God Will Provide

Today’s Gospel asks us to stop worrying.  Is that possible in the world we live in today?  I was just reading a post on Facebook in which someone asked for suggestions for an exciting vacation trip.  One cheeky person responded, “Come visit us in Chicago.  Dodging bullets is exciting!”  Of course there are other things to worry about as well – climate change, the collapse of our economy, a political system gone awry.  How are we to stop worrying?

This particular passage of the Sermon on the Mount is all the more difficult to understand when we stop to realize that the people of Jesus’ time were living a subsistence kind of existence.  If a man did not work that day, he and his family did not eat.  These people did not have refrigerators stocked with fresh foods or even pantries with canned and non-perishable food.  They did not have closets full of clothes.  They did not start their day by deciding which outfit or which suit to wear that day.  More than half of the children born never made it to puberty.  The average age expectancy was about thirty-five or forty.  Poor nutrition, poor sanitation, and no understanding of disease and contagion meant that one never counted on tomorrow.  Living through the present day was challenge enough.  “Sufficient for a day is its own evil” (Matthew 6:34c).

Though our situation is not like theirs, Jesus’ message fits our situation as well as theirs.  The point that Jesus is trying to make is that God is in control.  Nothing we do, no moments of anxiety, no provisions for the future will safeguard us from the various difficulties that characterize our world just as the people of Jesus’ time could not safeguard themselves from the difficulties of their world. 

What happens when we begin to think that we can provide for ourselves?  We begin to store up more and more, to put things away for a “rainy day.”  In many cases this means that we forget that we are powerless in the face of evil.  The only thing that will save us is trust in God. 

St. Francis of Assisi was the son of a rich merchant.  He had everything money could buy.  More than anything else, he wanted to be a knight.  His father bought him the necessary knightly attire, procured a steed, and watched him go off to battle to win honors and glory.  He ended up as a prisoner of war, held for ransom by his enemies.  He slowly realized that his father’s wealth could not protect him.  So he chose to go in the opposite direction.  He gave up everything, even the clothes his father had provided, and placed his total dependence on God.  He stripped himself naked and proclaimed that from that moment he would call God his Father.  This is how he came to understand the Gospel.

Not everyone is called to the radical form of evangelical poverty that became St. Francis’ hallmark.  However, we are all called to place our dependence upon God rather than on material wealth.  The material things of this world are not evil, but they are not necessarily good either.  They simply are.  When they begin to take over our lives, then we have lost sight of what Jesus asks of us.  Serve God, not material things.  Love God, not money.  Love your neighbor, not the things of this world.  God will provide.

Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator