{"id":4039,"date":"2017-02-25T12:43:40","date_gmt":"2017-02-25T12:43:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/?p=4039"},"modified":"2017-02-25T12:43:40","modified_gmt":"2017-02-25T12:43:40","slug":"commentary-on-8th-sunday-of-the-year-a-26-02-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/commentary-on-8th-sunday-of-the-year-a-26-02-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Commentary on 8th Sunday of the year (A) 26.02.2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

Commentary by Donagh O\u2019Shea OP<\/strong>, www.goodnews.ie<\/a><\/p>\n

Jesus said, \u201cNo one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.\u00a0 Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?\u00a0 Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?\u00a0 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?\u00a0 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin,\u00a0 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.\u00a0 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you \u2013 you of little faith?\u00a0 Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’\u00a0 For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.\u00a0 But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.\u00a0 So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cLook at the birds of the air\u2026. Consider the lilies of the field\u2026. Do not worry about tomorrow.\u201d\u00a0 There are people who would consider this New Age, if they didn\u2019t know where it came from.\u00a0 For many, the name \u2018New Age\u2019 has become a term of reproach, almost an accusation of heresy \u2013 or at the least a soft version of religion: \u2018Religion Lite\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 People who emphasise the beauty of nature, the innate goodness of people, etc., are suspected of avoiding the reality of sin and suffering.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is true that a spirituality that makes only slight mention or no mention at all of the Cross of Christ could hardly be called Christian.\u00a0 Where there is no affirmation that \u201cChrist has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again,\u201d it is hard to see the shape of the Christian faith.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are two contrasting spiritualities, then.\u00a0 But it would be better to think of them as two sides of the Christian faith, like the two sides of a coin.\u00a0 The God of creation and the God of redemption are one and the same God.\u00a0 It was the same Jesus who said, \u201cConsider the lilies of the field,\u201d and who died on the Cross.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is important for a Christian to have a positive view of nature \u2013 nature all around us, and our own nature.\u00a0 The pollution of land, sea, and air in our generation is evidence that we have neglected and abused the earth.\u00a0 This cannot be consistent with our faith.\u00a0 \u201cAnd God saw that it was good.\u201d\u00a0 This phrase is repeated six times, like an antiphon, throughout the first chapter of the Book of Genesis.\u00a0 At the end of each day\u2019s work of creation, \u201cGod saw that it was good\u201d (verses 4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25).\u00a0 And at the end of the entire work, \u201cGod saw that it was very good\u201d (verse 31).\u00a0 This is the charter for a healthy-minded lyrical outlook on the natural world (of which we are a part).\u00a0 We are entitled to have an outlook on nature that is religious in its scope and intensity.\u00a0 God is everywhere manifest in nature, because it is his creature. \u201cEvery creature speaks God,\u201d said Eckhart.\u00a0 It was commonplace in the Middle Ages to refer to Nature as \u201cGod\u2019s first book.\u201d<\/p>\n

But God’s greatness and compassion are revealed even more profoundly in the work of redemption.\u00a0 \u201cJesus is the hand of God’s mercy stretched out towards us,\u201d wrote Leo the Great.\u00a0 We could scarcely have imagined that God was anything like the father of the Prodigal Son, if Jesus had not us invented that parable.\u00a0 And we would certainly not have imagined the depths of God revealed through the death and resurrection of Jesus.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Remember, again, that it was this same Jesus who said, \u201cLook at the birds of the air\u2026. Consider the lilies of the field\u2026. Do not worry about tomorrow.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

We are not meant to choose between these two sides of the faith, but to hold them together in fruitful tension.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Commentary by Donagh O\u2019Shea OP, www.goodnews.ie Jesus said, \u201cNo one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.\u00a0 Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4040,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4039"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4041,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4039\/revisions\/4041"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}