Saturday, September 7, 2019

23rd Ordinary Sunday, Year C, 08.09.2019

Wisdom 9:13-18 / Philemon 9-10, 12-17 / Luke 14:25-33
One of the main themes of science fiction movies is about future. We may even say that science fiction movies is about the future.

As much as the future is mystery, science fiction movies depict the future with fantasy.

One way to put this fantasy into the movie is having a time machine that can transport human beings back to the past or into the future.

One such movie, and its sequels, is the movie “Back to the Future” where the characters time-travel from the present to the past and then to the future.

Of course all that is fantasy, but at the same time it is also interesting to see how the present or the future can be changed by changing the past. But again, all that is fantasy.

The past is history, and we cannot change that. The future is mystery, and we are curious about that.

We are curious about the future, so that we can be careful about the present.
And some will even have recourse to horoscopes and fortune-tellers in order to have a glimpse of the future.

There is this joke about young man who is single and was unhappy about his life.

So he went to a fortune teller to see what his future will be like.

Fortune teller read his palm and said, “You will be unmarried and unhappy till you are 45.” So the young man asked, “After that?” The fortune-teller replied, “After that you will get used to it.”

Of course we should not consult horoscopes or fortune-tellers. Because the first reading tells us this: What man indeed can know the  intentions of God? Who can divine the will of the Lord? The reasonings of mortals on unsure and our intentions unstable. Who then can discover what is in the heavens?

Yes we do not know what lies ahead, and for those who are obsessed about the future, they live in constant anxiety and feel unhappy about the present.

In the gospel, Jesus does not talk about the future. Rather He talks about the demands of discipleship and about carrying the cross.
We might be thinking: That’s the usual stuff, so what else is new?

Then Jesus tells us two parables. One is about building a tower, and another about fighting a war.

The two parables may tell us something about our present as well as something about our future.

So for all that we are planning and labouring, what are we building actually? For all the skyscraping towers that we want to build, will they actually help us get to heaven? After all, the monuments of today are the ruins of tomorrow.

With the gift of wisdom, we will come to see that what we should be building are not towers of achievements but bridges of relationships.

Yes, it is the relationships that we build with Jesus and with each other that will form the bridges to the future as well as to eternity.

And about the parable of fighting a war. We may remember that Saint Paul tells us to fight the good fight. In other words we must choose wisely what battles to fight, so that we will fight for God and not end up fighting against others.
Fighting for what God wants will give us victory in eternity. Fighting against others will only bring us agony and misery.

So Jesus has given us a glimpse of the future as well as a glimpse of eternity with those two parables.

And besides that, the Bible tells us that our future is in the hands of God, and Heaven is our eternal home.

We all have a seat in the eternal banquet that God has prepared for His children.

In order to have that hope of a glorious future and eternity, then we must listen to what Jesus is telling us.

We must give up our curiosity and obsession of the future, carry our cross today, be disciples of Jesus and follow Him into eternity.