17th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A
First Reading: 1 Kgs 3:5-12
Second Reading: Rom 8:28-30
Gospel Reading: Mt 13:44-52
“Those whom God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son,” we hear in this Sunday’s readings. Does God know in advance who will be saved? Are some people already saved and others damned?
No. The misunderstanding comes from the words know in advance. We have to talk like this because we are subject to time; we experience reality moment by moment. The moment we are experiencing we call the present; the moments we have already experienced, which are lost, we call the past; and those we expect to experience, which we do not yet have, we call the future.
However, God (in his own nature) cannot be subject to time like us. There is nothing he has already lost or does not yet have. For him, all times are now. He does not remember yesterday or foresee tomorrow; he simply sees.
Certainly, the fact that somebody is watching us does not abolish or reduce our freedom to choose now, in the present. And if God sees “the future” as we see “the present,” then his “seeing” does not change our freedom in the future either.
We say that God always was, he is, and he always will be, but this is difficult to imagine. Again, we have to talk like this because we are subject to time, but this is not God’s language. When Moses asked him his name, he said, “I am.” Jesus said, “Before Moses was, I am.”
Even now, we get hints that time is not our natural environment: that God does not intend us to remain subject to time forever.
We are always harried by time. We never get used to it. We are always trying to “save” it or “fill it in.” It always surprises us: how much has passed or how little is left, how slowly it goes or how quickly. If time were our natural environment, we would not notice it; we would be carried along with it like a log in a river.
The solution is to “live in the present moment,” as Chiara Lubich, founder of Focolare, said. Regret or nostalgia for the past is fruitless; we cannot change the past or bring it back, but only repent it and learn from it. It is equally pointless to worry about the future; we cannot predict the future with anything like certainty.
The only moment in which we can act is now. The present moment is where time touches eternity, like the single point where a circle touches a straight line. Only in the present can we choose “between good and evil,” as we hear in this Sunday’s first reading.
When God fed his people with manna, he told them to collect only as much as they needed for that day. When they tried to collect enough for the next day as well, it became wormy and rotten. Jesus told us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.”
Satan tries to distract us from our present duty. People used to criticize Mother Teresa for ministering to the dying instead of working to eradicate poverty. Now Satan tries to make us worry about what the world will be like after COVID-19.
(Of course, part of this moment’s duty is to prepare for the future, but not to the extent of ignoring the present.)
Evil has always been with us and will remain until the end of the world. Only then will the angels “separate the evil from the righteous.” In the meantime, we can be confident that God is victorious over evil; as we would say, he has already won the battle.
When I complained once to a friend that I had too little time to do everything I should in the parish, he said, “At every moment, ask yourself what God’s will is, and your duties will get done.”
It’s good advice.
