Mt 6:24-34 My Greatest Fears“Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear...Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span? Why are you anxious about clothes?”
The first thing I said to myself after reading today’s Gospel was “Gee, this could have been written yesterday?” Little has changed. And we shouldn’t be surprised. What the Lord said over two thousand years ago applies today – and maybe even more than yester-year!
I have no idea how much money is spent on clothes in any given year. Regardless of the recession, many families continue to spend hundreds of dollars a month on clothes, especially now during the summer months. Over and over again I hear on the radio commercials for Sonya Spa and Ideal Imaging. At least ten times a day I hear radio commercials inviting women to try new serums (I love how they use and market the word serum for cosmetics!) that reportedly remove all types of aging lines. And how when this “special offer is gone…it’s gone!” I pray that one day it will be gone! But after twelve months, the offer is not gone!
Then there are the special commercials brought to you by “world famous directors” looking for the new and fresh child star! Yes!, it could be your child that one day appears in a block buster teenage hit movie like the Last Song with Miley Cyrus…, and “how amazing would that be!” Really? If you think it’s amazing, then you seriously need to take a look at the history of child actors and actresses and read the far too common tragic story of their lives! That’s not amazing, it’s shocking and sickening!
Oh the seduction and glamour of evil, with all its lies, manipulations and distortions. Evil is alive and well today. As the Lord says, “Sufficient for a day is its own evil.” We have never eliminated it. We have simply replaced it with more cunning and more sophisticated high-tech gadgets. We have not even reduced it! On the contrary, we have made it more accessible by making it more hidden, private!
Fr. Robert Kraynak, professor of Political Science at Colgate University, wrote, “We are temporarily in a state of stability. We are in immersion – into middle class careerism, creature comforts and high tech gadgets – directing people from the abyss of nihilism in the surrounding modern culture. When economic recession pricks this bubble or the inner emptiness of the holding pattern becomes unbearable, we could see the void of atheistic humanism, mixed with doomsday cults, environmental pantheism and science fiction.”
Wow! Doomsday cults…May 21st? It all seems to be coming together. If we were to sum up our greatest fears, it would have to be our personal need for recognition. We crave attention and on a mass scale! We wish to be different. We want to be noticed. We have a desire to make a difference; to leave our mark, our sign that we were here!
Our Heavenly Father knows exactly what we need. “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." Seek to be holy and your face will shine (all wrinkles will disappear) and you will be dressed in white robes, bathing in the presence of the Son of Glory!
