Dai­ly Reflec­tion
Sep­tem­ber 9, 2007

PRE-PRAYER­ING
 

“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. Ernest Hem­ing­way, the Amer­i­can nov­el­ist, wrote that his great­est hope was to write one real­ly good sen­tence a day.

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 of the human limitednesses.

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!”

Our human spir­it so strives to intel­lec­tu­al­ly cap­ture what our sens­es bump into. As I write this, there is a space cap­sule land­ed on Mars. Its name is “Curios­i­ty” and it is dig­ging up lit­tle stones and ana­lyz­ing the stones for hints of its his­to­ry of life on that dis­tant plan­et. Curios­i­ty is our want­i­ng to, need­ing to, know “What’s up Doc” out there, in there, over there. With great dif­fi­cul­ty and expense we reach, not because we have a right to know, we have a thirst and hunger for pos­sess­ing the earth. We stum­ble and with frus­tra­tion seem to demand that we should also be able to send “Curios­i­ty” rock­ets to God and fig­ure that Plan­et out as well. Solomon kneels down in sur­ren­der and grat­i­tude to God for the spir­it of Wis­dom that guides him in liv­ing with his own curios­i­ty.

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.
 
Our Gospel read­ing is the con­clu­sion to a major sec­tion of Luke’s pre­sen­ta­tion of Jesus’ teach­ings about who belongs at the wed­ding feast of heav­en. Jesus has just told a para­ble about such a feast, to which many who were invit­ed did not come and so the doors were opened to the phys­i­cal­ly injured and out­casts. When he fin­ished this sto­ry some­one at table said that the ones who eat at the heav­en­ly ban­quet will cer­tain­ly be blest. What we hear today is Jesus’ reply.

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, grad­able 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 the deer that yearns for run­ning streams, so my soul is yearn­ing for you, my God; my soul is thirst­ing for God, the liv­ing God.”