Birds in the Sky!

Saturday, June 21, 2025

2 Cor 12:1-10; Mt 6:24-34

In today’s Gospel, Jesus invites us to trust in God’s unfailing providence. 

The imageries that Jesus employs to explain God’s intimate care over His creation are the most beautiful of all: birds in the sky and lilies of the field. 

Birds in the sky have nothing that they call their own. Yet, they fly as if they own the sky. Jesus invites us to make a model of what animates the lives of birds and animals. Something in them helps them decode the fact that just as they received their daily food in the past, they would continue to receive it in the future. Jesus identifies their daily trust as a virtue for us to imitate. 

Likewise, the ‘lilies of the field’ is another beautiful image to show that just as they have been clothed in the best way possible, we humans are provided for by God in the most sublime way possible. Jesus wants us to understand that just as the lilies remain unmatched in their splendour, we will be cared for by God’s diligent care. The example of lilies of the field is Jesus’ way of exposing the futility of excessive toil or anxiety and inviting us to hold on to God firmly.

Through the examples of birds and lilies, Jesus demonstrates how faith can take shape in the context. 

For Jesus, just as firm trust in God’s unfailing provisions reveals our faith, our unhealthy fear or anxiety about the future amounts to a betrayal of God’s providence that has never let us down in the past. 

Let us pray that we may trust in God’s providence without any distractions over our future.

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar