The Divine Lamp

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The Introit: Psalm 84:10-11; 84:2-3

Behold, O God, our protector, and look upon the face of Your anointed. Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere. How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of Hosts! My soul yearns and pines for the courts of the Lord.

The Psalm is a prayer of a pilgrim to Jerusalem, and it expresses longing for the temple and the presence of a caring, giving, God; as such, it is a fitting introduction to the Mass, which is about avoiding desires of the flesh and seeking the Kingdom of God.

The Psalm opens with an expression of the beauty of the temple of God. It quickly becomes apparent that the beauty which is admired is not aesthetic, but manifested by God’s providence and protection. This is a fairly common theme in the Psalms. This idea of God’s protection relates directly to the readings. The flesh lusts against the Spirit and the two are opposed. Only by walking (living) according to the Spirit will we not walk according to the flesh (Epistle). One cannot serve both God and the pleasure of this life, therefore one should seek the Kingdom of God, knowing He knows and will care for our needs (Gospel).

Prayer:

Protect, we beseech You, O Lord, Your Church with Your perpetual mercy and because without You human frailty goes astray, may we be ever withheld by Your grace from what is hurtful, and directed to what is profitable. Through our Lord, ect.

We can “walk according to the Spirit” because the Spirit was given us through “faith in what we heard” (Epistle. And see Galatians 3:1-6). To set God in second place is to show a lack of trust in His mercy, and is a sign of “little faith” (Gospel). The grace which upholds us are the fruits of the Spirit which Christ bestowed upon us after climbing the tree of the cross (Epistle).

Epistle: Galatians 5:16-24

Without the Spirit “The interests of our immortal souls are ever and always in direct opposition to the interest of our bodies. The law of God is not the law of the world: ‘the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are contrary to one another.’ Where the law of the flesh is ease, comfort, and the indulgence of the passions, the law of the spirit is self-denial, moritfication, and suffering. ‘If any man will come after Me,’ says Christ, ‘let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me’ (Matt 116:25). Charity is ever opposed to enmities, contentions, wraths, and quarrels. Modesty, continence, chastity are ever opposed to uncleanness, luxury, as is clearly explained in the Epistle of today.

Hence we must serve either God or the world. ‘You cannot serve God and Mammon,’ says our divine Mater in today’s Gospel, for ‘no man can serve two masters’ whose interests are so diametrically opposed to one another. As Christians and Catholics, who have already experienced the ineffable joy of laboring in the vineyard of the Lord, and who know the value of the promised reward in the Kingdom of heaven of serving Him whose ‘yoke is sweet and whose burden is light’ (Matt 11:30), there can be no possible doubt as to which master we ought to serve with loyalty and affection in our best interests, for, as St Paul says: ‘We have not received the spirit of bondage again in fear; but have received the spirit of adoptions of sons’ (Rom 8:15); and again: ‘The wages of sin is death. But the grace of God, life everlasting in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Rom 6:23).

Whilst we live in the world, however, we are surrounded by the dangers of the servitude of corruption, because God has placed us here to make use in His service as means of salvation of the very instruments of the slavery of the flesh. We are not angels but men. And so it becomes necessary for us to become delivered from the slavery of the world and the flesh and to make them our servants rather than our masters. Composed of a body and soul, man must devote his energy to the care of the higher and nobler portion of his nature; but he maust also, in due order and subordination to it, support the necessities of his frail mortal body. ‘For we know that every creature groaneth, and travaileth in pain even till now,’ says St Paul, ‘and not only it, but ourselves also, waiting for the adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body’ (Rom 8:22-23).

Hence we must be thoroughly loyal in the service of God. As soon as any of His enemies are at all inclined to assert their mastery over us, or interfere in the slightest degree with His best interest, we must exert to the utmost our spirit of loyalty and at any sacrifice and at any coust reduce them to subjection, saying with our Divine Master: ‘Go behind me, Satan; thou art a scandal unto me, because thou savorest not the things that are of God, but the things that are of men’ (Matt 16:23).

That we may be on our guard against the specious pretexts of such dangerous and persevering enemies, our holy mother the Church today warns us against a very common, a very constant and a very insidious method of attack by which our loyalty to our Divine Mater might be placed in jeopardy. And that is the necessity under which we are burdened of providing for the natural wants of the body, such as food, clothing, and shelter. For which purpose she quotes in the Gospel the words of our Divine Mater Himself on the subject.”

Gospel: Matt 6:24-33

He tells us that our Heavenly Father, who feeds the birds of the air and clothes the lilies of the field, also provides for the natural wants of mankind. He has given us life and strength, and is also prepared to give us the lesser gifts of food and clothing, for ‘Is not the life more than the meat; and the body more than raiment?’ We should not, therefore, be unduly solicitous or inordinately anxious for the acquisition of temporal comforts lest we endanger the welfare of our souls

In any case it is Almighty God who provides for our temporal wants, even though we may think that because we work hard-labor, spin, sow, plow and reap-that we obtain the necessities of life by our own efforts, unaided by the special providence of Almighty God. If God does not wish to provide us with food and raiment, of what use will be our plowing, and sowing, and reaping? ‘In the morning sow thy seed,’ says Holy Scripture, ‘and in the evening let not thy hand cease; for thou knowest not which may spring up, this or that’ (Eccles 11:6). And St Paul expresses the same idea of our ultimate dependence of God’s providence no matter what strenuous efforts we may make ourselves-’I have planted, Apollo watered, but God gave the increase. Therefore, neither he that plants is anything, nor he that waters; but God gives the increase’ (1 Cor 3:6-7).

How foolish, then, are those who not only labor all their lives without any thought of God, as if God would have neglected them, but who even put aside His holy Law and strive to secure for themselves and their families riches, honor, glory, position, power, and every kind of temporal success and prosperity. They work for them, as it were, in spite of God. They serve money straight out. They say they have no time for prayer or sacrifice, for Church, chapel, or meeting, and that religion will not earn their bread for them or make success of their business.

But this is just where they make the mistake. They would labor just as strenuously and much more successfully if they followed the advice of our Divine Mater in the Gospel: ‘Seek ye therefore first the Kingdom of God, and His justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.” Which does not mean that if a man spends all his time in the Church, or in private prayer, he will find himself miraculously provided with all that he wants for soul and ody, his business prospering and his store increasing. No, but it means that one of the very things he must do in order to serve God rather than money is to attend to his business-to faithfully discharge the duties of his statre in life. For the same God who said: ‘Thou shalt not have strange gods before me’ (Exodus 20:3), also said ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat read’ (Gen 3:19). The law of God’s providence is that we should lead lives of useful activity in His service and for His sake in the sphere of life in which He has placed us. The faithful discharge of such duty to God automatically includes the discharge of all our duties to our neighbor and to ourselves. It gives us an exalted idea of our responsibility and consequently encourages us in the pursuit of those material advantages as means to salvation which the worshipers of money propose to themselves as their end, their object, and their only god.

Who is such a conscientious and trustworthy servant as the good Catholic, who neither wastes his master’s goods, steals his money, nor squanders his time away, be cause the Law of God says to him ‘Thou shall not steal?” Who is so sought after, even by infidels, as the business of professional man whose uprightness and honesty and proved worth are built on the solid principles of conscientious religious convictions? Men who boast of having no religion at all are the very first to acknowledge the certificate of worth which the possession of such sacred convictions brings to their happy possessor, even from these very men who despise their origin, because, perhaps, such know best how crooked is the path in which they themselves must walk in order to follow their false god of money to his unholy shrine.

Whilst Catholics are in the main true to thir principles of faithful service of their Divine Master, there are some who, for the sake of a little gain, a little fame, a little business profit or professional advancement, sometimes pay court to this false usurper and sink their principles temprarily on the cowardly plea of expediency, or prudence, or what they are pleased to term ‘broad-mindedness.’ If so, they are guilty of disloyalty to the God wom they profess to serve. And He will not suffer them to offer a divided service. ‘You cannot serve God and Mammon,’ He says. And again: ‘Thou shalt not have strange gods before me…I am the Lord thy God, mighty jealous’ (Exodus 20:3-5). We should therefore never diverge one iota from loyalty to Him who has created us, redeemed us, and given us the privilege of being His beloved subjects.

If Almighty God promises us the necessities of life, and at the same time expects us to perform our daily duties in order to obtain them, so also He promises what is really essential to our temporal support and welfare. he does not promise riches, or luxury, honors, success, or a constant flow of prosperity. Our Divine Master Himself was born in poverty, and lived a life of suffering, in order to show us by His example how to conquer the flesh and the world. Divine Providence knows what is best for each one of us,, and He knows that we are drawn nearer to Him by failure than by success, by poverty than by prosperity. For many, prosperity and riches would e the most dangerous enemies of their souls, and would lead them to forget God-’The prosperity of fools shall destroy them,’ says the Wise Man, ‘but he that shall hear me shall rest without terror, and shall enjoy abundance, without fear of evils’ (Proverbs 1:32-33).

Let us, then, cultivate the spirit of loyalty to our true and only Mater. Let us discharge faithfully and well all the duties of our state of life and trust to Almighty God to provide for all our necessities. Let us avoid all undue anxiety and inordinate care about the things of this life and the wants of ourselves and our families, for ‘Your Father knoweth that you have need of all these things. Seek ye therefore first the Kingdom of God, and His justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.’ ‘Be nothing solicitous,’ therefore, ‘but in everything, by prayer and supplication, let your petitions be made known to God’ (Philippians 4:6). For, although Almighty God knows all our wants, like a loving Father He likes us to show our trust in Him by asking Him for all that we stand in need of for soul and ody. Although the wants of the soul are more serious than those of the body, yet the latter are more sensibly and more keenly felt. Hence it is a useful adjunct to fervent prayer if we mingle with our petitions for light and grace some request for temporal favors such as our divine Master Himself has taught us in the words: ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’-THE MASTER’S WORD IN THE EPISTLE AND GOSPELS, by Father Thomas Flynn. Public domain text.