MATTHEW AND THE FOLLY OF HUMAN PRIDE
A Reflection for the 8th Sunday in Ordinary Time
(Mt6: 24-34)
When I was in my 30's, working as an engineer in the Middle East, and before I became a priest, I made a journey to Egypt. I had long been interested in the antiquities, and wanted to see for myself the pyramids, the monuments and the mighty works of the pharaohs whose dynasties had once ruled that land for over a thousand years. I went by train from Cairo to Luxor in the south, and joined with a touring party to the Valley of the Kings. What I saw there changed my understanding of human nature, and planted in me the seed of a vocation to a life of service.
Amidst the pillared ruins of temples and tombs at the royal burial ground of Thebes, our group came across the fallen statue of the once-great pharaoh and king of all Egypt, Ramesses II. Time had wrought its ravage: only the legs remained upright on the massive base; the torso lay, shattered, on the sand. The pharaoh had once erected this colossus to his immortal self, and had incised on its base these words, immortalized in rhyme by the English poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley:
"I am Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair." The poet continues,
"Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away . . . ".
I realized at this point that nothing we can prepare for ourselves, no empire that we build, can last forever. All are fated to decay and oblivion. How much better to devote one's life to building up God's kingdom, a kingdom that will last, when all others have gone.
Matthew, in today's Gospel, sums up the impermanence of human pride and the folly of worrying where our next comforts will come from. He uses the simple example of the birds and the flowers: if they have been created in love and variety, how much more will we be taken care of, if only we have faith and trust? I think of the words of a modern hymn by the Marist brother Michael Herry, composed to complement today's Gospel:
"So set your hearts on the Kingdom first:
Your Father knows your needs . . . "
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