Memorial of Saint Anthony, Abbot
Scripture Readings
I have several cookbooks that focus on feast days for saints. For Saint Anthony, one of these cookbooks offers a rich and hearty meal of barbecued pork ribs. It's a joke that this is the celebratory food, the cookbook notes, because Anthony, a desert hermit, avoided meat in his diet. Several stories are told about his life when he was tempted by food or sex but overcame it. He is honored particularly for his ability to face both fear and temptation directly, rather than trying to avoid or sugarcoat them. So, the cookbook author suggests: we can eat the pork - or maybe trying to stare down the pork dish and NOT eat it, in honor of Anthony.
These are likely lessons any one of us stand to learn from as well, though our temptation may not come in the form of pork barbeque. Today's first scripture (1 Samual 8:4-7, 10-22a) reminds us how easy it is to be tempted by things that are not good for us, even though they SEEM good at first. The Israelites seek a king to replace him, so they can be "like other nations." A king would help them go to war against aggressors, and would give them stature in the international community. But the prophet Samuel warns them against this. Being like other nations won't get them all the things they think they want; moreover, having a king will mean ultimately that they'll become slaves of the one in power.
Still, the people are persistent, and God ends up granting them the thing they want: a king. If we were to read the rest of the histories in the Old Testament, we'd find that Samuel is right, that having kings didn't bring good results for the Israelites. Their nation is utterly destroyed and their leaders end up in poverty and exile.
The gospel reading (Mark 2:1-12) provides a counterpoint to thinking about being tempted to have what we don't have. In this story four men bring a paralyzed man to Jesus, presumably so that he will heal the man. But notice that Jesus doesn't give them what they (and we) want, at least not at first. He doesn't heal the man's physical ailments, but his sins. I can almost imagine being a bystander hearing Jesus say, "Your sins are forgiven" and thinking THIS is what you're saying to this poor man? How rude!
Yet the fact that Jesus forgives his sins first and his paralyzed limbs second serves to remind us again to take stock of whether the things we want God to do for us are the things that, in fact, we NEED God to do for us. In healing sins, Jesus gives the man friendship with God - and that friendship with God leads to further physical healing.
A different cookbook of mine offers a different recipe for St. Anthony's feast: a simple barley soup with carrots, cabbage and potatoes. Maybe the simplicity of that recipe helps us think about wants and needs? In any case, on this feast of St. Anthony, it's worth reflecting on the things we want that we don't have. Do they bring us closer to God, or do they bring us only more grief?
- Jana M. Bennett