{"id":4411,"date":"2013-09-28T19:31:55","date_gmt":"2013-09-28T18:31:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/?p=4411"},"modified":"2013-09-28T19:31:55","modified_gmt":"2013-09-28T18:31:55","slug":"what-is-at-the-centre-of-your-life-25th-sunday-of-ordinary-time-22-09-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/?p=4411","title":{"rendered":"What Is At The Centre Of Your Life? 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time (22.09.13)"},"content":{"rendered":"

25th Sunday of Ordinary Time (22.09.13)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

What Is At The Centre Of Your Life?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The challenging and unforseen can, unexpectedly, reveal us in our true colours. Luke\u2019s Gospel extract for this 25th Sunday of the Year \u2018C\u2019 (16:1-13) does just this to \u2018the unjust steward\u2019.<\/p>\n

Single-mindedness is a recognisable human attribute. As a character trait it can be commendable, as in the life of Mother Teresa. Equally, in other circumstances, it can be deplorable as in the savagery of Adolf Hitler. It is said that if you want a demonstration of totally innocent single-mindedness watch the determination of a two year old denied what she\/he wants!<\/p>\n

The \u2018unjust steward\u2019 was forced to \u2018think on his feet\u2019, as we say. His single-minded default position was his personal survival. Faced with dismissal, blacklisting him for future employment, his benign exterior would have covered a furiously working self-survival strategy.
\nIs it timely for us to ask ourselves what is our single-minded default position?<\/p>\n

Upholding allegiance to Jesus Christ, as the fundamental orientation for life, is more the exception than the rule in Europe these days. Yet, in not holding such a fundamental belief people deny themselves the stabilising principle of Truth in a world grown so complex as to be disorientating.<\/p>\n

Theologians Maurizio Flick and Zoltan Alszeghy claim that: \u2018strong personalities have a single, all-embracing goal for their whole life; lives so focused that activities not contributing to that chosen goal are merely incidental and not really part of their life.\u2019 In other words, we have to uphold a deliberately chosen focus for life if we are to avoid the destructive distraction of today\u2019s continuous, raucously demanding, instantaneously communicated \u2018happenings\u2019.<\/p>\n

Flick and Alszeghy hold that, \u201cpsychologically, the fundamental option is prepared during childhood and adolescence, maturing in the subconscious mind. It need not be expressed explicitly but a particular experience can provide a conscious turning point, a dawning of awareness.<\/p>\n

Our fundamental option then influences subsequent actions and decisions. It tends to last throughout life yet it can be altered through either a sudden, tragic change, especially in a young person\u2019s life such as the loss of a parent or parents, the break-up of the home. In adult life, the sudden loss of a life partner, of a job, of prolonged unemployment can be the cause of alteration in one\u2019s fundamental option. A more gradual change can also come about through a maturing process of conversion.<\/p>\n

What was it that brought the \u2018wasteful steward\u2019 to act as he did? Were there character-damaging influences in his childhood and formative years? His sacking certainly caused him to \u2018think on his feet\u2019. Today, a dismissed employee is likely to be escorted to the exit, without delay, and with electronic passes voided.<\/p>\n

There is no explanation of the term \u2018wasteful\u2019, as applied to the steward. Being a slave himself, had he shown more gentleness than his master would have approved? Have we been too hasty in classifying him as thief? The Lord knows well enough how \u2018wasteful\u2019 of his property we have been\u2013 take our use of time, as an example!<\/p>\n

Is our faith in Jesus at the heart of our daily life? Faith in Jesus cannot be a sideline that we sometimes squeeze into an otherwise preoccupied life. For example, we may often do someone a good turn but could we claim it to be at the centre of our scheduled day! If our faith is consigned to the periphery of our lives, no matter how many religious actions we perform, we will never accomplish what God most desires from us.<\/p>\n

This is not a new problem or one particular to our age. More than 700 years before the birth of Jesus, the prophet Amos (this Sunday\u2019s First Reading 8:4-7) was concerned with his people\u2019s priorities in life. Their religious observances had become rote, mechanical actions, more like \u2018speed bumps\u2019 along the road to where they really preferred to be. Amos warns his people that God really sees what is at the \u2018centre of their lives\u2019. In other words, God was not fooled by their pretence any more than he is by ours.<\/p>\n

Listening to the extract from St. Paul\u2019s letter to Timothy (1Tim 2:1-8) it\u2019s helpful to remember that Paul, or Saul as he had been formerly known, had made his fundamental option for God long before he started on the road to Damascus. There was nothing peripheral about Paul\u2019s faith prior to or post his conversion. Paul could never have imagined that, having God at the centre of his life, would lead him, one day, to embrace God\u2019s will in Jesus of Nazareth, the very person whose followers Paul was so assiduously persecuting.<\/p>\n

Biblical youth didn\u2019t attend religious education classes or memorise catechism answers. They learned their faith by carefully observing their parents\u2019 actions, then inquiring about the reasons behind them. Seeing the many differences between their parent\u2019s behaviour and what society considered \u2018normal\u2019, would naturally lead them to ask, \u201cWhy are you doing things other people don\u2019t do?\u201d<\/p>\n

Parental and family contrasting behaviour then – and now – plays an essential part in the \u2018passing on\u2019 of faith in God. If Hebrew parents hadn\u2019t opted for God and the Sinai covenant \u2014 and shown that option by their actions \u2014 their children most probably wouldn\u2019t have opted for faith in the Living God either.<\/p>\n

Today, parents and educators could ask themselves what their children really see at the centre of their parent\u2019s and formator\u2019s lives! Our Christianity will begin to be real and effective, for us and for others, only when we spend as much time and effort on it as we do on our worldly activities.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

25th Sunday of Ordinary Time (22.09.13) What Is At The Centre Of Your Life?\u00a0 The challenging and unforseen can, unexpectedly, reveal us in our true colours. Luke\u2019s Gospel extract for this 25th Sunday of the Year \u2018C\u2019 (16:1-13) does just … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archdiocese-of-liverpool"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4411"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4412,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4411\/revisions\/4412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}