What is your focus?

Let’s look into the future. You just died and went to heaven – or so you hope! You are amazed when you get there to find people you never expected to find. You comment to God: “I never expected to find some of these people here and, by the way, why is everyone so quiet?” God said, “They didn’t expect to see you here.”

Many of us will be surprised when we get to heaven and see who is there and who enjoys a more exalted position. The point is that things don’t always go the way expected! In the Gospel lesson, Jesus’s disciples had great hopes that the Lord, whom they called the Messiah, would be the one to liberate Israel from the Romans and from the tyranny of the ruling class. However, Jesus, for the second time, told them in unmistakable terms that he will soon be handed over to those who will kill him and three days after his death He will rise from the dead. This is not what they wanted or expected. While out of Jesus’s hearing range, they started to argue among themselves. If Jesus were really going to be put to death, who would take over, who was the greatest among them?

Jesus knew they were arguing; so, he decided to teach them a lesson. He said, “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.”  Placing a child in their midst, and putting his arms around it, he said “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.”

Where did the disciples go wrong? And for that matter completing my opening story, where do we go wrong? The big mistake is taking our eyes off Jesus. St. Thomas Aquinas said that our most fundamental problem in the spiritual order occurs when we take our focus off God and substitute wealth, pleasure, power, and fame (honor).

For example, when we come to Mass on Sunday morning, if we come to hear a great and inspiring homily, or good singing and music, we are not focused on Jesus but on pleasure. In our current economy, where high inflation dominates our daily living, our focus is turned to our own pursuit of wealth rather than on our dependence on God’s help. Our mistake is turning away from God while in the pursuit of money to pay our bills. Where is our humility and dependance on God for help? Jesus must always be our focus. The disciples’ mistake was in seeking power and dominance over others or wanting to be famous and recognized as more important than others. Jesus was teaching them to be servants, taking the last place rather than first place.

Even now, we must deal with aches and pains that we did not have before. It is more difficult to read the newspaper, and people don’t talk loud enough for us to hear them. We are forced to make changes we never expected to confront in our final days. Our Golden Years are not particularly golden, are they? So, we must make a choice. Either we can get up every morning and be miserable, or we can make the decision to accept the limitations imposed upon us by advanced age and make the best of each day relying on God’s help and support.

St. Francis de Sales wrote “Do not worry about what might happen tomorrow; the same loving Father who takes care of you today, will take care of you tomorrow and every day. Either He will shield you from suffering, or He will give you unfailing strength to bear it. Be at peace, then, and put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginations.”

Jesus must always be our focus in life, in prayer and especially here at Mass. The author of the Book of Wisdom in the Hebrew scriptures wrote: “The wicked say: let us best the just one because he is obnoxious to us; he sets himself against our doings, reproaches us for transgressions of the law and charges us with violations of our training.” Who is this just one? Is it Jesus? This wisdom author writes “If the just one be the son of God, God will defend him and deliver him from the hand of his foes.” Yes, Jesus is the just one. However, as disciples of Christ learning to live as Jesus did and taught, we are also the just one! We will be put to the test and condemned by the wicked ones. Like the Wisdom author concludes, God will take care of the just ones.

Of course, things don’t always go the way we expect them to go. Nevertheless, our focus must always be on God and on his son whom he sent to teach us a better way to live. There is no need to suffer alone. We can’t do this alone. We need Jesus and we need each other. When we eat and drink the body and blood of Christ in Holy Communion, we will have God’s support and the strength needed to be all that God’s wants us to be. Jesus is with us and is ready to walk with us – if we want and if we ask. With focus on Jesus now, ask him to give you strength and peace needed to be the servants of all, to be the just ones, the children of God.

God be blessed! Now and forever. Amen.