RESTING ON DELUSIONAL SUPPORTS


TUESDAY, TWENTIETH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Ezek 28:1-10; Deut 32:26-28,30,35-36; Mt 19:23-30

Danger of Self Sufficiency

Studies have shown that humans are naturally social beings. No one is made to be an island or to live in isolation. This conclusion is supported by the fact that our needs are many and we can never satisfy them in isolation. So, communities arise naturally as means of satisfying various human needs. If our nature demands we live in communion with one another, even more does it demand that we stay in communion with God. Human experience and studies have also shown that people tend to isolate themselves from others when they acquire material riches, which give them a false or mistaken sense of self-sufficiency. We call it false because material wealth and riches can never take the place of people in our lives. If wealth and riches can not satisfy our need for communion with people, how can they ever take the place of God in our lives? It is delusional and grossly sinful to rely on wealth for happiness and a good life. Our relations with the material creation, with people around us, and with God, the source of all these good things, enter into the constitution of a good and happy life.

We can easily fall into the delusion of the devil, who came to tempt our Lord on the sufficiency of material wealth and riches in Mt 4:9-10, and the attendant fame, power, and influence. We must be vigilant in this regard because of the subtlety involved. It is for the arrogance of the wealthy king of Tyre that God rebuked him and decreed his punishment for daring to arrogate divine power to himself. “Being swollen with pride, you have said: I am a god; I am sitting on the throne of God, surrounded by the seas. Though you are a man and not a god, you consider yourself the equal of God.” Because our bodily needs usually occasion our prayers to God, when these needs are taken care of by our material affluence, we easily lose our attention or focus on God. The evil one comes to deceive us into believing that we have acquired what we have through our astuteness and labour, urging us to abandon prayer because we have all we need to live a successful and happy life. This is delusional because everything we possess is a gift from God. If we fall for this temptation, we gravely offend God. Therefore, God pronounced judgment on the king of Tyre. “And so, the Lord says this: Since you consider yourself the equal of God, very well, I am going to bring foreigners against you, the most barbarous of the nations. They will draw sword against your fine wisdom; they will defile your glory; they will throw you down into the pit, and you will die a violent death surrounded by the seas.”

The devil lays this snare across our paths. We must, therefore, thread with care and never forget the Lord and our need of him. Even when our wealth and riches increase, and the circles of friends and well-wishers, we must hold all these in abeyance and embrace the Lord as the only sure source of our happiness and joy. The reliance on these delusional supports led the rich young man in the Gospel to abandon his quest for eternal life when directed by our Lord to abandon them. The Lord therefore pointed out the danger of these riches. “I tell you solemnly, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Yes, I tell you again, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” From these words of our Lord, we understand that we need to put our spiritual need of God and communion with him before every other good, to be worthy of possessing God in eternal communion. We can never accomplish this without grace. “For men, this is impossible; for God everything is possible.”

Let us pray: O God, who have prepared for those who love you good things which no eye can see, fill our hearts, we pray, with the warmth of your love, so that, loving you in all things and above all things, we may attain your promises, which surpass every human desire. 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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