“Satis” is the Latin word for “enough”. “Satisfaction” literally means “Making or doing enough”. “Enoughness” is a common personal demon which demands more than “enough”, but itself is never complete or okay. Golfers keep trying to be more than sufficient. Writers always are tempted to keep rewriting until the work is more than good. In the spiritual life, that personal drive for satisfaction can result in disheartening feelings of not being, not doing, and so not feeling adequate. What is “enough” in our relationship with God and with each other? The answer is that God does not judge the quantity of the performance, but the quality of our persevering in the struggle for acceptance. These days as we live toward the Eucharistic celebration, it would be good to pray with our being tempted to negativity, because our actions do not exceed our desires. We can pray with our patterns of “enoughness” and what a plot of quicksand that is for our spirits and our relationship with God. REFLECTION The chapter from which our First Reading comes for this liturgy opens with a direct prayer from the heart of King Solomon who experiences the tremendous weight of being King of Israel. He begs God by first praising God for being the Creator of all things. He then acknowledges his personal frailty and absolute dependence upon God’s gift of Wisdom. He knows the difficulties of governing the Jewish people and the prospects of building a new temple in Jerusalem. What we hear from this chapter are the verses which follow this prayer. It is a meditative musing upon God’s ways and the problems humans have in figuring things out, both on earth and about God in heaven. “The deliberations of mortals are timid.” Solomon is wondering how will he ever know how to do what is right in God’s plan if he, as with other humans, can hardly know what is right to do on earth. As King Mongkut reluctantly cries in the play, The King and I, “tiz a puzzlement!” Solomon, at the end of this passage does surrender to the history
of God’s having sent a spirit of holiness to assist our timid
ponderings. It is not so much a” puzzlement”, but an
ongoing relationship between our insufficiency and God’s loving
care. Solomon rests from his worries, by reflecting that God has
given the gift of Wisdom which does assist the straightening of
what seems impossibly crooked. The first challenging statement involves hating the very closest relationships we have. We are to “hate” them all, and our very own lives, in order to follow Him. Then Jesus ups the bar a little higher by saying that those who will be His disciples will have to carry their own crosses. Woe is me! Jesus relates two little parables to finish off the discussion. If you are going to build a tower, you’d better have enough to finish or else. If you are going to wage war then you’d better have enough soldiers to win, or else. The chapter ends with two verses we do not hear today. Jesus talks about salt losing its flavor and when it does, it gets thrown out. Jesus ends all this by reminding all who have ears to be listening. Hating those we love and carrying our crosses is not real attractive. “Hating” is the exact Greek word Luke uses though. Jesus did put great emphasis on loving and being loved by parents and friends. Next Sunday’s Gospel will relate a great story about family love. So what can this “hating” mean! That to which we are invited by Jesus is a wisdom about which we heard in the First Reading. All relationships of love are gifts from God and they are not meant to make gods out of those whom we love. How are we ever going to build our relationship with Jesus by loving God above all other relationships and also carrying crosses! It is the “puzzlement” question and the answer is “wisdom”. How are we going to build a tower successfully or be on the victorious side when we feel so insufficient? Very early in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, we pray for “big-souled” generosity so as to be able to find and love the will of God. A temple in Jerusalem, a tower in the Gospel, a war waged against perhaps over-whelming odds, will we have enough, do enough, pray enough, so as to win! It is about “salt” from the last verse which is not included today. Keeping our flavor lest it be lost and so we too. To follow Jesus is not a quantifiable gradeable thing. Each of us is given a salty wisdom which allows us to keep our ears and hearts open to the invitation. This involves not keeping our eyes on how we are doing and perhaps that very thing is what is the nature of the crosses we are to carry. Not any of us can love well enough. We do not do enough, feel enough, forgive enough, but we keep living, loving as we can and that keeps our salt from being thrown out. We cannot follow Jesus well enough, but we don’t throw ourselves away either, because we are not doing that well enough. “Large-soulness” is the gift of Wisdom which builds and wins and keeps us salty. “Like a deer that longs for running streams, my soul longs for you, O God. My soul is thirsting for the living God.” Ps. 43, 2-3 |