The Real War

Gospel: Matthew 6: 17-37

Little boys love playing war and soldier.  How often will we find them pretending to be fighting off enemies, making gun and explosion sounds as they fight on in a war they believe to be all too real.  Those young boys grow up and invent real wars that are in themselves just as illusory as the ones they created at age five.  We imagine people far away from us as our enemy when in fact they are not.  We create culture wars at home with another set of enemies that in reality are not so.

We do this because we do not wish to fight the real war, the only one that matters, the one that makes us realize that we are the enemy of ourselves.  It is the battle within our very hearts and souls from where arise all sorts of evils.  We can claim to keep the commandments because we have not killed anyone or committed adultery.  But Jesus asks us: who among you has not had murderous thoughts about one's neighbor, who among you has not had lustful thoughts about a man or a woman?  Now the room grows quiet...

It is much easier to wage vicarious imitation wars against imagined enemies than it is to wage war within ourselves, to admit that we are the enemy, we the ones who need to be conquered, we the ones who must submit to the Lord.  Today we are reminded of where the real war lies, and who the real enemy is.  Let us not be distracted by all the false wars, but instead let us wage the real one, the only one that matters.