only god remembers forever ... 8th sunday ordinary time A

Two points.  First point:

I never came to know the real impact of our first reading if not for the stroke my mother suffered.  When I asked her if she knew who I was, she readily replied yes seemingly sure of herself.  But when I asked her my name, she looked at me intently and said I forgot.  And then I remembered our first reading today. 

Only God remembers forever.  At a certain point in our life we will forget.  The book of Isaiah said even a mother can forget her child.  It is unthinkable In Isaiah’s time but even the unthinkable can happen, because at a certain point in our life our memories will fail us and we will forget.  Only God remembers forever.

More than this however at a certain point in our life also we will be forgotten. We will be forgotten even by the people we love, at a certain point we will be forgotten by the people we helped, but the people we loved and cared for.  This is what one of the things that makes old age dreadful, this is what makes us afraid of being shipped to a retirement home.  We might be forgotten. Only God remembers forever.

People will one day forget the good that we did.  And worst, even we ourselves will one day forget the good that we did.  At time will come when we ourselves could no longer remember, for only God remembers forever.

Our memories are important to us.  They prolong an event.  They prolong a relationship even when the person is long gone.  They may take everything from us but at least we still have remembrances.  But even these cannot also last.  One day most of us will be asked to offer back our memories.  This is an affirmation that God alone can prolong things, and God alone remembers forever, for God alone can make things eternal.

The second point:

Our gospel is inviting us to stop worrying. But our world today has created worries which are different from the worries Jesus has asked us to stop worrying about.  Now we worry not because we have no food but because we have lots and lots of them.  We worry today not because we don’t know what to eat because there is nothing to eat.  But we worry because we do not know what to eat because there are just too many choices and many of these can harm us.

We worry today not because we do not have anything to wear, but because we have a lot to wear and we do not know exactly what will match and what will not.  We worry today not because there are so many situations of need in our lives, rather we worry today because we created situations and wants that keep us worried.  Our kind of worrying should worry us.  We have lost our simplicity.

Today it seems that the Lord wants us to be aware of the activities of our mind.  Remembering is a mental activity and so is worrying.  Let us open the workings of our minds to the workings of grace, and we can only do that when we allow our souls to rest in God alone.  God remembers forever.  God never forgets.