Today’s Gospel presents a fragment of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and verily, not a word spoken by the Word Made Flesh is without telling impact. We are quite literally plumb spang bang in the midst of the Great Sermon on the Mount. The successful revolt led by Jehoiada ushers in a destruction of the instruments and altars consecrated to evil and a return to the only covenant that leads to salvation – it’s a reminder of the need for us too to daily examine our conscience and consciousness.
Two Covenants
After deposing the bloodthirsty queen Athaliah, Jehoiada the priest made a covenant between the LORD as one party and the people as another and then another covenant between the king and the people. A couple centuries ago, the prophet Samuel was reluctant at the people’s demand for a king, a subtle rejection of God’s kingship. In our day and age too, we find the same thing. Allegiance to political parties and patriotism on the one hand and the divine mastery of God. The latter should reign supreme, but it requires that we affix our gaze firmly on the unseen God which requires us to look past the craze and daze of the ephemeral monarch, dictator and warlord of the day. Free will allows us to precisely turn away from Our Creator and Redeemer. Our God’s language is silence and we need to tune out the world and tune in the Lord.
Rejection of Evil
The people overthrow the altar, temple and images consecrated to Baal. This is a powerful reminder that we too must systematically overthrow the altars to evil that build up in our own hearts. The Bible is replete with stories of the faithful who, out of fear of the Lord, do away with anything that distances them from God. Our attitude should be to shun anything that separates us from the love of God – anything, anything, anything! St. Josemaria Escriva writes: We know that we are as weak as other people, but if we use the resources available to us, we will become salt and light and leaven of the world; we will be the consolation of God. (Christ is Passing By, 74)
The Responsorial Psalm reminds us of one of these resources: The Lord has chosen Zion for his dwelling. (Psalm 132:13) With the redemption won for us by the Paschal mystery, we now become that dwelling place of the Great Lord God Almighty who dwells within us, deep within our soul! But only insofar as we are free of sin, and we should speedily and constantly avail of the penitential acts within easy reach.
Treasure That Lasts
We have four brief verses of Matthew’s Chapter 6, where we are quite literally in the heart of the Sermon on the Mount, which takes up 3 chapters of his Gospel. The Sermon on the Mount is the core of the Divine Teacher’s lessons on how we should live our lives. Do not store up treasures on earth, but in heaven, our Lord warns.
Jesus has much to say about material possessions and the lure of two masters. Saint Ignatius drums this home in his Spiritual Exercises, where we examine the use of creatures and the two kingdoms. Today’s Gospel is a reminder to constantly weed out the love for mammon that grows thick, fast and furious in the breast of fallen man. With the Fall, we will naturally tend away from the Divine Master and toward the siren call of the world. Creatures are neutral, neither good nor evil, but our use of these creatures can be sinful or holy. The onus is ours.
We have been receiving a steady supply of this over the past few days, a subtle reminder of the treasures of the church. All we have to do as faithful Catholics is show up, daily if possible, and the Church opens her treasures and lavishes them upon us!
Darkness Overcome
Jesus also reminds us to consider the light or darkness within us. This is a clear reference to the health of our conscience. If it’s well formed, seasoned with deliberate routines comprising devotions, scriptural reading and contemplation. And if we exercise our spiritual muscles with regular corporal acts of mercy and love, we can entertain hopes that the darkness is being overcome by the True Light of the World.
But for those among us who are consumed with “spiritual greediness”, Saint Francis de Sales has this warning: God has not made perfection to lie in the number of acts we do to please him, but in the way in which we do them, to do it in love, through love and for love. (Sermon on the first Sunday of Lent)
