23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year C
5th September 2010

Seek first the kingdom of God

People's first concern is usually to strive anxiously for whatever will make their lives more secure. Perhaps this is also true of you. Jesus asks of you a completely different kind of behaviour. From you. not just once but always. It's this: Seek first the kingdom of God.

When your whole being is directed towards God and you have done everything so that he reigns in you and in others, then the Father will give you what you need day by day. If, instead, you worry about yourself, you will end up caring mainly for the things of this world and fall victim to them. You'll end up seeing earthly goods as your real problem, the object of all your efforts. And you will have the grave temptation to rely entirely on your own efforts and do without God.

Jesus is putting before you the basic setup for your life: either you live for yourself or you live for God. But Jesus is not encouraging you to be inactive or passive about earthly things, nor to be irresponsible or superficial about your work.

'First' means 'more than anything else'. The search for God's kingdom is put in first place, but it does not exclude the Christian from being concerned with the necessities of life.

Let me tell you a story. Her name was Elvira. At that time she was ending her secondary education. She was poor and only by achieving a high grade could she be sure of continuing her studies. She had a strong faith. Her philosophy teacher was an atheist, and this would lead him often to present Christ and the Church in an unclear, even distorted way.

Elvira's feelings seethed within her, not for herself but for the love of God. for the truth and for her classmates.

Fully conscious that contradicting the teacher could bring her a bad mark, what she felt within was stronger than herself. She would raise her hand on every occasion, asking to speak: "Sir, that's not true!"

Her classmates, who loved her, tried to persuade her to stop these interruptions because they could spoil her chances. But to no avail.

A few months later, the reports were handed out. Elvira took hers with trembling hands. Then her heart leapt for joy. Ten out of ten! The highest grade!

She had sought first of all that God and his truth should reign and the rest was given to her as well. You too, if you seek the kingdom of the Father, will experience that God is the provider of all the necessities of your life. You will discover how extraordinary the normal ways of the Gospel are.