8th Sunday O.T. (A).
Put your hope and trust in God and His Providence and not in worldly things.

In whom do we trust, God and His Providence, or money and the things of this world?

This is the question which our Mother Church desires us to consider in today’s Sunday liturgy. How often do we fail to do the good that Christian love demands of us, for fear of what might happen tomorrow!

Instead of putting our hope, safety net and security in persons and in worldly things, let us place our only hope instead in God.

1. In the 1^st reading (Isa 49:14–15) we our reminded that God will never forget us.

Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me.” Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you.

• This is a great consolation for God’s love for us is not only fatherly but also is compared to the most noble and intense love on earth, that of a mother’s love for her child.
• But God’s love is even much greater! Even if mothers at times renounce and forget their children, God will never do that to us.

2. In today’s beautiful and reassuring Gospel account (Mt 6:24-34), Our Lord insists on the following important ideas:

2.1. We should not have two masters, but only one. God.

“No one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

• Our ultimate goal is God; to attain this goal we should commit ourselves entirely.
• However, some people do not have God as their ultimate goal, and instead choose wealth of some kind — in which case wealth becomes their god. We should not allow this to happen in our lives. We cannot have two absolute and contrary goals.

2.2. Using simple examples and comparisons taken from everyday life, God lovingly reassures us to not worry about tomorrow, about what we will eat or drink, nor be excessively concerned about our health or other worldly noble concerns for God, Our Heavenly Father, knows that we need them all and God provides! He teaches us to abandon ourselves into His loving and provident arms.

 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat (or drink), or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they? Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span? Why are you anxious about clothes? Learn from the way the wild flowers grow. They do not work or spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them. If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith? So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’ All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.”

2.3. What we have to do, as God tells us is to seek first of all the kingdom of God and his justice that the rest will be given to us in addition.

But seek first the kingdom (of God) and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides. Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.

• The Commentary to the Gospel of St. Matthew (Navarre Bible) states: “Here again the righteousness of the Kingdom means the life of grace in man which involves a whole series of spiritual and moral values and can be summed up in the notion of ‘holiness’. The search for holiness should be our primary purpose in life. Jesus is again insisting on the primacy of spiritual demands. Commenting on this passage, Pope Paul VI says: ‘Why poverty? It is to give God, the Kingdom of God, the first place in the scale of values which are the object of human aspirations. Jesus says: ‘Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness’. And he says this with regard to all the other temporal goods, even necessary and legitimate ones, with which human desires are usually concerned. Christ’s poverty makes possible that detachment from earthly things which allows us to place the relationship with God at the peak of human aspirations (General Audience, 5 January 1977).’”

Dear friends, only God is our firm rock, our refuge on whom we should place all our trust, our safety and security. Let us learn to abandon ourselves to God. If ever we get anxious about noble worldly concerns, let us repeat often:

“Rest in God alone, my soul. Only in God is my soul at rest; from him comes my salvation. He only is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold; I shall not be disturbed at all (Psalm 61).”

SEE AS WELL: ANXIOUS? WORRIED? TRUST IN GOD’S PROVIDENCE http://wp.me/p6k7Mv-2y

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ORIGINAL PHOTO SOURCE AND CREDIT: CRANACH, MULTSCHER, Hans, Holy Trinity, c. 1430, Alabaster, partly painted, 28,5 x 16,3 cm, Liebieghaus, Frankfurt in http://www.wga.hu/art/m/multsche/sculptur/trinity.jpg