Tuesday 1 August 2017

17th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year A 2017

Of course, we have since come a long way but in 1982, an advert for the cutting-edge Scottish-produced Sinclair ZX81 computer touted: "Finally, you can satisfy your lust for power". As someone suggested, while you are at it, you might as well throw in money. In fact, all our advertisements run along the triple strands of sex, power and wealth.

If lust is a hunger, then the pivotal premise for desire to make sense is its satisfaction. Otherwise it would remain an itch, if not an irritation. What is essential to this enterprise of satisfying the craving for pleasure, wealth and power is the emancipation of choice as exemplified by a music video of the cast of the series Empire. Check out the catchy tunes "No doubt about it" where it features Jussie Smollet and Pitbull singing "You can do what you wanna do. And do who you wanna do. Be who you wanna be. Freak who you wanna freak".

In short, this liberalisation consists of freeing the faculty of choosing from the anchor on which it is built. In the first reading the anchor is prudence and it is expressed in practical wisdom. The Collect voices this insight as "[G]rant that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may use the good things that pass in such a way as to hold fast even now to those that ever endure". This practical wisdom does not work out of a vacuum. In fact, it is relational as declared by the Psalmist: "Lord, how I love your law". This means that God's will must take precedence over my desire. Regrettably, our faculty of choosing has been tainted by sin and concupiscence. We have turned in on ourselves and to embrace God's will has become a struggle. We are that self-focused that it does not take much for us to pass off our proclivities as God's will.

God's will is found in both nature and through the Church. Nature because man has a nature and there he is subject to natural laws. The rage that we have today is that nature is not of creation but rather a construct. An example suffices here. The rampant development projects that we see taking place around us is less progress than the articulation of the unspoken assumption that powers these drives and it is that "nature should obey us" because we have the wherewithal to make it what we want it to be.

God's will is found through the Church because he who hears my voice listens to me meaning that Christ through the Holy Spirit speaks through His Church. Here again, we tend to idolise the maverick believing that the Holy Spirit cannot be tied down by an institution which is characterised by a censorious legalism and smacks of pharisaism. 

The Muslims have got one thing right, a feature in their practice which we used to have. This struggle of sin and concupiscence is definitely made more complicated because we have forgotten the education of our disordered nature. Prudence is strengthened by the taming of our senses. Fasting is a discipline of moulding the will because often enough what we want is in conflict with what the Lord desires. Thus, shaping of our conscience according to the love of Christ and His Church is helped by a will docile to the prompting of the Spirit.

The three traditional vows of religion--chastity, poverty and obedience even though they are often conceived of as renunciation, they are in actual fact, a mode of living whereby one enters into mystery of Christ through the total gift of the self. There is a vacuum created by God for which the human faculty of desire is an instrument to its fulfilment. As St Augustine says, "Lord our hearts are restless until they rest in you". Due to humanity's vitiated nature, this desire often takes us far from God. Therefore, mere renunciation is not enough to take us back to God. Instead, denial is only the first step in the re-education of our faculty of choosing.

Choosing Christ always has a cost and it is discipleship. We do not just make a choice once and for all and not think about it anymore. We affirm our decision for Him each time we choose. Recall the simple annual ritual of renewing our baptismal vows at Easter and each time we participate in a baptism, there is also the act of reaffirming our vows to choose God and reject satan. Furthermore, marriage promises are not made only at the altar. It is revitalised every day in the living out of one's marital fidelity. The same too goes for when we recite the Creed every Sunday. It might sound like a little dead ritual but it is simply one of many acts of renewing our faith and making a commitment to God.

Last week I made a reference to Hell in the sense that Heaven and Hell are not dualities created by God. Hell is the absence of Heaven and not the other way around because Heaven cannot be defined by something that does not exist objectively. Even though it is not mentioned in today's Gospel, the final stamp to all our choosing is whether we have wisely chosen heaven or whether by our own fault we have foolishly lost Heaven which therefore means that we have by our choice consigned ourselves to Hell. The discipleship of choosing God is not splashed out in the spectacular. Wisdom is not a flash of inspiration. Instead, if life is markedly ordinary 99% of the time, we can be sure that God's will is to be found in the humdrum of everyday living. It is in daily discipleship that one gains the wisdom of knowing how to use the good things that pass in such a way as to hold fast even now to those that ever endure.