What everyone longs for...

WORD 2day: Thursday, 16th week in Ordinary time

July 23, 2020: Jeremiah 2: 1-3, 7-8, 12-13; Matthew 13: 10-17

There is one thing that everyone longs for ultimately in life and beyond... peace and serenity! Every time God calls us to Godself, we are promised comfort, peace, tranquility, peace and well being. These are the lofty gifts that the Lord has in store for us. These we receive not by looking but seeing, not by hearing but listening, not by desiring for riches and luxuries but for the presence of God. When we abandon God, we find ourselves abandoned; not because God has abandoned but because we have abandoned God and moved away from God.

Look at the double mistake that the Lord points out through Jeremiah: one, forgetting the source fountain and secondly creating little cisterns thinking that you will store water for ever, but even those cisterns are leaking and so weak! What a powerful imagery to understand the kind of priority crisis we have in the world today! Yes we are constantly abandoning God, to our own detriment. 

There are subtle ways of abandoning God - hearing but not understanding, looking but not perceiving, seeing but not taking to heart the presence and the majesty of God. We are after "useless idols" as Jeremiah says in the first reading. What everyone longs for, what the whole world is yearning for, is right near us for our taking. But we are too busy making our living, establishing our names and defining our own glories. 

All that we need to do is open our eyes and see, open our ears and listen, open our hearts and perceive: we have so easily available what everyone longs for, right at our doorstep - the peace and joy that the Lord alone can give!