First Priority for
God’s Kingdom
(see Lk 9:51-62)
Dear Sisters
and Brothers in Christ,
The Gospel
for this Sunday Holy Mass tells us how Our Lord Jesus Christ invites people ti
join Him in the mission of building God’s Kingdom through the preaching of the
Good News of salvation.
As powerful
as God, Christ can accomplish His work by Himself, no matter how hard it may
be.
However, it seems that God, out of
His great love, wants His project to be done with the cooperation of angels and
men. This is by no means because He
needs help from somebody or something, for He alone, from nothing, made heaven
and earth. He did so—by calling us to
take part in the care and development of His creation—in order to teach us the
lesson of being responsible for our living environment. We would not appreciate something as valuable
unless we ourselves have tried hard to achieve it with efforts. Besides, the Lord God also wants to teach us
to work together with a sense of solidarity for the common good of the human
family, in order that we should not live just for ourselves but that we can
live with others and for others.
Now, we come
to the second point of special interest of the Gospel message which lies under
what Christ our Lord tells those who wish to follow Him, “No one who sets a
hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the Kingdom of
God.” This is because the proclamation
of the Good News of salvation is so necessary and urgent for the survival of
the human race that nobody and nothing else can be compared with it. The building of the Kingdom of God, always
and everywhere, should take the first priority over all other things, no matter
how important they may be, even the burial of our beloved ones.
This Sunday
Gospel message really gives us a strong sense of how we Christians, disciples
of Jesus Christ, the Lord and Savior, should be wise enough to set up a list of
priorities for our everyday concerns for both material and spiritual needs.
Let us
listen to the Lord tell us how, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His
righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides.”[1]
Fr. Francis Nguyen, O.P.
