Offer Praise

June 30, 2008
Monday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
By Beth DeCristofaro

He that offers praise as a sacrifice glorifies me; and to him that goes the right way I will show the salvation of God.” (Psalm 50:23)

A scribe approached and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus answered him, “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.” (Matthew 8:19-21)

Piety

Thank you, God, for the delights and wonders of the world and for my ability to be delighted and to feel wonder. Thank you, God, for the gift of your Son and thank you, God, for my ability and desire to follow him. Thank you, God, for the gift of others and the potency of community. Guide me to walk with others and see you in each of them. Guide me so that in all I think, feel and do, I offer praise as a sacrifice to glorify you.

Study
http://www.usccb.org/nab/readings/063008.shtml

My daughter is studying abroad and I follow her travels via the Internet, “googling” the destinations she visits. It has been wonderful seeing the sights of the world with this technology! Did you know that ancient houses look like beehives in Trulli, Italy or that Vikings lived and flourished in Dublin for centuries? Or that amethyst forms beneath the earth of Sardagna (Sardinia)? It has been educational and delightful but it is also an apt metaphor for what Jesus is telling us in today’s gospel.

The images are ethereal. They neither belong to me nor do their subjects “belong” to me in the sense that I have never stood at the archeological digs in Dublin nor walked the beaches of Sardagna. I can appreciate the inexhaustible creativity of God and appreciate the beauty of God through them – and even touch the experience of my daughter through them. However, they are not mine – I cannot “rest my head” upon them.

Jesus tries to tell the crowds that he cannot lay his head upon this earth because it belongs to his Father. Jesus has emptied himself in order to bring God’s will, not his own human message, to earth. He wants the scribe to know that what is real is God. He tells the disciple that relationships with God should have nothing obstructing them, even traditional fidelity to family. Jesus says to us that all our “belonging” in the world should be in and through him, the Son of Man, rather than things. Jesus came to serve and to save not to yield power or accumulate status and wealth.

John Paul II talked of our true belonging being in God, being given by God: “When (Jesus) began his teaching, his situation continued to be one of extreme poverty, as he himself bore witness to in a certain way by referring to the precarious conditions of life imposed by his ministry of evangelization. "Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head" (Luke 9:58)…. In this self-emptying which profoundly characterizes the truth about Christ, true man, we can say that it re-establishes it and restores it. When we read that the Son ‘did not regard equality with God something to be grasped,’ we cannot but see in these words an allusion to the first and original temptation to which Adam and Eve yielded in the beginning: ‘You will become (that is, you will be) like God, knowing good and evil’ (Genesis 3:5). They yielded to the temptation to be like God, even though they were only creatures. He who is God the Son ‘did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.’ In becoming man, "he emptied himself" and by that choice he restored all human beings, however poor and deprived, to their original dignity.” [1]

Action

What do we think we “own”. Of course we have mortgages on our houses…but look at the sub prime experience of many who have been forced from “their” homes. Of course we have a job title or role we play. But what of the truth that no one is indispensable? What is “belongs” to me in the internet images I look at is my wonder, my delight and my praise of God for them. And all those are gifts, fabulous gifts! that God gave me. Although ethereal, they are real. God’s gifts are real and indispensable. God’s will is real and indispensable.

What is truly real and indispensable in my life? Do I nurture? Do I ignore? Do I love wholeheartedly, like Jesus does? Where do I place my time and effort?

[1] http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/audiences/alpha/data/aud19880217en.html