In today's Gospel, we have saints acting badly, or perhaps simply future saints learning basic lessons in how to become a saint.  We are also celebrating Mary of Egypt who went from courtesan to celibate saint once she had a transforming experience of coming to know God.  One of the common features of saints who are otherwise quite varied in backgrounds and dispositions is that they grow to have something the world is in short supply of.  When we look about us, we see that the world’s supply of  love, joy, and peace is desperately low.  There is no shortage of the false imitations of these qualities.  Jesus is at peace even as he contemplates his own unjust death because he is doing it out of love as an act of service to mankind.  The disciples have to learn that serving others rather than being served is the basis of true happiness.  When two of them seek a special honor, it causes all of the others to get jealous and leads to conflict.  It must not be so with them or us.

        As the world grows old, happiness is in short supply.  Everybody is seemingly desperate to get one's fair share of the rightful portion of whatever is seen as desirable.  This usually involves a competition for those things in short, or at least finite supply.  Contentment is actually unlimited because it comes from an infinite supply that flows from following the path of Our Lord.  Serving others without expectation of reward or honor is usually an activity for which little competition exists.  The same goes for not seeking the places of honor.  That is usually the short line to get into.  The world wants to see happy saints–people who have followed this pathway and who are radiant about it rather than gloomy about all they have missed out on.

        Our neo-pagan culture is nearing the end of its run.  Everything it has touched has turned to death.  It requires more and more stimulation for people caught up in it to be able to feel alive.  Boredom and ennui have led to a death of interest in things because they are no longer exciting and new.  The existential sense of meaning derived from spontaneity is fading.  The pleasures of the flesh no longer satisfy and the inevitable consequences are drawing in.  People can no longer enjoy the particularity.  A young child could wander out into the yard in the Spring and see this wonderful yellow flower growing in the yard and be amazed by its complexity and beauty.  It seems to be truly wonderful in every respect.  When that child grows up with material privilege, he or she might look at a dandelion and mentally compare it to an orchid or a rose.  They cannot enjoy a dandelion for its own sake as simply what it is.  The sense of awe is gone.  Our family members cannot be just who they are but must be compared to something grander that they are not.  This leads to dissatisfaction. with what we have.  Missing are love, joy and peace which bring contentment.  The saint with these qualities has something that is in short supply in the world.  We must remember that despair comes not from being weary of suffering, but in being weary of what we perceive as joy.

        Without love, joy and peace, we can have the whole world and have lost our soul.  We tend to look around at every thing we might have and it no longer has any meaning.  As in the Peggy Lee song of years ago, we say, "Is that All There Is?"  In the Gospel we hear that serving others is the way of God's Kingdom, not in being served.  Greatness comes not from lording it over others to impress them with our importance, but in serving them.  This simple, yet radical way of living turns the world on its head.  Instead of wishing that our family or friends were different and more important than they are in the world's eyes, we have only to see them as unique persons who are unlike anything else in creation.  We can serve them and help them to grow.  We love them, intercede for them, support them, and give them every opportunity to grow to the maximum that God has for them.  We love them as they are.  What is interesting is seeing what happens to us.  Our capacity for love grows as we grow in our humanity.

        Mary of Egypt had to flee the sensuality that had been an integral part of her life and seek God in ascetic practices of denying the flesh so as to start over as a child of God.  What she discovered is that it is not sensual beauty that is in short supply and in great demand.  Rather it is the ability to see the good in other people--to serve and not be served, to follow God's way.

        This is the way to love, joy and peace--and it is in short supply in the world today.