4th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C
First Reading: Jer 1:4-5, 17-19
Second Reading: 1 Cor 12:31-13:13
Gospel Reading: Lk 4:21-30
When Jesus addressed the synagogue in Nazareth, everyone was “amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” However, before he had finished, they all wanted to “hurl him off the cliff.”
It is a perennial problem. “I’m not very pleased with God,” said a parishioner. “I asked him for help with my son, but things are getting worse.”
“I don’t believe in a God who keeps mother and son apart,” says a woman in C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce. “I believe in a God of love.”
If God is all-good, all-loving, and all-powerful, why does he seem to treat us ungraciously?
“God is infinitely good and all his works are good,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. There is no other good thing Satan can offer; he can only tempt us to take God’s goods at the wrong time, in the wrong way, or in the wrong degree.
God created us for himself. “Our heart is restless until it rests in you,” St. Augustine said.
However, God’s creation is so good that it can tempt us to prefer it to God. When we sin, we do not usually prefer evil to good, but rather a lesser good to a greater good.
God has to turn us away from his creation and toward himself, without violating our free will. How does he do it?
God knows, said C.S. Lewis, that while “our own life” remains agreeable, we will not surrender it to him. What else can he do, in our own interest, but remove the plausible sources of false happiness and make our life less agreeable?
In Francis Thompson’s poem The Hound of Heaven, God takes away every good thing the poet turns to. Eventually, the poet surrenders to God, and God says, “All which I took from thee I did but take not for thy harms, but just that thou might’st seek it in my arms. All which thy child’s mistake fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home: rise, clasp my hand, and come!”
We are perplexed by the misfortune of decent, worthy people. However, God knows that this world’s goods are not enough; if they do not learn to prefer him, they will be wretched forever. Accordingly, he warns them that the world’s good things stand between them and the recognition of their true needs; in his goodness he makes their life less sweet to them.
“The gate that leads to damnation is wide, the road is clear, and many choose to travel it,” Jesus said. In contrast, “how narrow is the gate that leads to life, how rough the road, and how few there are who find it!”
God does not abandon us easily. He is like a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. When those invited would not come, he told his servants, “Go out into the byroads and invite to the wedding anyone you come upon.”
On our own, few of us would find the narrow gate to life. In his divine humility, God herds us toward it like a shepherd, or a sheepdog who nips at our heels whenever we make a break in the wrong direction.
“Endure your trials,” then, “as the discipline of God, who deals with you as sons,” says the Letter to the Hebrews.
If you are a parent, you know how tough your love has to be, protecting your children from lovely things like glowing stove elements, shiny knives, or harmful drugs.
“If we respected our earthly fathers who corrected us,” says the Letter to the Hebrews, “should we not all the more submit to the Father of spirits?”
We should rejoice in the good and beautiful things our loving Father gives us. However, let us never forget “how far more excellent is the Lord than these.” Let us remember, like children, that Father knows best.
Father Hawkswell is again teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English. The whole course is available in written form and Sessions 1-17 in YouTube form at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. Session 18, “Baptism and Confirmation,” will be available in YouTube form starting Jan. 30.