We know that the Lord provides for us, the question is, do we know how to live with what He has provided? There is great abundance that surrounds us, and yet many go without the basics. The resources that we are graced with are quite sufficient for all, and yet, we allow this to happen. This is the problem with much of how we sometimes conduct ourselves – we are not looking out for our brothers and sisters with less, and so not showing love for them, and for our Lord. As Isaiah tells us, there is a veil that veils all people, and it often blinds us to the needs of others that should be obvious to us.
Saint Paul tells us that he learned to live both in need and in abundance, and that it was accomplished by keeping his needs properly focused – on Jesus Christ. In doing so, his other needs were always fully met. This is the natural outcome of a reliance on Christ. Whether he was in surroundings of material need or of plenty, his outlook and actions did not change. The exterior circumstance was not really that important, he knew this, because he was aware of the goal in life, which is to be with our Lord. That focus, on that goal, frankly, changes everything, if we let it. We can be loosed from the common concerns of the purely material and temporal aspects of this life and accept our circumstance with peace, because we know that He has a plan for us and will care for us. We can learn to share more of our own resources, and discover that we still have what we need, and feel the joy of having helped out others of Gods children, and the feeling of closeness to Him that comes with that. We will soon discover that this is what we are truly seeking. You see all the stuff that we try to accumulate to fill in that void of feeling, that desire we all seem to share but can’t quite satiate, is in reality the real need we have for that connection with Him. Only through drawing closer to Him will it ever be satiated and bring peace, and loose us from the angst that is so pervasive today.
All of us are called to God’s kingdom, we have all been invited to the feast, and yet like those unworthy guests in our Gospel, we often reject and evade what we know to be God’s plan. As much as we claim to seek peace and fulfillment in our lives, we often run from the very source of that peace and fulfillment – closeness to God. We sometimes reject His teachings as surely as those wedding guests who rejected those who invited them. There are many who invite us, they are called the Saints, and we read of them, but how often do we really take their message and apply it to our lives? If we fail to listen to them, as they invite us to God’s kingdom through their teaching and their words, then we are just as surely rejecting the invitation of the true King, as if we were mistreating His servants the way those described in today’s Gospel did. You have to ask yourself, why would we do something so self-destructive and short sighted? The answer is simply the inclination’s that still plague us from original sin. It is this, that we must daily guard against and be actively vigilant against in order to enter God’s kingdom. He tells us again and again that it is a narrow gate that leads to this kingdom, and it will only be those who are alert to their own failings, and who seek to take the harder path that will successfully navigate that narrower gate through God’s grace. We can’t do it on our own, no matter how hard we try, we must instead pay attention to, and RELY on God in all things, just as Saint Paul did, in order to reach the goal. We must show ourselves humble enough to follow our Lord like children and allow Him to lead us. It is only when we are this humble, vulnerable, and reliant, that our strength is augmented by our Lord to a point beyond anything we could conceive of as human beings. It is in our own weakness and reliance on God that we are truly strong enough to make it through that narrower gate.
Podcast Link
The Deacons Bench 
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