Friday Gospel Recharge
A Reflection on Matthew 9: 14 - 15
(Friday after Ash Wednesday, Year B of the Liturgical Calander, 2024)
Desiring God again through our Lenten observance
As humans, we can be very ambitious creatures. This is very evident in the world we live in today; it’s observed in people’s pursuit for money, power, fame, riches, honour, innovation - a phenomenon that stretches as far back since time began: “Then they said, 'Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens’” (Exodus 11:14).
We don’t want a small portion of these pleasurable goods either, it’s always in abundance and more than we could possess. People’s pursuit for pleasurable things come from an innate desire for them. When we desire something, be that money, maybe even just a single scoop of banana flavoured ice cream, the chase is on until we behold the desire stirred within. Until the desirable object is secured, our wanting will still remain strong.
The
idea of desire can also be found in today’s Gospel. We hear of Jesus’ disciples
criticised for not fasting while the disciples of John the Baptist do. Jesus
addresses his critics by saying that when the bridegroom is absent, his
followers will fast. After all, what is the point of fasting in times of a
feast? When we attend a wedding banquet, often we find an abundance of food,
drink, sex. Very rarely - if ever - are we invited to put on sackcloth and mourn
for the newly wedded.
The discussion on fasting in this Gospel seems contradictory in comparison with the idea of desire, for desire often draws one towards what they want strongly instead of stepping back from the goods and pleasures that give quality and proper satisfaction. If we desire pleasure of all sorts and to experience them must come through consumption instead of fasting and abstinence of them, then this Gospel indicates something more than what we already know about the phenomenon of human desire.
Other than seeking pleasure in the usual natural goods, people everywhere have a desire for a higher good, something which is not exactly composed of form and matter. “They seek me day after day” says Isaiah in our first reading, “they long to know my ways,” continues the prophet. From all ages, every culture and ethnic race from Solomon Islands to Sweden have wanted to intimately know a higher being known as God. Some cultures have reduced God to an animal or some vegetable matter, while other cultures have reduced him as a man. Perhaps the reduction of God as a form of some material object is so that through our senses, humans of times past might possess that most desirable object which has spoken to the heart since our first parents took their first breath.
According to our faith, God is neither here nor there. He is above and beyond this timely existence; he, as that brilliant theologian has taught, is the act of existence whose essence cannot be distinguished from his existence. Our faith also teaches that God is one of love who knows no limit; this is best represented by Jesus on the cross. However, our faith goes on to teach that irrespective of our personal longing to know God, God is also jealous of our love and attention, delighting in our pursuit after him: “You shall not bow down to them (idols) or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God” (Exodus 20: 5-6).
If our God is one of love and yet is also jealous for our attention, it informs that our means to being with God is through the pathway of love. Love always entails sacrifice, and since God’s love is unconditional, our sacrifices should follow similarly. It means that when we give, we do so from the point where we expect nothing in return, desiring only that the other we have shown service towards may receive the best and all that our labour is worth. When our sacrifices are not geared towards our unfocused-selves, entailing something in return, even just the slightest recognition for the activity done, then our sacrifice cannot be described a true sacrifice. For Jesus our example did not take the honour for his death on the cross but for the glory of God, and it’s because of the glory he gave to his Father we remember him and can truly love him.
Lent is a period in the Church’s liturgical calendar that summons the faithful to fasting and abstinence. It’s a period where we take on more sacrifices. The purpose of our Lenten penances isn’t for the sole purpose of developing a habit to endure self-inflicting pain, or to focus ourselves on glum penances. Instead, Lent is a time to learn to desire God again, through the sacrifices we make for him. It’s in sacrifice of money, wealth, and the other pleasures of life that something greater outside ourselves and the world exists, whose love for us and can give us more than anything the world can give.
This
is what Jesus meant by today’s Gospel. When he has gone to the Father, his
disciples will desire to be with him again. Until then, they will fast. For
now, they remain in the good company of God whose presence satisfies their
hearts desires; they need not to fast. So remember, when you have decided your Lenten
penance, it’s done to draw us closer to God, to trust in his support for our
existence, to support that innate desire to be with him again. Do not fear of
giving something up this Lent, for God is with us during this time of fasting
and abstinence.
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