Learning to thank God for everything

Those words from the Gospel today (Matt 22:34-40) ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind,” got me thinking about the answer Jesus gave to the Devil when he was tempted “You must worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.” You can see and hear me give this Homily on Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXoJNG17f9s

There are two ways of handling this. The first is not very practical. You shun anything in the world that tempts you. Some hardline religious communities have tried this, as well as some extreme Protestant ones. The most extreme version was exhibited in the Cathars (sometimes called the Albigensians from their occupation of Albi in medieval Southern France) who even tried to give up sex. One wonders how they continued to exist! It is based on the mistaken idea that worldly things are intrinsically evil. Indeed, the Cathars believed that there were two gods, one good and the other evil which is one of the reasons why it is so important for us all to assert in the Creed every Sunday that we believe in “One God… the maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.”

So, if we cannot shun the many attractive things in the world, the things that tempt us to think of them as more important than our love for God, how should we deal with them? This is particularly the case the more prosperous we become. People living on the bread-line, just managing to survive from their work in the fields, had and still have little to tempt them. But we prosperous people have all sorts of things to distract us haven’t we; from following almost fanatically our favourite football or other sports team, to shopping sprees in some exciting location – Bicester village for example? Some of us (this is me) surround ourselves with books, or are tempted to spend endless hours on Facebook or Twitter, or on online Computer Games. For many people they just find themselves too busy doing all these things to give much time to God, and going to Sunday Mass gets swamped by activities that seem so much more attractive.

So if it is impractical to shun the thing or things in the world that attract us, what should we do? Some priests try to make the Mass more entertaining. It’s a foolish task, not least because a great rock Concert, or a Play or a Musical at a Theatre will always be more exciting than a Mass, however hard the priest tries. It also misses the point of the Mass, which is each one of us entering into the sacrificial offering of Christ, of being drawn into union with God’s love, so that we may be challenged and encouraged to be better people supported by his presence and power. What we need to do, and encourage people to do, is to see Mass as the great thanksgiving for all that we do enjoy, of all that attracts us. Football, books, shops, computers, rock concerts, theatre etc. None of these things would exist if there was no God. Mass exists to challenge us not to entertain us.

Yet even if we go to Mass regularly, and intend to really love God with all our heart and soul and mind, doing this requires to extend our thanksgiving offered at Mass into every aspect of our lives. Rather than looking for God simply in religious experiences, we must aim to find God within all the things that are part of our ordinary lives. St Augustine of Hippo put it so brilliantly in a passage from his Confessions that you may know already. “Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they would have no existence at all.”

There is however a tendency to thank God for the beautiful things of nature, St Augustine’s “Lovely created things” and forget to thank God for the ordinary things that we take for granted. Do I thank God that I have a house to live in with walls and a roof? Do I thank God that I can go to the Supermarket, or order things online, and most things will be available for me? Do I thank God that I have clothes to wear, probably more than I really need? And to get even more personal – do I ever look at my hands or feet and thank God that I have them – or (forgive me for reminding you) do I thank God when I successfully empty my bowels and can then flush everything away? The answer is that very often I forget to thank God for all these things ; and if I forget, then probably you do too. Then of course there are the worldly things we enjoy doing – our favourite TV programme – or some sporting activity that we watch or even take part in. Indeed, when someone says they prefer to play or watch football instead of going to Mass, I remind them, along with St Augustine, that if God did not exist, there would be no football to enjoy, or anything else for that matter.

It may therefore sound easy to love God the way Jesus recommends, but I suggest it is actually very hard indeed. It’s a daily task that we often forget to do. But Jesus takes us one step further doesn’t he, because he clearly suggests that part of the way we love God is by loving our neighbour, and that’s yet another challenge. First of all, it is getting on not just with the people we like but the people who irritate or even annoy us; but it is also caring for those who do not have all those things I have suggested we thank God for. Indeed, perhaps we might be more thankful for what we have got, if we thought more often of those who live in poverty and starvation, who struggle to find any kind of home or livelihood in some of the cruel places in the world. I don’t know about you, but I find it incredibly hard to watch or listen to the News, especially at the moment. If it isn’t in Israel and Palestine, then it is in the Ukraine, or the Sudan, or Afghanistan, or Haiti. To love God must be to care about all those suffering people, and to spend a little less money and time on myself, and a little more on caring in some way for those who suffer. God has given us so much, and we are called aren’t we, to love him in response by sharing that love wherever we can.