WHO IS RIGHT BESIDE
Pride, Pretence and Preoccupation
June 23, 2024: 12th Sunday in Ordinary time
June 23, 2024: Job 38: 1, 8-11; 2 Corinthians 5: 14-17; Mark 4: 35-41
In this world, which likes
to call itself the Postmodern world, by now it is out of fashion to speak about
God. It is either considered an outdated or a conservative practice to refer to
God or regarded as a disrespect to humanity to refer to God on any ongoing
humanistic issues. To deny God has become an elite and an intellectual habit
that a person or a society can grow into. People have no problem in denying the
presence of God, or to say the least, they take pride, a philosophical feeling
of ascendency, in expressing an agnostic indifference towards God. And some go
to the extent of vehemently getting rid of any sign or symbol to do with God
from the public sphere! Some make it a fad to speak of “the Universe being so
good to them” and “the cosmos coming to their aid” not wishing to name the real
source: God, because they wish to be decent and “cultured”! They want a world
where God has no place! It could be dissatisfaction or misunderstanding or a
circumstantial resentment that has led them to this point of view – but the question
that stands out is: is it so difficult to find God? What is that which makes
persons not see God who in fact is present right beside us?
First of the reasons could
be Pride; a pride which amounts to a conviction that I know everything, that I
am capable of anything, that I am the most the important of all who exist in a
particular situation, that I am the centre of the entire universe. It is indeed
a foolishness that constructs for itself a universe that is so small, that has
such a limited understanding of what it means, “everything”! Certainly, there
is no denying about the heights that human mind has scaled in these centuries…
the scientific and technical advancements that we have accomplished is too
tremendous not to wonder at. But the truth is, it is not all, it is not
everything, it is not the “universe” that God has caused. Let us just imagine
we have only discovered a fraction of the entire reality that exists, if that
is the case, should not true knowledge make us more humble, instead of proud?
We heard in the first
reading, that part from the book of Job, where the Lord questions the haughtiness
of Job, through him, the pride of humanity! How dare we to question the wisdom
of the Lord, while we have done all our best to destabilise the harmony in
there and create all the chaos within the creation, leading to effects so horrifying
and we continue to go ahead in our ways of distortion and destruction! This is
the pride of humanity that has ruined every bit of tranquility and serenity possible
on earth and wishes to blame it all on what it calls the “dominant arrogance of
God”. Whatever goes wrong they wish to attribute to god whom they don’t wish to
even name otherwise, and whatever success they wish to claim it for themselves!
What a folly we live in.
The second reason that we miss
acknowledging the presence of God could be our Pretence. If pride is a foolishness
that says, ‘I know everything’, pretence is that foolishness that says, ‘everything
is what I know’! It assumes that what I do not know, does not exist! I cannot
explain this, I cannot prove this, I cannot quantify this, therefore it does
not exist. This is the preposterous pretentiousness with which the world today
negates the obvious. There can be no space for mystery, for the spiritual, for
the awe that leads to the recognition of the Ultimate Being who is the cause of
every other being and never caused or created.
The passage from the letter to the Corinthians we hear
today, tells us how we need to realise that we are a new creation, that we need
to overgrow the material and carnal standards that we have, and tend towards
the standards that Christ has taught us, transforming us into reflections and
participations in that Divine being, in whose image we have been created, the
image that we carry and that we need to share with the rest of the world. Realising
our real image we will find God so close to us, so intimate within us, and so
part of us, that we cannot just speak of God, but we would begin to make God present
wherever we are, even without being too conscious of it.
The third reason that could impede us from recognizing the
Divine presence could be our Preoccupations, justly named so, they pre – occupy
our minds not leaving really the space to occupy with the right things and the
pertinent things of the moment. There are troubles and problems in our lives,
every one of us has his or her share of them. But how is that some are able to
handle them will calm, the others not? Or even better, how is that we are able
to handle them better some moments, and some other moments no? If we pay keep attention
we would realise, the presence of the right perspective is that which makes the
difference. From which perspective we approach our challenges, would determine
the way we would do it and the manner in which we would live those moments.
Perspectives of proving ourselves, winning competitions, overtaking the other
and dominating the situation… these would add fuel to the fire of anxiety and
panic. While the divine perspectives of love, meaning, brotherhood and sisterhood,
living together, making this world a better place… these would make us calm
down, and be quiet, because the Lord is there around! Be still, and know that I
am, the Lord assures us.
Why are you so frightened? How is it that you have no
faith? … these are the questions that the Lord would like to pose to you and me,
and to the world of today! Why are we so anxious, so sad, so derelict and so
desolate? Why is so much of hopelessness spread around the globe today? Are we
missing something very important? Aren’t we missing the Lord, the God who is so
close to us, just beside us?
