The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today resonate with our mental laziness that too often assesses people, in this season of social and family gatherings, in accord with our opinions and we may miss the goodness within them if we are not open to see it.
 |
| Family festival |
The reading from Leviticus is a calendar of Holy Days.
* [23:1–44] This is paralleled by another calendar from the Priestly tradition, in Nm 28–29. Non-Priestly resumes of festal and holy observances are found in Ex 23:10–17; 34:18–24 and Dt 16:1–17.1
In Psalm 81 God gives the Israelites the fundamental commandment of fidelity.
* [Psalm 81] At a pilgrimage feast, probably harvest in the fall, the people assemble in the Temple in accord with the Sinai ordinances (Ps 81:2–6). They hear a divine word (mediated by a Temple speaker) telling how God rescued them from slavery in Egypt (Ps 81:7–9), gave them the fundamental commandment of fidelity (Ps 81:9–11),2
Jesus encounters rejection at Nazareth in the Gospel from Matthew.
* [13:54–58] After the Sermon on the Mount the crowds are in admiring astonishment at Jesus’ teaching (Mt 7:28); here the astonishment is of those who take offense at him. Familiarity with his background and family leads them to regard him as pretentious. Matthew modifies his Marcan source (Mt 6:1–6). Jesus is not the carpenter but the carpenter’s son (Mt 13:55), “and among his own kin” is omitted (Mt 13:57), he did not work many mighty deeds in face of such unbelief (Mt 13:58) rather than the Marcan “…he was not able to perform any mighty deed there” (Mt 6:5), and there is no mention of his amazement at his townspeople’s lack of faith.3
Ann Mausbach observes that in today’s Gospel, Jesus’s ordinariness confused people and they could not believe in him. His familiarity made them ignore him.
How could he be so special when he was right here all along? How often in our lives do we look for the razzle, dazzle, the new, the exciting, the different? What Jesus is calling us to do is be like Saint Ignatius and find God in all things. God is right next to us, in our partner of 61 years, and it is through the ordinary day to day living, through the familiar, that we find His love and our footing.4
Don Schwager quotes “Few miracles done because of their unbelief,” by Origen of Alexandria (185-254 AD).
"It seems to me that the production of miracles is similar in some ways to the case of physical things. Cultivation is not sufficient to produce a harvest of fruits unless the soil, or rather the atmosphere, cooperates to this end. And the atmosphere of itself is not sufficient to produce a harvest without cultivation. The one who providentially orders creation did not design things to spring up from the earth without cultivation. Only in the first instance did he do so when he said, 'Let the earth bring forth vegetation, with the seed sowing according to its kind and according to its likeness' (Genesis 1:11). It is just this way in regard to the production of miracles. The complete work resulting in a healing is not displayed without those being healed exercising faith. Faith, of whatever quality it might be, does not produce a healing without divine power.' (excerpt from the COMMENTARY ON MATTHEW 10.19)5
The Word Among Us Meditation comments on how the people of Nazareth still couldn’t bring themselves to surrender to Jesus.
In our journey with the Lord, we too need to learn to surrender to Jesus. This is an important element in the call to faith: to trust that Jesus knows what he’s doing and to believe that he is strong enough to save you. Yes, faith has to do with knowing the doctrines of the Church. Yes, it has to6
Friar Jude Winkler fleshes out the agricultural origins of the list of festivals in Leviticus. The Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant understanding of Jesus brothers and sisters is different. Friar Jude reminds us of our tendency to let the negative aspects of people take our attention and blind us to their goodness.
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, introduces modern mystic Dr. Diana L. Hayes, an author and professor emerita of systematic theology at Georgetown University. She was the first African American woman to earn a Pontifical Doctorate in Theology. In her book No Crystal Stair: Womanist Spirituality, Hayes writes about the never-ending dance of giving and receiving.
This is our calling as Christian faithful: to recognize the Christ in everyone. And to reach out a hand of hope, to speak a word of love, to sing a song of happiness, to share a tear of joy or pain, to speak a word of praise, to murmur a prayer, to stand together against those forces that would divide us, isolate us, and block our flow toward home.
We must seek to become the righteous of God, recognizing that the path is neither short nor easy, but rock-strewn, obstacle-laden, sometimes even seeming to flow backwards and uphill! But as the prophet Micah proclaims:
You have been told . . . what is goodAnd what the Lord requires of you:Only to do the right and to love goodness,And to walk humbly with your God. (6:8)
This is the Christian vocation of the laity in the world. Today and every day. It is not an easy vocation for there are temptations to flow in other directions, to leave our own course and follow the so-called “main-stream,” a stream that appears large and exciting but eventually peters out into nothingness. . . .7
The psychological phenomenon of confirmation bias may lead us to accept ideas that agree with our opinions and miss opportunities to grow in our relationships and understanding.
References
No comments:
Post a Comment