By: Msgr. Stuart Swetland

Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, Aug. 22
Isaiah 66:18-21; Psalm 117:1,2; Hebrews 12:5-7,11-13; Luke 13:22-30

In today’s Collect (Opening Prayer) we pray:
Father,
Help us to seek the values
That will bring us lasting joy in this changing world.
In our desire for what you promise
Make us one in mind and heart.

What are these “values” that will bring us lasting joy? Today’s collect and readings point to two such values: unity and childlikeness.

Taking childlikeness first, the Bible, it would seem, is constantly trying to remind us that we are God’s children. Perhaps, we need to hear this message over and over again because the truth of the matter is so hard to really believe or comprehend.

The God who created everything there is (visible and invisible), who sustains it in being, loves us with an indescribable love. He is our “Abba,” our daddy, who looks upon us as his adorable little sons and daughters. Loving Father that He is, He finds us adorable and will do anything and everything possible to live in a loving relationship with us, His children. The only thing He cannot do is to force Himself upon us, for authentic love and relationship must always be free. He awaits our “yes” to His offer of relationship

As a loving Father, he loves us just as we are. But He loves us too much to want us to stay as we are. He desires more for us. He wishes for us to become perfected, to become holy, to become, as the evangelist Matthew Kelly would put it, “the best versions of ourselves.” Thus as any loving Father would, He “disciplines” us and allows us to undergo “trials” so that we may grow and become the perfect lovers we are called to be (cf. Hebrews 12:5-7).

CALLED TO UNITY
In our efforts to accept the fact that we are truly children of God, we also recognize that we are called to unity. Since we are all children of God (in fact or in potential) made so through our adoption in baptism, we are all part of the same family, brothers and sisters in the Lord. This fact establishes an entirely new ethic of how we relate to one another.

Family members are always willing (or should always be willing) to “go the extra mile” for each other. In a loving family, no one thinks of his or her “due,” but each is ready to give all for the others.

And this is now the ethics of the Kingdom. We are indeed one family called to recognize each other as family members and to live and love accordingly. From east and west, north and south we are one body, one family in Christ. Our Church’s social teaching is built upon this fundamental Gospel truth.

Living a life of unity and childlikeness will bring us joy. And this joy will last because it is the joy of the Kingdom of God. The world may change, but the Kingdom is eternal and perfect. Thus, unity and childlikeness are two values “that will bring us lasting joy in this changing world.”

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MSGR. STUART Swetland, a priest of the Diocese of Peoria, is the Most Rev. Harry J. Flynn Professor of Christian Ethics at Mount St. Mary University in Emmitsburg, Md.