The main point in both of the readings for mass today seems to be that something is missing in the lives of the people in King Darius’ time and in King Herod as well. In the first reading for mass today the prophet Haggai speaks for God when he tells the people, “You have sown much, and harvested little; you eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill, you clothe yourselves but no one is warm; and you that earn wages earn wages to put them into a bag with holes.”
How familiar does this sound? Some things never change. This verse in scripture sounds no different than many of our lives today. History repeats itself. Many of us work hard but never seem to have enough. Whenever we acquire something new, it leads to wanting something more and so the cycle continues. We work really hard and then find ourselves throwing our money away without even realizing what we are doing. For some of us, our money leaves our hands almost as quick as we earn it and then we look in our wallet one day and wonder what we spent it on? Was it because we stopped for too many of those expensive coffees on the way to work or we splurged on too many dinners out? Maybe it was a lot of little things that we bought at the store that added up quickly. Often, we don’t even remember what all we spent our money on.
The opposite can be true too. We can save a little money and see our bank account grow and save a little more and invest it, then search around endlessly looking for ways that our money can earn a better interest rate, then we’re never satisfied with the current rate we are earning on our investments.
Let’s not even talk about jobs, relationships and marriages. We get a job but are unhappy with it after the new wears off and the monotony sets in. The same way with marriage. It’s great when you are newlyweds but after a few years, all of your spouse’s faults really begin to weigh on you. Some people go through multiple marriages in life and end up at the end of their lives just as dissatisfied as they were earlier in life. This is especially true with movie stars.
King Herod was a very wealthy ruler who had the ability to indulge his every wish or inclination and yet he too, sensed something was missing in life. There was still an empty place inside of him that made him perplexed about Jesus and that was why he wanted to see him.
Do you ever have days where you wonder if this is all there is to life? You wake up each day, go to work, come home and have dinner and maybe watch a little television, run your errands on Saturdays and then go to mass on Sundays? It seems like a treadmill sometimes that you can’t get off. Do you ever wish you could stop the world for a while, and take a little time to catch your breath and experience just the basic elements of life itself? To reexamine your life and what it is all about?
If you feel dissatisfied in life, that something is missing and there is an emptiness inside of you that you just can’t seem to fill, then the Lord is calling you to something deeper, just like the people in the first reading for mass today. Even Herod sensed this in the gospel reading too. When God is near, you instinctively know it. His closeness to you, makes you even more aware of your own emptiness, the lack of joy in your life.
The people in the first reading for mass today did not want to take the time to build God’s house. We also do not want to take the time to build God’s “house” in our own hearts either. We want to grow in holiness and have very good intentions of working on our spiritual life by praying more often, going to confession, maybe attend a daily mass or go to adoration, but we then we do not want to take the time to do so. Something always comes up.
Today would be a good day to let Jesus be the priority in our day for once. Just for today, we might eliminate something that is consuming our time unnecessarily and spend some time getting to know the Lord again in prayer. The “something that is missing” in our lives is our relationship with Jesus. He alone can fill the emptiness inside of us, with joy, and give our lives purpose and meaning.
Saint Augustine expressed this feeling most profoundly when he said “Our hearts are restless Lord, until they rest in thee”.
