Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Today's Mass Readings

I can’t remember when I first heard this quotation from Scripture. I think it is more precise to say that I don’t recall when I realized the real meaning this text had for me. “… all things work for good for those who love God…” I knew that I loved God; there was no doubt about that in my mind, but to say that ALL things worked for good.

This posed a big question for me. I could think of so many things in my life where I did not see that good that might come out of them: depression, type 2 diabetes, chronic back pain that prevented me from standing for any extending length of time, the death of a friend, other friends who were suffering from cancer, arthritis in my shoulder, the limitations aging was forcing me to reluctantly accept, the list goes on. Do I honestly believe these things work for good? And what about the situations in the world? The wars and the deaths of so many innocent people, the discrimination, the injustice, the poverty, the abuse of children, the random violence? Does God make good out of all these? I must admit that when I consider them all, I must pause. I can’t ignore them, thinking they will all just go away, because they don’t! Maybe it is a matter of wait and see. Maybe it will happen in God’s time, not mine.

I think there is a message in the next sentence of that quotation: “those he (God) foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son…” God seeks to transform us into Christ Jesus. In other words, all those inconveniences, all those wounds in my life and in the life of the world, God takes and nails them to the wood of the cross of Christ. It is another way in which, as Paul said to the Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ in me.” This is the wisdom of the Scriptures. This is how we find meaning even in those pains, those annoyances, those agonies, those disruptions that happen to us along the way. Here too is where we find hope and understand better how God makes everything work to the good for those who love him. 

Reflection by Fr. Martin DeMeulenaere, OSB