In today's First Reading from the Book of Kings, Elijah felt defeated and worn out, so much so that he began praying for death. He laid down and hoped he would die in his sleep. However, an angel (there those angels are again!) woke him up, and ordered him to get up and eat; cake and water miraculously appeared nearby. After that, however, he laid back down again. However, the angel appeared again a second time, and this time, Elijah got up, ate, and drank; then strengthened by that food, he walked forty days and forty nights to the mountain of God, Horeb.
We have spoken in previous posts about gifts God has given us. Certainly one of them is the gift of food. Food gives us strength for the journey, as we saw in this passage from the Old Testament. Food is fuel. I think we sometimes today see food as end in itself, as opposed to something that helps us do greater things besides eat.
Along the same lines, there are many other things that we often today see as ends in themselves, instead of means to an end. I am thinking of sex and money. Some of us may be blessed with an abundance of these gifts of food, sex, and money. We need to always remember, though, that everything we have is a gift from God and like our own lives, we will have to someday give an accounting of how well we have used those gifts. Did we hoard these gifts, or did we use them for something greater?
We only need to look to the world around us to see that many of us are hoarding gifts. Our own American culture has an obesity crisis, while other parts of the world are starving. We have a large gap between the lives of the rich and the poor within our own country, and then there are even bigger gaps between what we consider poor, and true gut-wrenching poverty that we see in underdeveloped nations. We have sex without considering the consequences. How many people use birth control, and/or have abortions, because they lack an understanding of sex as a means to something else, and not an end in and of itself?
Our ultimate end is God. God is a relational being in His essence, Three Divine Persons. If in His essence, God is relationship, that is what we must be striving for as our end, relationship; relationship with God foremost, but also with our family, friends, Church, and all mankind.
Everything else is a means to that end. Food is given to us to strengthen us and to be a vehicle for fellowship with our fellow man. Money is given to us, like food, to strengthen us for our journey by allowing us to invest in the resources we need to move forward on that journey to God, and others to do the same on their journey . However today, many of us spend our lives focusing on just getting money, and not seeing that money is meant to serve ours and others lives, not the other way around. Finally, sex is given to us to grow the human family and to strengthen the marital bond. It is not something that exists for its own sake. Sadly, many of us spend our lives seeking to have more and more sex just for the enjoyment of it.
Yes, there is a certain pleasure associated with all these things. Pleasure is a gift from God, as well. Since they are gifts from God, they should be pleasurable. Yet, the gift is primary, the gift comes first, not the pleasure. We need to remember that, and how often we do not.
One of the titles of Joseph in the Litany to him is "lover of poverty". I think that he loved poverty because it made it easier to love God, instead of being focused on material things. Being a lover of poverty, in my mind at least, wipes out the possibility of loving food, money, sex, or power inordinately. If any of us are struggling with inordinate attachments, we can turn to Joseph to help us.
Joseph, lover of poverty, pray for us.
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