Posted by The WORD in other words (2009) by Fr Joseph Miras SVD – Toronto Canada
Thursday 17th Week in Ordinary Time
Oftentimes we think that we always get the shorter end of the stick when we look too much on our fate and become overly narcissistic. Sometimes we get to the extent where we say we have been dealt unfairly by fate. The gods have been sleeping during their watch over us.
However, when we get hold of our senses, we realize that actually we live in a world where differences exist, where there is always a mixture of good and bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the big and the small. The good and the bad exist together – it is a reality. We will always be dealt with the “cards of life” as long as we live. Sometimes we might get good ones like knowing good friends, having good fortune or good job or good health and luck. At other times, we get the bad ones, ill health, and false company who would influence us to make ill-advised actions. What we can only do is to take a higher road by learning from the bad experiences and ask for God to help us find healing and closure from those sad and painful experiences.
When Jesus announced about God’s reign he proclaimed that the Good News is for all, no exceptions. Moreover, by “all” he means the whole of creation, human and non-human alike, the totality of God’s creation. So even if drabness and monotony force their ways into our awareness and perspective, we could only, at best, fight it out with a positive attitude and a will to do good.
This resolve is better expressed by the famous pianist András Schiff who remarked that playing Bach everyday is like a devotional exercise. Therefore, instead of fretting over the better lot of others, which could just be merely arising from jealousy; instead of feeding the needs of our ego, which could be indicative of our refusal to grow and a narcissistic tendency; let us instead, focus our attention to the innate beauty and goodness found in creation. Instead, we cultivate a passion for wonder and awe in and around us.
The following quote from Pablo Casals could best exemplify the state of being possessed by a positive spirit and outlook matched by the world’s beauty. “For the past eighty years I have started each day in the same manner… I go to the piano, and play two preludes and fugues of Bach…. It is a sort of benediction on the house. But that is not the only meaning for me. It is a rediscovery of the world of which I have the joy of being a part. It fills me with awareness of the wonder of life, with a feeling of the incredible marvel of being a human being…. Each day is something new, fantastic and unbelievable. This is Bach, like nature, a miracle.” Indeed we do ourselves something good when we recognize the fact that differences do exist in the world, and those differences constitute the world’s beauty.
Following a more religious line of thought, we cannot but quote St. Thomas Aquinas who once wrote that, “God cannot express himself fully in one creature and so he has produced many and diverse life-forms, so that what one lacks in its expression of goodness maybe compensated for by others: for goodness in God is single and undifferentiated, in creatures is refracted into a myriad of hues of being.” Such imagery speaks as well about what God’s Kingdom is like.
As Christians, we are called to do our part in bringing about God’s Kingdom, which as Marty Haugen wrote in the song “Send Down the Fire” we are “to be God’s compassion, to learn God’s mercy,” and “to take action against oppression.” –
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