Anything We Are Commanded To Do By God Must Be For Our Own Good

Friday of the 23rd Week in Course 2024

Why do we exist? That’s a question that could be at the end of the endless list of questions our children aim at us when they are about three years old. I can’t claim that any of my girls asked it, but we should all do so, at least before we are in our twenties.

St. Paul makes a very bold claim: we were created and chosen by God to “exist for the praise of his glory, we who first hoped in Christ.” At first look, we might think, “well, God is the best and the greatest in everything, so I guess He also has an infinite ego.” I certainly would not be entitled to tell you that you exist for the praise of my glory. That’s absurd, isn’t it? But God is always good, always telling us He loves us. So anything we are commanded to do by God must be for our own good, must be an act of love by God. Logically, then, it must be very, very good for us to praise God’s glory.

St. Augustine told us in his prayer to God in his Confessions, that “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” Fundamental truth: there is a God, the Creator, and none of us are Him. Moreover, this is the God, the ultimate Cause, who is responsible for our existence. Scripture teaches that we are each made in God’s image and likeness, and through Jesus Christ’s life, death and Resurrection, we can sacramentally be joined to Him, assume His own image, and be adopted children of God. When people look at us and hear us for any lengthy time, they should see, hear and feel the presence of Christ, and want to be like Him, too. The Holy Spirit can do this in us. We just need to want to be like Him, repent of our sins, and let that Spirit change us.

Thus can we sing with the psalmist, “Blessed the nation whose God is the LORD, the people he has chosen for his own inheritance.” We are chosen, so we are blest.

There are many teachings in today’s Gospel, but let’s look at the first and the last. Beware of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. It’s like a leaven. You put one person with it in a group, and with kneading, in time, it infects everyone. Want more detail? The Pharisees believed they were the chosen. They dressed differently, spoke differently, and taught that all Jews had to obey every one of the commands of Torah, even thoughts meant for only the priests. They were God’s special folks. The common Jew was ignorant, disobedient, and not worthy of God’s love. So we can’t be like that, forming cliques and looking down on others.

Now, about the five sparrows for a tuppence story. There’s a little Jesus humor in this one, and it fits as a kind of rejoinder of the Pharisees. Each of us is obviously worth a lot more than a whole flock of sparrows. After all, we are “made in God’s image.” So if the Pharisees, or Stephen Hawking, or anybody else considers us a kind of stain on the street, God Himself seems to be laughing at human hypocrisy and stupidity.

You are worth the price of God’s own Son on the cross. Don’t forget it.