psalm 27, the light and the one thing that matters, 3rd sunday ordinary time

We continue to reflect on our responsorial psalm.  Today we reflect on Psalm 27.  I would like to propose two things.

First, psalm 27 says, the Lord is my light.  There are two sources of lights in the Old Testament.  First, the sun, God's first gift to us, let there be light.  Because of the sun we have life and everything that sustains life, there is warmth, and we can see.  God is light, there is no darkness in him.

Many of us are afraid of the dark, but in our days, when we are afraid we have recourse to guns, security locks, guards and more guards.  But then in the Bible the antidote for fear is God because God is our light and our shield.

The second source of light in the Old Testament is a lamp.  They have no flashlights then, they have no light bulbs unlike ours that can beam its light for miles giving us a vision of what lies way, way ahead.  But this is not the kind of light psalm 27 refers to.  The psalm refers to a small lamp which is a small pot with oil and wick, and the light it gave was just enough to make them see a short distance.  In fact, when the Word of God was referred to a lamp, it could only light the feet and our path, just a few steps ahead.  If we follow God's will God will not give us a flashlight. With God we may never know what the road will look like a few miles from where we are or a few years from now.  God instead will give us a lamp, a very handy lamp with a light just enough to make us walk a few steps without stumbling; a few steps at a time, just enough to make us see the path before us.  We have to trust God with his kind of light.

Second, psalm 27 says, "One thing I ask of the LORD;  this I seek:  To dwell in the house of the LORD..."  We ask for so many things from God, but in the end there is only "one thing" that really matters.    We work for so many things in life, running after this and that but in the end there is on "one thing" that really matters.

When the rich young man who was also very religious asked Jesus about what he must do to have eternal life, Jesus answered, you lacked one thing.  When Martha complained to Jesus about her sister Mary, Jesus said to her, "Martha, Martha you are anxious and worried about many things.  There is need of only one thing."  And yet in our anxiety, in our vanity, in our complexity, in our zeal to do what is good and right and leave our mark in this world, we often miss that one thing that is necessary.

St Ignatius reminds us in our discernment to go back always to the first principle:  "Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul."  This is only measure of all the things we plan to do - the one thing that really matters.

Many times, we argue, we go through a lot of conflicts, we can even be rude to one another even when we are all serving the same interest, the interest of God.  We can minimize this when we always put in mind and in our priorities the one thing that really matters.