Sunday, December 1, 2024: St. Plato
EPHESIANS 2:4-10
LUKE 12:16-21
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Christ is in our midst.
Have you ever noticed this sometimes unfortunate reality that something goes wrong – something goes wrong with your car, your house, with your relationship, with your job, maybe something goes wrong with your body, maybe you have an accident. Have you noticed how quickly something pops up and you blame God, have you noticed this? “Why are you doing this, God? Why have you allowed this to happen to me, God? Where were you, God? Why is this going this way, God? Why is she being this way, God?”
We’re very quick to lay the blame on God for things that we don’t like and yet the second that something goes well, we tend to forget God. We begin to see how great our voice is, how strong our body is, how smart we are, how wise we are with money, how everyone rightly praises us and makes sure that we’re the boss, all these things make sense because we’re so great, but then the second something negative happens again, “Oh God, why did You do this?”
In the Gospel today, we see a man who exemplifies this very unfortunate reality for us as human beings: we are so quick to forget God. Did that man, did he make the crops grow? Did he really have the power to make the crops so bountiful? I’m sure he chose the choicest manure, but does that really guarantee that he’s going to have a bountiful harvest? So oftentimes we forget who is the one that makes things happen.
This is where we can often find ourselves falling into things like magical thinking, even as religious people. “Well, if I say my prayers correctly and rightly, and if I do X, Y, and Z, everything should align just right,” and sometimes this is the root of our disappointment with God… “But God, I said my prayers, but God, I went to confession, but God, I did this and that, why are you doing this to me, God?”
And this happens because we don’t know what grace is, we don’t know what grace is. Grace is not God’s unmerited favor. Grace is God’s energy, His ability to work and to change you, and St. Paul in the Epistle today talks that we are not saved by our works, but rather by grace through faith, what does he mean? Well, faith is trust, you should not understand faith as in “I understand all these doctrines, I have enumerated all the correct ways in which I can manipulate God and therefore I will be saved.” Faith is trust in God, and you can only have that faith through experience, and what kind of experience? The experience of recognizing that those difficult things are precisely God’s grace.
Because God’s grace, His energy, His ability to work in your life, whether financially, physically, emotionally, all those things, the work of salvation is to bring us to a place where we are like God, so that we can be with God and be with the Holy Ones.
How can God save you, David, if you think you’re always right? How can God save you, Ben, if you think you don’t need to change? Mary, what will God ever do with you if you don’t learn that you are not the center of the world?
You see, grace is not the warm feelings when you have a good prayer rule. It’s a little aspect, it’s a little whisper of grace, but the real grace comes when you have an inkling that something is about to happen, and then it happens, and then you have peace, and then right then and there you have a choice, and you see that choice. “Will I choose to trust you, God, or am I going to choose to fall apart and go into my flesh?” Right then and there, if you choose to trust God through that difficult trial, then you will experience grace.
If you have not done this yet, you don’t know what grace is. It is only until you come to this place where you are going to be undone and you choose to trust God, that’s faith, that’s how you get grace. So don’t read anything in the Fathers, don’t read anything online, don’t listen to anything if you’re not willing to really understand grace, because grace will burn you. We had Thanksgiving, I just wanted to give you guys some meat, real meat.
We fail to see how good God is, because this thing over here, whatever the thing is, my good… whatever this is, this is keeping you from seeing the greater good of God. And so we say, “Well look how good it is, stack my retirement, stack my chips,” whatever the thing is. But who gave that to you in the first place? He did. Why are we so quick to forget Him?
If that man had said to himself, “Wow, God has been so good to me.” We would have a completely different story. We are weak, my brothers and my sisters, my sons and my daughters, we are the weakest generation ever.
Amen.
Amen, Dave. We are the weakest generation ever. So the cross, it may seem too much, and it very well might be. So let me give you this little cheat, let me give you this little hack.
Just try being thankful. Just catch yourself the second that you’re like, “Well of course they’re going to give me the promotion. Of course so and so came to me. Of course, blah, blah, blah.” Just stop yourself and go, “Oh my gosh, Lord, I don’t deserve this. Thank You.”
See, gratefulness will save you so much unnecessary pain. The key thing is unnecessary. You must have pain. It’s going to come. But if you can practice thankfulness, then when the pain does come, you’ll know it’s not unnecessary. And when the pain comes, you’ll have the eyes to recognize and the ears to hear the word of the Lord. You’ll be able to know that, oh, this is the opportunity for grace.
But unless you’re practicing gratefulness and thanksgiving, you’ll never know grace. Because everything is you, you’ve done it all. Gratefulness, right? If we are so weak we can’t bear the cross, at least let us be good kids and be grateful for the things that God’s given us.
God is so generous. Let us remember that. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.