No Other Gods

By Chris Sparks

[B]ear your share of hardship for the Gospel with the strength that comes from God. (1 Tim 1:8)

Being true to Jesus doesn’t guarantee us ease, prosperity, or earthly blessings.

Shocking, I know. Who could have predicted that a religion founded by a Person whose earthly life ended in crucifixion would involve suffering? Yet there it is.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life?” (Mt 16:24-26).

So when we commit to following the Lord, we don’t do it in exchange for lesser blessings, but for greater. We don’t do it for earthly wealth, or health, or power, or prosperity, although God may bestow those upon us as well. We follow the Lord for the Lord’s own sake. We love and serve God in order to receive God’s own love and the gift of God Himself.

So what do we receive in that exchange?

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We receive the Creator of all good things. He is a greater gift than the things themselves, for they all come from Him and are good only insofar as they reflect Him, for He is Goodness itself, Beauty Itself, Being Itself. He is the Goodness from which all other good things take their goodness.

If we have God, we have a greater treasure than anything earthly, anything from this life.

And yet we laypeople, at least, are not called to live lives without any earthly goods. We must work to provide for our needs, according to our vocations and the consequent duties of our state in life. We must pursue earthly goods like food, money, property, family, friends, and so on.

But we must pursue everything according to justice, according to obedience to the laws of love.

You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself (Lk 10:27).

So we give everything up for God, and He gives us everything back, rightly ordered, according to the law. We are to receive creatures as creatures, and not make them idols.

Money is for use and prudent stewardship, not to be hoarded or worshipped.

Power is for use and the service of God and neighbor, not to be pursued at all costs.

Sex is for love between spouses and the procreation of children, not an end in itself.

Pleasure is to sweeten life, not to be sought at all costs.

We are given many good gifts, and at times they are so good that they obscure God in our darkened vision. They appear to even be God, to be so good as to be Goodness Itself, Beauty Itself. But nothing other than God is worthy of worship. No one other than God is worth our complete loyalty, our complete devotion, our complete self-sacrifice. And God is a jealous God, but He is also a generous God. He demands of us our complete fidelity and devotion — and when He has that, He then loads us up with neighbors to love and things to steward.

Saint Faustina went so far in her love for God as to X out her will in her Diary, setting herself completely aside. God said to her:

I am with you. During this retreat, I will strengthen you in peace and in courage so that your strength will not fail in carrying out My designs. Therefore, you will cancel out your will absolutely in this retreat and, instead, My complete will shall be accomplished in you. Know that it will cost you much, so write these words on a clean sheet of paper: “From today on, my own will does not exist,” and then cross out the page. And on the other side write these words: “From today on, I do the will of God everywhere, always, and in everything.” Be afraid of nothing; love will give you strength and make the realization of this easy (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, 372).

By giving up everything, Faustina cleared the way for God to give her everything. After she set everything aside for Him, He handed her everything: Her mission of proclaiming Divine Mercy is meant to prepare the whole world for the Lord’s Second Coming (see Diary, 429), and the fate of many, many souls depends upon it (see Diary, 966).

So let us put God in first place so that we hold everything else in life lightly, with open hands, receiving them as gifts and returning them to God whenever He asks for them. Let us worship God, and not make idols out of creatures. Let us love God and neighbor rightly, according to His will.

Pray for me, that I may practice what I preach. I’ll pray for you.

Chris Sparks serves as senior book editor for the Marian Fathers. He is the author of the Marian Press book How Can You Still Be Catholic? 50 Answers to a Good Question.

Photo by Thuong Do on Unsplash.

 

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