July 7, 2017
Friday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 381
GN 23:1-4, 19; 24:1-8, 62-67
PS 106:1B-2, 3-4A, 4B-5
MT 9:9-13
When Abraham was first given the promise of blessing the entire world, I don’t think he completely understood God’s plan. I think we are in that same boat today. The Bible itself is a library of books that attempt to look at our evolving understanding of who the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob really is. At the beginning, they saw Him through the eyes of a warring tribal nation intent on setting themselves apart for God. In their zeal to be part of a relationship with Him they refused to intermix with other races and only wanted to marry inside their families. Spiritually we see this as the other nations representing Sin and the nation of Israel representing holiness, being set apart, living in communion with God.
Jesus is the incarnation of God Himself. In order for us to fully understand what God wanted from us, He Himself came down to give us a relationship we could understand even more fully. As He quotes today, “God desires mercy, not sacrifice.” Here we are two thousand years later trying to digest and unpack all that Jesus taught us about God. While the public deposit of revelation is complete and the scriptures unchangeable, we humans are still trying to understand how to live out that message in our own time, our own socioeconomic realities.
I think we still tend to isolate ourselves in groups though, separating from those who are different and strange. Jesus simple statement that it is the sick who have need of a physician, not the well, is something we would all do well to meditate upon. First and foremost we must realize that we are sick. We are infected with this thing called concupiscence, that Saint Paul describes as: “Those things I should not do, that I do.” It’s that desire inside of us to do things that feel right, even when we know they are wrong. In that sense, the Hospital we need is the Church and the healer Christ in the Sacraments. Secondly, we must l learn that we are also to be working to be in the image of Christ. That means healing. Not dividing, not separating, not pushing away… but forming a bond of unity, healing, and forgiving one another.
That’s our goal. That’s our mission. To reach out into the world, to sit with the men and women in need of just as much healing as we need, and to help them find the medicine they need in Christ’s loving arms.
His servant and yours,
Brian Mullins
“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my rock, and my redeemer. – Psalm 19:14