Saturday of the Zeroth week of Lent

The reason why God requires service from man is this: because he is good and merciful he desires to confer benefits on those who persevere in his service. In proportion to God's need of nothing is man's need for communion with God. - from the treatise Against Heresies, by St. Irenaeus, bishop

So I've grabbed a quotation from the middle of this passage that was focused on the idea of God's self-sufficiency and how being in his light illuminates us, not him. That leads to the first sentence above, which can make it sound as if a God whom we call benevolent is instead capricious in only bestowing blessings on those who serve him. This is not at all true. In fact, scripture itself quotes God as saying that he pours out his blessings on the good and the evil alike. But here is the thing: serving God positions us in right posture to receive benefits to which we are not otherwise open. When we get focused on living our lives according to our own providence, we become self-centered and closed off from the greater abundance which he pours out for us to receive.

This morning at men's group we got onto the topic of how we perceive things in the world, and specifically the difference between our view of things and God's. For instance, tomorrow's mass readings clearly contrast two approaches to temptation. Adam succumbed to the temptation to grasp for equality with God, and we have been thus grasping ever since. Christ forsook his rightful equality with God for our sake. I don't know: maybe once we've turned out back on something for a specific purpose or mission, that thing doesn't inflame us with the same degree of desire. Certainly Jesus would have lacked the power to resist his temptations had he not had such confidence in God's providence and love. It seems to me that my tendency to despair is always foreshadowed by doubting God; when I am confident of him I am not tempted to get wrapped up in what I perceive as the shortcomings of my life. At any rate, I believe that the ultimate answer to every temptation is to have faith in God, to trust what he has revealed through his Word and his Church and his prior work in my life.

Likewise, our approach to suffering - particularly sacrificial suffering - is very different from God's. We see both things in Jesus' agony in the garden, his human longing to be spared along with his ultimate trusting that the Father's will was best.  When we trust him through whatever life brings, God allows the light of his glory to shine through in ways that we cannot see by any other means. We still don't illuminate God; it is still his light and not ours that shines so brightly. But neither do we see the sunlight when we are turned away from the sun until it illuminates those objects which reflect its light.

In our case, we must make the choice to reflect God's light for others to see.