Oblates of St. Francis de Sales

New DeSales World Newsletter - Summer Edition

23nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (September 05, 2004)

Suggested Emphasis

"If one of you decides to build a tower, will you not first sit down and calculate the outlay to see if you can accomplish the project?"

Salesian Perspective

Life can be frustrating enough at times without making it worse by failing to look ahead. How many times have we had to go back to the grocery store because we didn't first make a list of what we needed to buy? How often have we run to Lowe's or Home Depot three, four, five times or more on the same day because we simply didn't take the time to first consider all the materials that we would need in order to accomplish a project? How many vacations or trips have been soured because we failed to first sit down and consider all the things we should bring?

Anything worth doing - no matter how simple or complex - is worth doing well. And the first step in doing something well is to plan ahead.

We clearly hear echoes of this truth in the parable from Luke's Gospel. Jesus admonishes his audience to first determine what it is they will need to complete an important task before embarking on the task itself. For his part, St. Francis de Sales recommends: "Be careful and attentive to all the matters that God has committed to your care. Since God has confided them to you, God wishes you to have great care for them."

Of course, we know that the Salesian tradition cautions us to not become so obsessed with advanced planning that we become anxious or compulsive. However, this same tradition cautions us against performing tasks or projects in a careless or haphazard manner. Our own experience clearly demonstrates that when we fail to plan we are frequently planning to fail.

Take a page from the life of Jesus himself. Before undertaking his public ministry he went into the desert where he no doubt took stock of all that he would need to accomplish God's great project for him: the salvation of the human family. Jesus didn't begin his ministry in a haphazard fashion; he didn't make it up as he went along. He was deliberate; he was prudent. Before he began his ministry in earnest he first considered all that he would need - with the Father's love - to redeem all creation through his life, his love, his passion, his death and his resurrection.

God has entrusted to us the most important of all projects: to continue Christ's work on earth, to be sources of God's peace, justice, reconciliation, truth, hope, care, concern and love for one another. Like the tower in today's Gospel parable, accomplishing this task can sometimes be a tall order indeed. Few of us, however, have the luxury of setting aside forty days in the desert to determine what we need in order to follow God's will and to be the kind of people that God calls us to be. When are we supposed to calculate what we'll need to be successful - to be faithful - in pursuing this greatest of all projects?

How about the first few minutes of every new day?

Michael S. Murray, OSFS, is Executive Director of the De Sales Spirituality Center at Childs, MD