14th Sunday after Pentecost 30.8.15 Spiritual maturity
God gives us what we need - that is what He thinks we need not what we think we need. (We have to read the fine print!)
We want money and cars and houses. He wants us to have humility and patience and generosity.
He does give us the material things too, but most of all He wants us to have the right idea about what we really need. So He says, Seek first the Kingdom of Heaven and all else will be given you besides.
He wants to save us by transforming us, changing the way we think, the way we value things; and this is preparing us for heaven.
He wants us to reach the point where we would be more likely to ask for humility or similar virtue, more fervently than we would ask for a new car etc.
We are allowed to ask for the things we need for basic comfort and dignity – enough to live on; food and shelter etc. But when it comes to more luxurious things we have to be prepared to live without them, if God so wills it.
Even the basic things we cannot guarantee fully, because circumstances might not permit them (eg war, famine). But we can always ask, and we are more likely to receive if we ask, than if we do not.
God wants us to understand that to possess Him is more important than to possess the various blessings He can give. He is greater than anything He has made, so we should be happy with Him. If we find ourselves murmuring with discontent it must mean we do not properly value God Himself.
Why does he withhold blessings? Sometimes He wants to give us different blessings, so if He refuses one thing it is only to give us something that will be better for us.
One thing in particular that He wants to bless us with is our ability to trust Him. He does not tell us much about the future. He lets us discover it bit by bit. This is frustrating for us as we would like to know certain things in advance. But He wants to keep us trusting in Him. So we have to pray our way into the future.
It is ironic that we trust other people more than we trust God. eg pilots, surgeons. We let them do more than we let God do.
God is proving us, refining us, seeking to bring us to spiritual maturity. So that we learn to relate to Him in a smooth consistent way, covering all times, not just when we have a pressing need.
We ask and thank all in one continuous motion. And what we ask takes on a less selfish quality, including the needs of other people, and that the plans of God unfold (His Kingdom come).
An example of this prayer is found in Our Lady at Cana. Son, they have no wine (Jn 2,3). No fuss, no panic. Knowing He would do something.
Once we have reached this higher level of spiritual maturity it turns out we are more likely to get the things we would have wanted in the first place.
The saints are the people who are most likely to work miracles. Yet they worry the least about what they have. This should tell us something.
How to get what you want. The first thing is to want something higher (Kingdom) and then we go back to getting what we want, only now trimmed of all the selfish excesses.
This is how God saves us. He leads us to this after we have gone every other place.
We are grateful that He has denied us a lot of things to give us what we have.
We navigate our way through life ignorant of so much, but we make progress to the final fulfilment. In Heaven it will be more straightforward!
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