13th Sunday after Pentecost
30.8.20 Thanksgiving
We are expressing trust in Him that whatever has gone wrong, or appears to be so, can be brought to a proper resolution by Him.
If I did not get what I wanted I will get something else, equally satisfactory, or better.
The main thing is to be in a state of union with God. He is the Source of all goodness (James 1,17). If we are at the Source we must be in the best place.
We do not judge God by the last thing that happened. He is not like the stock market which can go up or down from one day to the next.
If a graph were to be made of God's reliability it would not be up and down, but a perfectly straight line across the top of the page at the highest level and for the longest time.
We give thanks for this state of affairs. Overall things are going well, if God is in command.
But we still have to deal with details, and some of them can be very painful.
As we give thanks to God in all circumstances we can mention the things that are not going well. We do this with a sense of quiet trust that God will know what to do. As Our Lady did at Cana: Son, they have no wine. Not a complaint, just a minor problem that can be swept away in God's creative power.
The leper who came back saw further than the other nine, recognising where the healing had come from. The other nine were not sufficiently focused on God. They took the blessing in their stride, taking it for granted, as one can do. The nine lepers needed more work on the spiritual level.
The one leper was able to connect his physical healing to a spiritual source. He was thanking God, not his ‘lucky stars’ or equivalent, but the true source of all blessing.
His faith made him ‘whole’ because it was well-rounded and solidly based.
We ask for everything that we need, large or small, but we come to see that what we need most of all is a true sense of God's goodness.
I will not try to out-think God or come up with a better answer than He could find. Sufficient that He guide the course of our lives and guide also the whole Church.
Giving thanks in all circumstances could even go as far as being thankful that God sometimes punishes us, by way of bringing us to see what is really needed – which is that we should obey Him at all times.
God does not like things going wrong any more than we do, but the way to get clear of such situations is to obey Him, to align ourselves with His holy will. Until we do that we will have trouble.
We become more familiar with God and His ways, as we learn from experience. We cannot claim to know all about Him but we grasp the general idea that He has great love for each person and desires the salvation of all.
Trust will increase as we make proper thanksgiving. We can look back on our lives and see times when the activity of God has become clear, even if it was not so clear at first.
The thanksgiving has to be deep enough that it takes hold on us; such that it makes us stronger for whatever comes next.
As we say in each Mass: Let us give thanks to the Lord our God!
No comments:
Post a Comment