ABANDONING OUR IDOLS FOR GOD


SAINT BENEDICT, ABBOT

Isa 6:1-8; Ps 93:1-2,5; Mt 10:24-33

From worship of Idols to God

Once we have the light of the Word of God to illuminate our inmost being, to see how truly sinful we are without the grace of God, we begin to cast away our idols in order to approach God. Without the light of the word of God, none can really know himself and his sins. We cannot understand how deceived and deluded we are in putting ourselves first before God, our creator. As we noted yesterday, this deception with oneself is the masterpiece of the devil's tricks. The saints believed and taught that knowledge of self is the foundation of the life of holiness. The knowledge of self does not come without our turning to the interior, where the light of God’s word illuminates our sinful self and teaches us about God. The strategy of the devil is always to distract and remove us from the light of the presence of God, received in contemplation of his word. Thus, it is said that ignorance of the scriptures is the ignorance of Jesus Christ. Our ignorance of Jesus Christ is ignorance of God and his saving will for us. Thus, our greatest and daily occupation must be to meditate on the word of God and contemplate the truth of the Gospel. By so doing, we are fulfilling the purpose of our creation and keeping the evil one from deceiving us.

We see the importance of having an encounter with the word of God illustrated in the call of Isaiah the prophet; he was only able to understand his sinfulness after his vision of God of Hosts. “In the year of King Uzziah’s death, I saw the Lord of Hosts seated on a high throne; his train filled the sanctuary; above him stood seraphs, each one with six wings: two to cover its face, two to cover its feet, and two for flying. And they cried out to one another in this way, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts. His glory fills the whole earth.’” The glory of God is everywhere in his creation, but we have no eyes to see it because of our sinful preoccupation with self, which blinds us to the presence of God. Isaiah’s vision and encounter with God opened his eyes to see himself as he truly was. He cried out: “What a wretched state I am in! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have looked at the King, the Lord of Hosts.’” Our encounter with God may not be as visual as Isaiah’s, but our reading, meditating, and contemplating the word of God surely offer us a spiritual encounter with God, for the word of God is Spirit and Life. As in the case of Isaiah, it is only when our eyes are opened to see our sinfulness that we can really understand how others, our neighbours, need the same light of God’s word to destroy their own idols of selves.

The disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ had an encounter with God through their faith in the Son of Man; they believed and followed him. Each of them encountered the God of Hosts in Jesus Christ and abandoned everything to follow him. So, the words they heard from him continuously dwelt in them and purified them from the sinful self. He sent them out to go proclaim to others the illumination they got from him in today’s passage. “Jesus instructed the Twelve as follows: ‘The disciple is not superior to his teacher, nor the slave to his master. It is enough for the disciple that he should grow to be like his teacher, and the slave like his master. … What I say to you in the dark, tell in the daylight; what you hear in whispers, proclaim from the housetops.’” Without the interior and continuous encounter with the Lord, we will end up proclaiming our idols to the people in place of the Gospel of life. Saint Benedict encountered the God of Hosts through the Gospel and left everything to follow him in a solitary life in the desert. He was born in 480 at Nursia, in Umbria, and studied in Rome; unable to contain the dissolute life of the city, he became a solitary hermit at Subiaco. His reputation spread, and some monks asked him to be their abbot, but they did not like the discipline he imposed and tried to poison him. He organised various small communities of monks and nuns in various places, including the great monastery of Monte Cassino. His rule of monastic life is considered wise and balanced, helping one to live a self-authentic life in God’s presence.

Let us pray: O God, who made the Abbot Saint Benedict an outstanding master in the school of divine service, grant, we pray, that, putting nothing before love of you, we may hasten with a loving heart in the way of your commands. 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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