The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today offer an opportunity to meditate on the quality of our relationship with God and the tension with distractions of the world.
Discern our path
The reading from the Book of Genesis shows the chutzpah of Abraham in discussing God’s judgement pronounced on Sodom.
* [18:20] The immorality of the cities was already hinted at in 13:13, when Lot made his choice to live there. The “outcry” comes from the victims of the injustice and violence rampant in the city, which will shortly be illustrated in the treatment of the visitors. The outcry of the Hebrews under the harsh treatment of Pharaoh (Ex 3:7) came up to God who reacts in anger at mistreatment of the poor (cf. Ex 22:21–23; Is 5:7). Sodom and Gomorrah became types of sinful cities in biblical literature. Is 1:9–10; 3:9 sees their sin as lack of social justice, Ez 16:46–51, as disregard for the poor, and Jer 23:14, as general immorality. In the Genesis story, the sin is violation of the sacred duty of hospitality by the threatened rape of Lot’s guests.1
Psalm 103 offers thanksgiving for God’s Goodness.
* [Psalm 103] The speaker in this hymn begins by praising God for personal benefits (Ps 103:1–5), then moves on to God’s mercy toward all the people (Ps 103:6–18). Even sin cannot destroy that mercy (Ps 103:11–13), for the eternal God is well aware of the people’s human fragility (Ps 103:14–18). The psalmist invites the heavenly beings to join in praise (Ps 103:19–22).2
In the Gospel of Matthew, would-be followers of Jesus learn about the cost.
* [8:22] Let the dead bury their dead: the demand of Jesus overrides what both the Jewish and the Hellenistic world regarded as a filial obligation of the highest importance. See note on Lk 9:60.3
S. Candice Tucci, O.S.F. pictures both men, in the Gospel, struggling with God, with a desire for an intimate relationship with God and with their desire to know God more deeply.
Our prayer, our conversations with God can be revealed through our conversations with friends, companions, strangers, spouses, and creation. We can learn from St. Irenaeus, whose feast is today, that all creation is an expression of God’s Glory. May our eyes be open and let us be alert to those moments the Spirit breaks into our lives with an invitation to talk with God. God wants to talk! Once while I was wondering what I was to do next in ministry, I clearly heard the words, “Let the dead bury the dead…I desire LIFE!” Choose life! Lean into what is light and blessings. Blessings for me, light, life, and blessings for others. It is to be God’s glory, mercy, kindness, loving compassionate presence in following Jesus. It is for us to be “fully alive” as St. Irenaeus exults.4
Don Schwager quotes “Following the Lord Jesus,” by Saint Augustine of Hippo, 354-430 A.D.
"'Come follow Me, says the Lord. Do you love? He has hastened on, He has flown on ahead. Look and see where. O Christian, don't you know where your Lord has gone? I ask you: Don't you wish to follow Him there? Through trials, insults,the cross, and death. Why do you hesitate? Look, the way has been shown you." (excerpt from Sermon 64,5)5
The Word Among Us Meditation on Matthew 8:18-22 comments that one thing is clear from today’s Gospel: Jesus doesn’t sugarcoat the cost of discipleship.
Following Jesus means that you have to battle temptations to sin, maybe daily. It might also mean a less prestigious career path that enables you to spend more time with your family or to serve your parish. It might mean living more simply so that you can give generously to those in need. In all these ways and more, we make sacrifices to follow Jesus.6
Franciscan Media writes that Saint Irenaeus gave us a system of theology of great importance. His work, widely used and translated into Latin and Armenian, gradually ended the influence of the Gnostics.
A deep and genuine concern for other people will remind us that the discovery of truth is not to be a victory for some and a defeat for others. Unless all can claim a share in that victory, truth itself will continue to be rejected by the losers, because it will be regarded as inseparable from the yoke of defeat. And so, confrontation, controversy and the like might yield to a genuine united search for God’s truth and how it can best be served.7
Friar Jude Winkler notes the chutzpah of Abraham who almost puts God on the spot. The sayings about following Jesus tell us we are involved in a journey not an “arriving”. Friar Jude notes the year long Jewish burial ritual and our mission to strike while the iron is hot.
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, comments that the first chapters of Genesis contain not one but two creation stories. The ancient writers were not worried by the obvious differences between the two accounts. For them, both revealed the same inspired truth: that God alone is the Creator, that everything else is God’s creation, and that everything which God creates is good.
Put in theological terms, the story is saying that everything is grace, everything is gift, everything comes from God. God is the One who makes something out of nothing and gives it to us, not way back when, but here and now. God makes us what we are, and gives us to ourselves as a free gift.8
In our journey, in Scripture, we encounter the mystery of God and the Spirit through which we find our path.
References
Addendum
John Moffatt SJ comments that Irenaeus offers some ideas about what it means to live in the right relationship to everything of this world and be in communion with the natural order. He gives us a vision of Eucharist as a liminal space in which communion (koinonia or ‘sharing in common’) binds us with the whole natural order, with one another and with the incarnate Word, as we are nourished on the journey to redemption.
How could we fail to acknowledge that these bodies of ours, Irenaeus asks, nourished by the Lord’s body and blood, are destined for eternity? Again, Irenaeus gives us a vision of death and the afterlife not as a rupture with our physical past, but as its organic completion in a new, eternal and embodied harmony. Towards the end of the fifth book, he presents a vision of the new creation drawing heavily on imagery from Isaiah. Here (and elsewhere) he is, following Genesis 1, unashamedly anthropocentric. All the animals will be completely subject to the redeemed humans, the plants will vie with one another to provide them with more fruit.[5] The vine belongs both in this world and in the world to come, which is a recognisable, physical paradise, but renewed and liberated and in which relationships between the living creatures are restored to harmony. The new creation lies not in the intellectual construct of an unimaginable beyond, but is already glimpsed in the world of our experience. The old creation is not to be effaced as a failure; rather, it is to grow to completion as something greater.[6]
(n.d.). The Eucharist and care of creation – an ancient ... - Thinking Faith. Retrieved June 28, 2021, from https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/eucharist-and-care-creation-%E2%80%93-ancient-perspective
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