The Eucharist, Heart Of The Church: Part Six

31-07-2016 EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR (C).

SCRIPTURAL READING:

Eccl. 1:2; 2:21-23
Ps 90:3-4.5-6.12-13.14.17 (R. 1)
2 Col. 3:1-5.9-11; Accl. Mt. 5:3
Gospel Jn 6:41-51 OR Lk 12:13-21

Preamble:

Dear friends please repeat these words after me;
Stay with me Lord Jesus as I give you my mind; help me understand your word.
Stay with me Lord Jesus as I give you my ears; help me hear your voice.
Stay with me Lord Jesus as I give you my heart; help me welcome you.
Holy Spirit, rekindle in me the fire of your love. Amen.

THE EUCHARIST THE HEART OF THE CHURCH-PART SIX.
THEME: THE LORD’S PRESENCE BRINGS THE DESIRED TRANSFORMATION - MEDITATION THREE.

If you are a keen observer of the happenings all around us today, you would observe that we have become increasingly very aggressive as a result of the hardship in the economy of our great country Nigeria. There is this rat race of competing for the world positions and acclamations, titles, material things and all that come with it. There is this craze for been the best among the best, been the richest among the rich. There is also a tussle to be the wealthiest among the class of the wealthy.

There is a striking difference between the wealthy man and the rich man. A wealthy man create riches or income for others and his systems keeps supplying with abundance-for example he perceives the need for a car, creates a factory to produce the car, and employ others to work in it. Soon, the society has what they need (affordable cars), his employees are getting paid, and he is at home sleeping in peace knowing very well that he has changed the life of others, while a rich man makes himself rich and could make others poor.

He almost creates nothing. He takes his country’s resources and hides in Swiss bank. He is actually a parasite that thinks he is smart. He has no intention or lacks the ability to help others like what the gospel passage presents to us in the parable of the rich man. His main interest is possession of money by skimming the system others have created. When a society is filled with wealthy people, there is a narrow gap between the have and have not, but when it is filled with rich people, the rich will get richer in the name of inflation that eventually leads to a breakdown of society.

A wealthy man shares idea while a rich man hordes idea and is very stingy with it which in actual fact is an inadequacy in him. It increases his aggressive nature like what the rich man in today’s gospel passage said to himself “what shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?” and he said, I will do this: I will pull down my barns, and build larger ones; and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, be merry.” But the Lord called him “fool” and demanded for his soul and the riches he left behind whose shall it be?

The aggression we are talking about is the craze to build the outside and not the inside and it talks about a lack of contentment with ourselves, with our accomplishments, with our position, job, status there is the desire to be more. We are busy and disturbed about the outside, the externalities of life and not our interior being.

These breeds unhappiness in the soul; today the percentage of those who slump to death is on the increase and of course sympathizers might want to blame it on a certain person or to one spiritual thing or the other. But the truth remains that the problem lies, lives and is with us. We always want something more than what we have or where we are. Without been grateful to God for what we have in terms of height, position, and the good things of life.

The lack of contentment is hydra headed. There are some single people who are not going to be contented until they get married. But you need to enjoy being single because when you get married, you will enjoy it more. There are married people today who wish they weren’t married, or who wish they were married to somebody else. White people sit in tanning booths trying to get darker. Dark people put cream on their skin trying to get lighter.

Ladies with curly hair go to the salon to get it straightened. People with straight hair go to the salon to get it permed or get it scrapped off because they want no hair on their skin. Some scrap off their eye lashes and eye brows, some others fix eye lashes to look like dollies and mark their already scrapped off eyes lash area with eye pencil.

Some are not even proud of themselves or who God made them to be. They get their self-esteem from what others tell them about themselves, they go around carrying along their mistakes, shortcomings, weaknesses, things that they wish were different without realizing that God made them to be simply the best, valuable, a masterpiece, strong, bold and beautiful and confident. Some also get into the habit of ascribing unto others so much and leave themselves behind.

They will so complement and celebrate their friends and brag about them and leave themselves behind. The truth is that just as you appreciate others, you must learn to appreciate yourself, believe you are special, strong, confident be happy with yourself. The enemy knows that if he succeeds in getting you to be unhappy with yourself then he has succeeded in ruining your life and destiny. Get out of that mentality and believe that there is something special about you and with God you will be that. But then you must begin to be content with whom God has made you to be. A lack of contentment is the beginning of unhappiness.

There is really nothing wrong with improving, being your best, and showing your style, but the way and manner we go about it is the point of the gospel passage today and the first reading. These readings tells us of the emptiness of material things which many today kill for, join cults, confraternities, covens and fellowships, visit oracles and shrines today in order to be more assertive, influential and powerful in the society today also to get out of their seeming predicament.

But then this also speaks of a complex and in this case it is inferiority complex; a feeling that it is only when you have money, power, the woman or man of your dreams, position or car or house or clothes, shoes, wrist watch or phone of your choice that your happiness begins or you will be content and satisfied. But then that is a big fat lie!!!

Beloved in Christ, Contentment is not based on what you have or don’t have, who likes you or who does not like you. Contentment is learning to love yourself the way you are, the way God has created you, love your position before you proceed to other stage of life. It is a big tragedy to go through life always dissatisfied, wishing you had more and more and more, wanting to look like somebody else, waiting to be happy. Beloved you need to be content where you are and that contentment begins with building your interior life and developing a personal relationship with the lord which the second reading of today talks about.

The solution to a lack of satisfaction, bitterness in the soul cannot be solved by wishful thinking but in rediscovering the presence of the Lord anew because as he said “this is my body which is given up for you.” “This is my Blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant which is poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

To experience the beauty of this, you must seek to respond to the Lord in bodily attitudes for he has given you his body and blood for your transformation. The bodily attitudes we are talking about is sit finding time to “sit” quietly in order to concentrate on listening to the word of God which is also a part of our liturgy.

Stand” before the Lord as a gesture of readiness to follow his instruction just as Israel ate the paschal lamb standing to manifest readiness to depart and be led by the word of God. Besides that, standing is the expression of the victory of Christ: at the end of every battle, it is the victor who remains standing. That is what it means when Stephen, before his martyrdom, sees Christ standing at the right hand of God (Acts 7:56). Thus standing for the Gospel is, over and beyond the Exodus attitude, which we share with Israel, standing in the presence of the Risen one is recognition of the victorious one.

“Kneeling” before the lord is not an introduction of something new within the celebration of the liturgy, it has long existed in history, it is not a sign of the church humiliating us, or asking us to do something entirely different but is a bodily expression of adoration, in which we remain upright, ready, available, but at the same time bow before the greatness of the living God and of his Name.

Jesus Christ himself, according to Saint Luke’s account, in the last hours before his passion, prayed on his knees on the Mount of Olives (Lk 22:41). Stephen fell on his knees when just before his martyrdom he saw the heavens open and Christ standing there (Acts 7:60). Before him who was standing, he knelt. Peter prayed kneeling to beseech God to raise up Tabitha (Acts 9:40). After his great farewell speech before the elders of Ephesus (before he went off to Jerusalem and to his captivity), Paul knelt and prayed with them (Acts 20:36).

The most profound teaching is in the hymn to Christ in the letter to the Philippians (Phil. 2:6-11), which refers to the promise in Isaiah, of people paying homage on their knees to the God of Israel, to Jesus Christ: He is the “name, that at the name…every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth” (Phil. 2:10). When we kneel, we express our affirmation of the divinity of Jesus.

We kneel with Jesus; we kneel with his witnesses-from Stephen, Peter, and Paul onward-before Jesus, and this is an expression of faith, which was from the beginning the requisite visible witness of the relationship of faith to God and to Christ in this world. Kneeling in this way is the bodily expression of our positive response to the real presence of Jesus Christ, who as God and man, with body and soul, flesh and blood is present among us.

There is no better place of finding perfect peace and joy, self-contentment and self-satisfaction, self-transformation except in the presence of the Lord; for he is the author and finisher of your faith. He is the great force that can help you put away disordered passion, lust, anger, bitterness, immorality, impurities, evil desire and covetousness, deception and lies which the second reading of today talks about. To walk into the doors of blessedness which also is the abode of peace, there must a total surrender to the Lord of course there would be the struggle of letting go but with the lord it will be easy.

Beloved in Christ, each time we approach the presence of the Lord, we must feel this burning desire of responding to the invitation of the Lord. As we often submit ourselves to him and respond to his call we are moulded into the living image and likeness of the creator. I pray this day that we are able to be free of every disordered passion and lust for the things of the world for they are all emptiness which gives no true peace. True peace and satisfaction comes when we build our interior life then we are able to develop a pleasing relationship with the Lord.