Wednesday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 343

Come now, you who say,
“Today or tomorrow we shall go into such and such a town, spend a year there doing business, and make a profit.”

You have no idea what your life will be like tomorrow. You are a puff of smoke that appears briefly and then disappears.

The spiritual life is that quest to make of oneself more than a puff of smoke. We seek eternal life, something which has more weight than the immortality of a vampire or zombie.

Immortal life doesn't sound attractive to me. I’m only sixty-five and I think I have already seen too much change. The older I get the less I know about anything. Why would anyone want to live in an indefinite future of endless change and ebbing familiarity? At the VA I see intense, beautiful young people preparing to serve as doctors, nurses and technicians. I am quite willing to turn my sorry world over to them.

In the meanwhile I look for that substance which is not a puff of smoke. I find evidence of it in our creed, in that mysterious word consubstantial. We are created in God’s image and called to be holy as God is holy. We find in the person of God that substance which does not perish by sin or corruption.

Our religious tradition insists, profit, money, security, fame, influence and luxury are insubstantial. Ownership is an illusion. One’s claim on property vanishes like a puff of smoke at the moment of death, if not sooner. I’ve been around long enough to see billions of dollars vanish overnight. (Fortunately I owned none of it.) Even as we speak the worth of money fluctuates; it might tank before the day is out.

I don't look for immortality but for eternity, which is now. As Saint Francis learned to see the beauty of all creatures through the lens of poverty, I want to know the goodness of life through such simple acts as breathing, walking and drinking water. Just listening to another human being speak pays homage to everlasting life. 

Saint Francis saw Eternity in water, so useful, lowly, precious and pure. This is the same water of the rich and the poor, of animals and plants, of animate and inanimate life. It is more substantial than wealth; its contemplation touches God.