This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.
“How sweet to my palate are your promises, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Ps. 119:103)
Strange sometimes are the images we read in the prophets, and today’s is no exception: We have Ezekiel eating a scroll. And it is a scroll we might expect to be bitter, since its message is “lamentation and woe,” but the prophet finds it to be sweet as honey in his mouth.
And indeed, even though God’s message can be hard and challenging, there is something infinitely sweet about being handed the recipe for happiness.
Our culture is one of self-sufficiency and control: We seek to manage our destiny through the choices we make. And all the while, we are inevitably conscious that the greater part of our destiny lies outside our control. This tendency to want to wrangle every aspect of our lives, combined with the awareness that we cannot, is a recipe not for happiness, but for great anxiety. It is no wonder that there are so many mental health problems plaguing our society.
And by contrast, in today’s first reading we see God simply handing Ezekiel the answer key to life, as it were, in the form of His decrees. So too does Our Lord and His Church provide us the key to happiness in the form of a readily available relationship with Him, obtainable through the simplest of means: Prayer, the sacraments, and our simple, daily acts of love within our vocation.
So what is our problem? Why do we continually revert to the recipe for angst, instead of the straightforward recipe for happiness? Is it raw pride, the need to be masters?
Viewed more deeply, it is fear and lack of trust. As we see the world going to hell in a hand basket everywhere we look, we have trouble taking the Lord’s hand and trusting Him. Like Peter suddenly aware of the waves on the raging sea, we grab control and then flounder and flail.
Against this backdrop, it is clear why Jesus in today’s Gospel refers the apostles to little children when they ask who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. To conquer their fear, children do not grab control. They turn immediately to the person they trust. We intractable adults can learn to do the same in the school of prayer, where we slowly learn to let Jesus convince us that, despite the swirling seas and shipwrecked boats around us, He’s got this.
And sweet indeed is this conviction, when it reaches our hearts–“How sweet to my palate are your promises, sweeter than honey to my mouth!”
Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Talk with Jesus about your deepest concerns and fears, the things you strive mightily to avoid with all your daily effort–and abandon them completely into His hands, entrust them to Him. Ask Him if you should truly place all your trust in Him, or if He wants you to keep some of the control yourself.
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