Spirituality of the Readings 31st Sunday of Ordinary Time C November 3, 2013 Prepare for this upcoming Sunday, beautiful reflexion! Up a Tree The First Reading claims that the universe is tiny. Wait! It cannot be tiny. The Hubble telescope tells us just the opposite: how terribly vast it is. There could be billions of galaxies just like our Milky Way in the universe. Or many times that. And each one contains literally millions or even trillions of stars. A billion billions of stars! The universe is tiny? Yet the First Reading says, “the whole universe is as a grain from a balance or a drop of morning dew come down upon the earth.” That writer had never looked through the Hubble. Ok, is the universe large or small? Imagine this. Picture an old fashioned weighing scale (called a “balance” in ancient days). It has pans on either side. Add just a single grain of sand to one of the pans. Does the scale move? No. Next add the vast totality of all that exists, but place God on the other side. Now the universe is weighted properly. For sure it is like a grain of sand. Up in the air. Outbalanced. If you see what we are talking about, get ready for the worst part. Lodged within that miniscule universe are you and I. We are the size of microbes. Impossible that so huge a God could or would love microorganisms like us. We are smaller than small. Too small to matter. Yet the greatest surprise in the world is waiting for us. The Reading reveals it, as it talks to God: You love all things that are and loathe nothing that you have made; for what you hated, you would not have fashioned. And how could a thing remain, unless you willed it; or be preserved, had it not been called forth by you? … You spare all things, because they are yours, O Lord and lover of souls, for your imperishable spirit is in all things! God’s imperishable spirit is in each grain of dust, and each is beloved to God. You and I are beloved to God! We are cherished by the “Lord and lover of souls”! Let us bring this lesson down to earth. Look at Zacchaeus in Sunday’s Gospel. Notice that he was small of stature, just like each of us in the universe are. He was so small he had to climb a tree in order to see Jesus over the crowd. Noticing Zacchaeus in the tree, Jesus laughed. Out loud. He said, in effect, “Zacchaeus, you are up a tree! Come down quick. I want to have dinner in your house tonight. We don’t want to dine out on a tree branch!” Remember, Zacchaeus is not a man who “lives right and does right.” He is a tax-collector, selfish and held in bad repute. Does God therefore withhold love and grace from him? No. The Christ of God comes in person to his door and waits patiently while he scrambles down from the tree. Christ is loving the man’s goodness into existence. Are you and I bold enough to have the master of the universe over to dinner? Even though our clothes may be torn and dirty? Even small and unworthy as we are? Let us try it, because God loves well everything he has created. And the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the least specks in the universe. John Foley S. J.
Posted on: Thu, 31 Oct 2013 12:13:22 +0000
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