32nd Sunday In Ordinary Time - A Refection By Fr. Leo
Understanding the meaning of the Incarnation gives a helpful perspective in understanding today’s readings. For God there is a oneness between God’s-self and what God has willed into being, namely, creation.
For us, because of sin, the oneness, or the right relationship of all things, is interrupted. We are thus limited in perceiving the right relationship of things and work towards the restoration of Eden as we journey back to God in this life. Because of this there will be clashes between what God’s spirit draws us to and what individual human cultures deem is true.
It seems silly on one had that the seven brothers and their mother would sacrifice their lives over pork. Isn’t that only a cultic rule for health reasons that was given religious significance in a time when disease was less understood? Also, why would the king be so insisting on their breaking their custom for his satisfaction. It is the king’s ego that has become his own truth in place of God’s. Such missing the mark leads to turmoil and death.
The difference between the rationality of the king and the seven brothers and mother is their motivation. The king is motivated my power. The brother’s and mother by love of God. While their perception of truth may be limited they are willing to die because of the love of God as they know it.
In today’s world we see extremist killing in the name of God. Which I believe can not be God’s truth. I must then ask what their motivation is. Is it for love that they kill or for power and control. From my perspective it is the later as they perceive themselves as the rulers over others, even their women who are seen more are property than the daughters of God.
In pursuing God’s truth, we must always be willing to question our cultic life just as we would question the cultic life of others. Christ, we must remember, is above culture and seeks to draw us to his truth and to the proper ordering of all things in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
I believe our best guide in our search to know and live in God is to look at our motivations as ask if what we desire is the fullest expression of love for God, ourselves and others. This honest and hard question, asked in prayer for the gift of the Holy Spirit, is the best guide we can hope to have. The true challenge that follows is weather or not we are willing to die to all that would stand in truths way? Love that leads to the fulness of life passes through death before it rises up.
So the second most helpful guide is to bolster our faith in the resurrection. Hope based in God’s gift of the fullness of life, helps us keep things in a spiritual perspective as we see in our Gospel today. We live in this world, but we always try to live with a spiritual perspective of God’s ways which can be different than our ways as individuals, as a society and even as a Church.