The
image conveyed by today’s scripture readings is one depicting all of
those great things God has planned for us to experience when we
accept God’s invitation to partake of His great banquet. God has
issued the invitation; all we now have to do is to RSVP and, then, to
show up appropriately dressed.
And, that presents the dilemma confronting us.
God has endowed all of us with the gift of free will. We can accept
God’s invitation and start preparing ourselves to experience all
that God has planned for us. Or, we can reject God’s
invitation, closing ourselves to that possibility. The decision
hinges, of course, upon where we decide to find happiness.
To
the Philippians, St. Paul described how to make that decision
freely:
I
know how to live in humble circumstances; I know also how to live
with abundance. In every circumstance and in all things I have
learned the secret of being well fed and of going hungry, of living
in abundance and of being in need.
St. Paul’s decision?
“My God will fully supply whatever you need.”
And where that “whatever we need” is to be found
(which, we need to recall, is not “everything we want”),
according to St. Paul, is in living our lives as Jesus taught. In
short, that requires loving God and neighbor as we love ourselves.
To
grasp better what all of this may mean today, consider how many
young people are responding to God’s invitation.
Having been endowed with so much talent, young people are attending
college in record numbers and paying record tuition for it. For some undergraduates, it’s a
wonderful period of time during which they develop their minds and
identify a meaningful path their lives may take. Yet, as good as
all of that may be, accepting God’s invitation by “loving God and
neighbor as we love ourselves” requires that young people would do
all of this in a different way, namely, that they would use their
undergraduate years to figure out how they are going to “make a
gift” of themselves and their lives for both God and neighbor.
Interestingly, the 2006 Higher Education Research Institute’s annual
Freshman Survey reported that nearly 40% of male freshmen and 45% of
female freshmen identified the reason they wanted a college
education was “to influence social values.” The good news—the
optimistic view—is that, on average, 4 of every 10 young people want
their lives to have a positive influence on shaping society for the
better. (Think of it this way. If every Phillies’
batter had a .400 batting average, Friday’s game would have had a
much different outcome.) The bad news—the pessimistic view—is that,
on average, 6 of 10 young people today don’t identify having a
positive influence on shaping society for the better as important in
their lives. (I don’t
think I need to comment on the Phillies’ actual batting average and
why the outcome was as it was on Friday.)
Sad as that statistic is, let’s
focus instead
upon
the optimistic side of the equation. That trend appears to
have begun in the late 1980s, when many college graduates decided to
go to work for non-profit organizations with the goal of influencing
social values for the better. Their growing awareness of global
tragedies—like poverty, homelessness, and hunger, diseases like
malaria and AIDS, child labor, the abuse of young girls and children
by sex traffic rings, environmental catastrophes including drought
and floods, as well as genocide in Rwanda, the Sudan, Congo, Serbia
and Darfur—inspired many young adults during the past two-plus
decades to act on the well-founded belief they have a duty to use
their talents and education to improve others’ lives.
Due to this concern with social welfare and public affairs, the
number of these type of non-profit organizations grew between 1980
and 2000, nearly twice as fast as the number of all other non-profit
organizations. For example, the number of non-government nonprofits
(NGOs) registered with the United Nations increased almost 700%,
from 6,500 NGOs to more than 45,000 NGOs. Many of these NGOs focus
upon issues associated with global justice with peace.
Perhaps many of young adults attending college today at one time
have read (or are now reading) Rick Warren’s 2002 book, The
Purpose Driven Life or David Bornstein’s 2004 bestseller How
to Change the World. Challenged to answer the questions, “What
on earth am I here for?” and “With the freedom, time, wealth,
health, and confidence I have to address urgent social problems in
bold new ways?”, perhaps these young adults are deciding that change
is urgent and that’s how they will make their mark on the world.
And, it’s not just those young adults who attend college.
A
2001 study, “Young Adult Catholics: Religion is a Choice,” found
that more than 75% of non-Latinos—and over 83% of Latinos—agree that
Catholics are duty-bound to close the gap between rich and poor. The
author of that study, Dr. Dean Hoge, wrote:
Young
Catholics today believe they have a duty to apply their faith to
improving society.
While devoting one’s life to using one’s talents and education to
improve the others’ lives is laudable, Hoge overlooks something that’s
more significant, namely,
when
one’s doing so is not explicitly rooted in love of God and
neighbor—making
“a
gift”
of one’s life for God and neighbor—it serves strictly secular ends,
perhaps a job well done that “makes a living” or may even “make a
difference.” But, being a social worker is not living out a personal vocation—an
RSVP to God’s invitation—where,
as young people intentionally root their lives in love of God and
neighbor, they make a gift of their lives to God and neighbor by
witnessing to their faith.
We all know that it’s one
thing to be a member of the Church, but is an entirely different
thing to be a member of the Church who lives one’s membership out
each and every moment of each and every day. Few Catholics today, for example, consider the fact of how
counter-cultural it is simply to attend Sunday Mass. Most U.S.
Catholics—if that statistics are to be believed, two of every
three—do not regularly attend Sunday Mass, “regularly” meaning “at
least once each month.” And, for many of that one-third who do
attend Mass regularly, it’s a burdensome obligation rather than a
“gift of self”—carving out 45 to 60 minutes each week to reconnect
with the Source of our spiritual lives in Word and Sacrament—so that
they might better demonstrate love of God and neighbor in their
daily lives.
And, so the dilemma is one that not only confronts young adult
Catholics today, it’s
a dilemma confronting
all of us. Are we and do we concretely make a gift of our
lives to God and neighbor by witnessing to our faith? Not
ideas. Not aspirations. But, facts.
In
his letter to the Philippians, St. Paul raises three questions for
us to consider:
·
Is the
majority of our thoughts
about living surrounded by abundance? Or, do we actively
consider ways that we can forego all of that and live in more humble
surroundings?
·
Are
we interested only in being well-fed, not just in terms of food but
in having everything be our way? Or, have we demonstrated a
willingness to go hungry?
·
Is
possessing everything we want more important to us
than simply having what we need?
God has given us the gift of free will. We can accept God’s
invitation—opening ourselves to the possibility of experiencing all
that God has planned for us—or we can reject God’s
invitation—closing ourselves to that possibility. The decision
hinges, of course, upon where we decide to seek our happiness.
Today’s scripture readings remind us of all those great things God
has planned for us to experience if we accept God’s invitation to
participate in His great banquet. God has issued the invitation;
now it’s up to us to RSVP in the way we live our lives and, then, to
show up at the banquet appropriately attired.
As we
contemplate today’s readings from scripture, the challenge
confronting us is to consider using the gift of free will that God
has entrusted to us to make a gift of our lives by loving God and
neighbor on God’s terms, as Jesus taught us through the example of
his life. That’s called “sacrificial love” and it represents our
RSVP to God’s invitation. It “clothes” us, not with virtue but with
sanctity, the proper attire for entrance to God’s banquet hall.
It’s also what that poor fellow in today’s gospel seems to have
neglected, to his personal detriment.
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