Today’s homily: Feria of Sunday XIV Post Pentecost

Seek First the Kingdom: The Battle for the Undivided Heart

MASS “Protéctor noster”
LESSON Galatians 5: 16-24
GOSPEL St Matthew 6: 24-33
HOMILIST Mt Revd Jerome Lloyd OSJV

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

“No man can serve two masters.” There are some words of Our Lord which allow us very little room for manoeuvre, and these are among them. Our Lord does not say that serving two masters is difficult. He does not say that it is unwise. He does not suggest that we should try to keep God first while giving a respectable second place to something else. He says simply: “No man can serve two masters.” And then He names the rivals: “You cannot serve God and mammon.” There must finally be one master, one sovereign allegiance, one thing which comes first.

That is why today’s Epistle and Gospel fit together so perfectly. St Paul speaks of the flesh fighting against the spirit; Our Lord speaks of God against Mammon. St Paul describes the battle taking place within us; Our Lord tells us what that battle finally concerns: who is going to rule? “The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.” There is a contest for the government of the human heart. On one side are fallen appetite, selfishness, pride, resentment, lust, envy and the desire to have our own way. On the other is the Holy Ghost, drawing us towards charity, joy, peace, patience, goodness, modesty, continence and chastity. And the question asked of us every day is not whether this battle exists. It does. The question is: to whom shall we give our consent?

St Augustine makes an important point about this. The Christian who experiences temptation should not imagine that temptation itself means defeat. Concupiscence may speak loudly without becoming king. A thought may arise; an appetite may demand satisfaction; anger may begin to burn; pride may seek recognition; envy may whisper; fear may suggest distrust. But none of those things has yet become sovereign merely because we experience it. The decisive question is whether the will gives its consent. That is where the battle is fought. Holiness does not consist in reaching some imaginary condition in which nothing ever tempts us. Holiness consists in loving God sufficiently to refuse the rival claimant when it appears.

And so St Paul tells us: “Walk in the spirit.” He does not simply say, “Try harder.” Christianity is not an exercise in gritting our teeth until eventually we become good enough for God. The Collect today has already destroyed that illusion: “because, without Thee the frailty of man is wont to fall, save it ever by Thine aid.” Without God we fall. We need grace. We need the Holy Ghost. We need the Sacraments. We need prayer. We need the assistance of God not merely at the beginning of the Christian life, but at every moment of it. St Thomas Aquinas teaches that the New Law of Christ is principally the grace of the Holy Ghost working within us. God does not merely point towards holiness and say, “Now reach it if you can.” He gives us supernatural help so that what He commands can truly be accomplished in us.

But then Our Lord takes this interior battle and brings it into the circumstances of everyday life. “You cannot serve God and mammon.” Mammon certainly includes money, but it means more than money. Mammon is anything created which ceases to be a servant and begins to behave like a master. Money can do that. Career can do it. Reputation can do it. Comfort can do it. Social approval can do it. Politics can do it. Health can do it. Even perfectly legitimate relationships can become disordered if we reach the point where we say, perhaps without putting it into words: “I will obey God, but not if obedience costs me this.”

That is the test. What is there in my life which I would refuse to surrender even if fidelity to God required it? What determines my decisions when the demands of the Faith collide with my own convenience? What am I most afraid of losing? What has the power to disturb my peace merely by being threatened? These questions often reveal the identity of our real master more accurately than our words do.

There is nothing wrong with possessing temporal things. Our Lord does not command us to neglect our responsibilities. The Church has never understood today’s Gospel to mean that Christians should stop working because the birds do not sow, or stop providing because the lilies do not spin. St Jerome, St John Chrysostom, St Augustine and St Thomas all insist upon the distinction. Work is not condemned. Prudence is not condemned. Providing for one’s family is not condemned. Planning for the future is not condemned. What is condemned is that anxious solicitude which treats temporal security as though everything depended upon us and nothing upon God.

This is where today’s Gospel becomes extraordinarily contemporary. We live surrounded by inducements to anxiety. We are told continually that there is one more danger to fear, one more possession we need, one more financial protection to arrange, one more political crisis upon which everything depends, one more threat to health, security, reputation or future happiness. Modern life can train us to live permanently in tomorrow. We rehearse disasters which have not happened. We carry imaginary crosses which God has not given us. We spend today’s grace trying to solve tomorrow’s possible problems.

Our Lord says: “Be not solicitous.”

He does not say: “Be irresponsible.” He says: do not allow care to become your master. St Francis de Sales makes the distinction beautifully between diligence and anxiety. Diligence performs the duty carefully; anxiety performs it fearfully. Diligence considers what must be done; anxiety imagines everything that might go wrong. Diligence works and then entrusts the result to God; anxiety works but secretly believes that everything rests upon itself. One is compatible with peace. The other slowly devours it.

And so Our Lord gives us the birds and the lilies. “Behold the birds of the air.” “Consider the lilies of the field.” He tells us to look at creation and learn theology from it. The bird does not know the doctrine of Providence, yet it lives under Providence. The lily cannot reason about the goodness of God, yet God clothes it in a beauty beyond Solomon. And Christ’s argument is very simple: if God does not forget these lesser creatures, why do you imagine that He has forgotten you?

But notice what Our Lord actually says: “Your heavenly Father feedeth them.” And again: “Your Father knoweth that you have need of all these things.” Christianity does not merely teach that there is an intelligent force somewhere arranging the universe. Providence has a face. Providence is paternal. God is not simply the Creator who once made us; through grace He is our Father. Christ therefore invites us to live not as spiritual orphans desperately constructing our own security, but as sons and daughters who know to Whom they belong.

That does not mean that nothing painful will happen. It does not mean that Christians will never experience poverty, illness, disappointment or bereavement. St Paul himself knew hunger. The Apostles knew persecution. The martyrs lost everything this world could take from them. Providence does not mean that God will always give us what we would have chosen. It means that nothing which happens to us escapes His knowledge, His permission and His power to bring good even out of suffering. Faith does not say, “Nothing difficult will happen to me.” Faith says, “Nothing can happen to me outside the Providence of my Father.”

And then we reach the heart of the Gospel: “Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and His justice: and all these things shall be added unto you.”

“First.” That is the word upon which everything turns.

We so often reverse the order. We say: first let me make myself secure; then I shall seek God. First let me solve this problem; then I shall pray. First let me achieve this ambition; then I shall think seriously about holiness. First let me acquire enough, arrange enough, control enough, and then perhaps I shall have the leisure to attend to my soul. Our Lord says the opposite. Seek first the Kingdom.

St Augustine makes the distinction perfectly. We do not preach the Gospel in order to eat; we eat in order that we may be able to preach the Gospel. The temporal thing is not evil; it simply belongs in second place. Food is good, but it is not God. Money is useful, but it is not God. Human affection is beautiful, but it is not God. Health is precious, but it is not God. Reputation may be useful, but it is not God. And whenever we ask one of these things to become our ultimate security, we place upon a creature a burden it can never bear.

This is why so much anxiety is really a disorder of priorities. The more things we make indispensable, the more things we have to fear losing. But the soul whose treasure is fundamentally in God possesses a freedom which the world cannot understand. Such a person may still suffer; he may still grieve; he may still experience uncertainty. But beneath all of that there is something which cannot be touched: God remains God. Christ remains Christ. Grace remains possible. Heaven remains our end. The Kingdom cannot be stolen by inflation, illness, political upheaval, betrayal, unemployment or death.

And then the liturgy does something wonderful. At Holy Communion, after we have heard all of this, the Church repeats only one sentence from the Gospel: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God: and all things shall be added unto you, saith the Lord.”

Why there? Why at Communion?

Because we have been told to seek the Kingdom, and at the altar the King gives Himself to us.

Mammon says: accumulate enough and you will be secure. Christ gives Himself.
The flesh says: satisfy every appetite and you will be happy. Christ gives Himself.
Anxiety says: control everything and perhaps nothing will hurt you. Christ gives Himself.

And the Church says: “Taste and see that the Lord is sweet.”

This is the answer. Not that created things are worthless, but that none of them is enough. Man was not made merely for food, clothing, comfort, possessions or longevity. Man was made for God. And therefore the deepest hunger in us cannot be satisfied by anything less than God.

So today we should ask ourselves very simply: what comes first? Not what do I say comes first, but what actually comes first? What receives my best attention, my strongest affection, my greatest sacrifices? What governs my choices? What am I unwilling to surrender? Where does my confidence finally rest?

And if the answer troubles us, then today’s Collect gives us hope: “without Thee the frailty of man is wont to fall.” We do not heal the divided heart by ourselves. We bring it to Christ. We ask for grace. We receive the Sacraments. We begin again. We crucify, as St Paul says, “the flesh with the vices and concupiscences,” and we learn slowly to walk in the Spirit.

There can finally be only one Master. But the Master who claims us today is the One who first gave Himself for us. His yoke does not enslave; it makes us free. His Kingdom does not impoverish us; it teaches us what riches really are. His Providence does not remove every cross; it assures us that no cross need be carried without grace.

And so let us take from this Mass the one sentence the Church herself places upon our lips as we approach the altar: Primum quærite regnum Dei.

Seek first the Kingdom of God.

Put God first, and everything else can at last take its proper place.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.