Saturday, Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

We all have worries and anxieties and preoccupations. It is part and parcel of living. In the gospel reading, Jesus suggests that there needs to be a sense of proportion about our anxieties. We need to be more preoccupied about what is more important and less preoccupied about what is less important. What is most important is what Jesus refers to in the gospel reading as the kingdom of God and his righteousness. We are to set our hearts on those realities first. In comparison to those realities the material needs of life for food and clothing are much less important. What Jesus says here corresponds to the prayer that he gave his disciples to pray, where we are taught to pray first for the coming of God’s kingdom and that God’s will would be done on earth as in heaven, and only then to pray for our own material needs, our daily bread. What Jesus refers to in the gospel reading as God’s righteousness is simply another way of referring to the doing of God’s will. If everyone did God’s will on earth, as it is done in heaven, then the kingdom of God would be fully present on earth. It is clear what Jesus’ own priorities are and he wants us to make his priorities our own. Our primary preoccupation is to be the seeking and doing of God’s will. This priority of Jesus is there again in the Beatitudes, ‘blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness’. If we were to ask ‘What does doing God’s will mean?’ Jesus would point to himself, and he would say to us, ‘Learn from me’. He is the one human being in whom God’s will was done on earth as it is in heaven.

Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin, Ireland

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