REMAINING CONNECTED TO GOD


THURSDAY, FIFTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME   

1 Kings 11:4-13; Ps 106:3-4,35-37,40; Mk 7:24-30

Our Spiritual Connection to God

Our connection with God can be compared to the connection between a power source and an appliance. The appliance functions as long as it is connected to the power source. Once the connection is severed, it ceases to function. The same applies to our spiritual connection with God; we must keep our focus on God to remain spiritually alive in God. We cease to live spiritually once our attention, especially our minds and hearts, is taken away from God, who is the source of our spiritual life. We can consider a more apt analogy by examining the fish's dependency on water. The water is the life of the fish; the fish must be inside the water always to survive. The fish dies when it leaves or is separated from the water. To live a spiritual life, we must take in God and remain connected to Him in our minds and hearts. When it comes to spiritual life, we have no life and strength at all unless we are united with God. Hence, Jesus tells us that without him, we can do nothing. Cf. Jn 15:5. We can do and accomplish many things physically on our own. So, many of us think it is the same with spiritual life and activities. Every spiritual life and every spiritual activity is initiated by God and sustained through cooperation with God, by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Thus, spiritual life is initiated and sustained through faith. We live connected with God by a habitual grace, who is the source of everything spiritual.

We see an illustration of the above in the life of King Solomon. Because Solomon married wives from pagan nations surrounding Israel, these gradually led his heart away from God to their different idols. “When Solomon grew old, his wives swayed his heart to other gods; and his heart was not wholly with the Lord his God as his father David’s had been. Solomon became a follower of Astarte, the goddess of the Sidonians, and of Milcom, the Ammonite abomination.” The love for worldly pleasures and material wealth/riches of this world led Solomon’s heart away from God to idols. It would not be the case that the wise Solomon was ignorant of the fact that these were not gods at all, but deceptive and lying demons. His attachment to women, who were their devotees, got him entangled with these evil spirits. Just as his single-hearted devotion to God made him build a great Temple for God in Jerusalem, his devotion to the devotees of these demons made him build temples for them. “Then it was that Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the god of Moab on the mountain to the east of Jerusalem, and to Milcom, the god of the Ammonites. He did the same for all his foreign wives, who offered incense and sacrifice to their gods.”

Our disconnection from God, our spiritual source, is never caused by God, but by us; the detachment of our hearts and minds from God and his word cuts our connection with him. God did not remove the wisdom he gave to Solomon; that did not cause him to fall into sin. It is his preoccupation or entanglement with devotees of these foreign gods that led him to sin. He ceased to live by the spirit of wisdom he received. This caused his downfall and the disintegration of the visible manifestation of the Davidic Kingdom. The kingdom remained intact spiritually because it rests on the word of God. Its visible manifestation renews whenever people regain interest in the word of God and profess faith in the divine promise. Such an expression of faith does not make a distinction between an Israelite and a non-Israelite; whoever believes receives the blessings of the kingdom of God. The Syrophoenician woman illustrates the power of such a faith in the Gospel. “A woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him straightway and came and fell at his feet. Now the woman was a pagan, by birth a Syrophoenician, and she begged him to cast the devil out of her daughter. And he said to her, ‘The children should be fed first, because it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the house-dogs.’ But she spoke up: ‘Ah yes, sir,’ she replied, ‘but the house-dogs under the table can eat the children’s scraps.’ And he said to her, ‘For saying this, you may go home happy: the devil has gone out of your daughter.’” The woman’s attachment to the Lord made her astute. Wisdom starts with the fear of the Lord and faith in his word.

Let us pray: Keep your family safe, O Lord, with unfailing care, that, relying solely on the hope of heavenly grace, they may be defended always by your protection. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.         

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