? To resemble God our Father, thus, our approach, rather than being complex, should be simple. In other words, attempts to bring about human development and wellbeing mustn’t turn stewardship and service into a welfare organisation of impersonal administrative bureaucracy - as it too often happens to become sadly! While organisational skills and proper administration of the enormous array of human, material and technological resources are certainly important and, indeed, necessary, these require to be employed in such a way as to serve the fostering of better relations between people.
Furthermore, the task of Christians is far more demanding and also subtly all-pervasive of all parameters of human society. This implies taking to heart and witnessing through our entire way of living the teaching and example of Jesus, who is truly the Gospel or ‘Good News” of hope. Rather than being merely members of a humanitarian agency, an NGO, worthwhile though this certainly is, as Pope Francis emphasizes, Christians are called to show by the very quality of their communal simplicity of lifestyle how human beings are brothers and sisters caring for one another because they are children of the same God and Father. This is the deep meaning of being “servants of Christ” and “stewards of the mysteries of God.” It is the essential point of Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount and of his whole earthly existence poured out for the life of the world in the gift of himself on Mount Calvary.
These reflections on Last Sundays scripture readings lead toward discovering how by being freed from the disease of excessive self-preservation we are enabled to share joyously and generously with all people the beauty and harmony both of simply living and living simply.
Image above: Illuminated Ms. - Mazarine Library, Paris.
Is this tenderly caring attitude of God reflected in the way we draw up our programmes and projects and planification when endeavouring to tackle the urgent problems of the world? To resemble God our Father, thus, our approach, rather than being complex, should be simple. In other words, attempts to bring about human development and wellbeing mustn’t turn stewardship and service into a welfare organisation of impersonal administrative bureaucracy - as it too often happens to become sadly! While organisational skills and proper administration of the enormous array of human, material and technological resources are certainly important and, indeed, necessary, these require to be employed in such a way as to serve the fostering of better relations between people.
Furthermore, the task of Christians is far more demanding and also subtly all-pervasive of all parameters of human society. This implies taking to heart and witnessing through our entire way of living the teaching and example of Jesus, who is truly the Gospel or ‘Good News” of hope. Rather than being merely members of a humanitarian agency, an NGO, worthwhile though this certainly is, as Pope Francis emphasizes, Christians are called to show by the very quality of their communal simplicity of lifestyle how human beings are brothers and sisters caring for one another because they are children of the same God and Father. This is the deep meaning of being “servants of Christ” and “stewards of the mysteries of God.” It is the essential point of Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount and of his whole earthly existence poured out for the life of the world in the gift of himself on Mount Calvary.
These reflections on Last Sundays scripture readings lead toward discovering how by being freed from the disease of excessive self-preservation we are enabled to share joyously and generously with all people the beauty and harmony both of simply living and living simply.
Image above: Illuminated Ms. - Mazarine Library, Paris.
