On being authentic

Saturday in the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time, Cycle I

Rt 2,1-11. 4,13-17; Mt 23, 1-12

When we use our social media, such as facebook or instagram, and scroll down our screen, we see many smiling faces, everybody showing off his or her perfect lives, as though everything was plain sailing in their lives. What is we express in our social media is rarely what we are actually living in our daily lives.

This is what Jesus warns against in his words to the Pharisees. "Be authentic!" he is telling them. "Do not allow yourselves to be carried away by what others think of you!" Jesus is saying the same words to us as well: Why do you want to keep longing for the approval of others in everything you do? Why do you always want to feel needed and important among your friends? Why do you always feel the need to be consulted by others and get offended if they do not?

Henry J Nouwen tells the story of when he spent seven months in a Trappist Monastery in an Abbey of Genesee in upstate New York. By then, he was already an established psychologist and priest, a renowned author and popular speaker. He recounts how while he was there he almost became depressed because, spending all the time in silence and solitude, he was far from those people who would constantly seek his help, people who always showed him that he was needed, and people who made him feel important. There, he says, God wanted to teach him the lesson of humility.

We can say that in the Abbey, Henri J Nouwen learnt the fear of the Lord, as we prayed together with the psalmist today: "See how the Lord blesses those who fear him." Indeed, the Lord blesses those who fear him, those who stand in awe of God, those who recognize their littleness and their limitations.

Last Thursday, the Pope delivered a very important address about how are we to pray and worship - our liturgy - together as a Church, and which is very strongly tied to today's Gospel. He did three points:
First, that our prayer and worship has life only insofar as Jesus is part of our celebration, because only Jesus can give it life. Without Jesus at its centre, all our prayer and worship cannot be life-giving Otherwise, it is merely a number of external actions with no meaning at all. Secondly, the Pope said that all our prayer and worship must be inclusive to all and a sign and instrument of communion for everyone, nobody excluded. Finally, he said that it is a concrete way in which we experience God love for us and therefore we too must love others in concrete and tangible ways.

Jesus' hard words today are an invitation for us to let go of anything that smacks of pride or attention seeking, so that, unlike those chosen pictures on facebook or instagram, we can become more authentic persons in every aspect of our life, be it our relationship with others, or even our relationship with God in the way in which we celebrate our liturgy and worship God.