Pastor's Column

4^th Sunday Ordinary Time

Feb 3, 2008

 

Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, is a very rich and powerful man who once made an observation about our faith that I have never forgotten. He said, "Christianity is a religion for losers and weaklings." Actually, it is quite the opposite!

Jesus frequently warns us about the dangers of wealth, power, and fame, because they can blind us into thinking that we don't need God. That's why we hear, over and over again, as in the beatitudes, that the really smart people, the blessed ones, are frequently NOT worldly successes at all. They have bought the stocks that are really going to pay off, but their time to be fully revealed has not yet quite come. On that day, we shall see who the losers and weaklings really are.

Let's hear Saint Paul's words in the second reading this Sunday (1 Cor. 1:26-31): consider your own calling, brothers and sisters. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many of noble birth. Rather did God choose the foolish of this world to shame the wise. God chose the weak of this world to shame the strong. He chooses those who count for nothing to reduce to nothing those who really think they are something. 

It is so crucial that we begin to understand the hidden plan of God. Don't we all struggle with events and crises and personality issues that seem to disempower us? We see this ideal world on TV or ads: if I could be rich, famous, powerful, liked, that would be the ideal. Yet all the while, Christ is working to give you the opposite of these things –not to hurt you, but so that you might be really rich, really powerful, really blessed.

The beatitudes speak in a language that just doesn't make any sense to many people who are too full of themselves, their lives, their money, their power trips, or their agendas to realize that they have any need for God. But when we are suffering or sick or grieving or dispossessed of something we love – we are arriving at the beatitudes, words that unlock the secrets of heaven itself. The irony, of course is that the times of our greatest needs and crises often turn out to be the richest source of  blessings in the future.

Almost every one of us, if given a chance would prefer to be wealthy, full of life, well-travelled, laughing and well-thought of. Christ knows this, of course, and ultimately wants these things for us, too. However, the road to actually getting there spiritually is filled with those self-emptying moments when we have to admit our powerlessness before the realities of our lives. It is at those times that Christ will often do his greatest works in us. Praise God!

                                                                             Father Gary