Wednesday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time
Truly we are all blessed. Many of us got an extra reminder of that after our power was restored. The power for some people was off for five cold winter days. While many people went to the warm houses of family and friends nearby, not everyone was able to do so. At my house the temperature stayed at 51 degrees with the help of a fireplace and candles in every room. One of my friends described it this way, “There was chaos in my house while the power was off, and then like magic the return of power restored calm.” Sometimes it takes divergent circumstances to bring awareness to our blessings. Yet was power necessary for there to be peace?
The first reading from Genesis brings to our awareness once again that we are made by a loving creator who provides for us with many blessings. In this second creation account we encounter a human (adam – from the Hebrew) being animated by God through breath. Michelangelo characterized this image by God transferring energy via a divine spark. The main irony in this story is that God creates everything, including the opportunity for us to fall, by eating of the wrong tree. What was God thinking? Why make paradise with an exit? Simplistic as it sounds, it was because he loved us. The garden was not a prison in which the creature’s only choice was to worship the creator. The garden is a metaphor of life at its best. The irony is that even if we could get back to the garden, we still would have the pesky tree that symbolizes free will.
Even as the fruit of a tree is an image of an external force at work in the first reading, food still seems to carry the same power in today’s Gospel; despite Jesus’ parable to the contrary. Jesus makes it clear first to the crowd and then to his disciples that defilement comes from within, from our very hearts, everything passes through. His admonition here borders on sarcasm. Food is clean, it is what comes from us that makes us defile holiness.
External realities can certainly shape us yet they do not need to define us. If we really believe the Lord gives us only what we can handle, then those realities do not lead us into sin. Those realities of wealth, power, and property are a few of the ways our culture confers status. Simply put our culture connects status with worldly riches; yet some of the richest people I have ever met in my life had no earthly possessions.
No matter what we have, we need to be aware of all of good things in our life so that even in ironic situations we become like the psalmist and say, bless the Lord, oh my soul!
-Michael Montgomery