AD SENSE

16th Week, Saturday, July 24

 16th Week, Saturday, July 24

Exodus 24:3-8 / Matthew 13:24-30

God covenants his people; 'This is God's covenant with you.”

 The covenant experience transformed Israel from a mob of ex-slaves into a chosen people. It gave them an identity and a destiny. A modern Jew, Will Herberg, puts it this way: "Israel is not a 'natural' nation; it is, indeed, not a nation at all like the nations of the world. It is a supernatural community, called into being by God to serve his eternal purposes in history." Israel's covenant experience at Mt. Sinai gave the people a uniqueness. Apart from Christianity and Islam, which owe their origin, in part, to Israel, no other religion originated as Judaism did. Other religions sprang from nature; Judaism sprang from an event in history.

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Do we recognize our spiritual debt to Israel? "Apart from the covenant, Israel is as nothing and Jewish existence is a mere illusion. The covenant is at the very heart of the Jewish self-understanding of its own reality." Will Herberg

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Today’s first reading describes the rite of the covenant, by which Israel became God’s chosen people with whom God made a blood compact, a “sangduguan” (was an ancient ritual in the Philippines intended to seal a friendship or treaty, or to validate an agreement. The contracting parties would cut their wrists and pour their blood into a cup filled with liquid, such as wine, and drink the mixture., whereby they became his blood relations.) “I am the Lord thy God” (in the singular, “thy”, term of intimacy). The tremendous, inaccessible God of Sinai is the God who is present to every person and who accepts to go along with people in their adventures of hope and love, of life and death. He is the God of his people. By taking the risk to be with us, he obliges us to take the risk of faith to seek him and to be near to him. Christ will raise this covenant to a deeper level and make it everlasting. At the heart of every eucharist, in the consecration, he tells us: “You are my blood brothers and sisters. This is the blood of the new and everlasting covenant.”

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We may know of some people who have left the Church because of a bad experience. The bad experience can be anything from being told off by a priest to an argument with another Catholic in Church. And their common grouse is this - How can Church people/ Catholics be like this? Yes, how can Catholics or people who go to Church be like this? Just what is the Church all about? 

Well, ideally, we would think that the Church is made up of good and nice people who would not give any kind of trouble whatsoever. After all the Church is called the Holy Catholic Church. Yet if Jesus came for sinners, then the Church is also refuge for sinners and a place where sinners will slowly learn to be saints.

 The Church is essentially the font of God's grace for these kinds of people, and no one in the Church can ever say that he is without sin. In other words, the Church is certainly not a garden without weeds or darnel, as reflected in the parable in the gospel. 

Even Jesus Himself did not weed out people like Peter and Judas, and He even gave hope to sinners who want to repent. May we acknowledge that we are indeed sinners but let us also acknowledge the power of God's grace. May we journey on in repentance and conversion and may others see the Church as a sign of salvation.

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All around us, but in our hearts as well, weeds are growing together with the wheat – the bad with the good. This is life, and it is not easy to take. We see first of all the weeds growing in the garden of our neighbour, and we want him to pull them out. But we should look into our own hearts as well. What to do? To pluck out the bad as best as we can. And not to be upset that, after all, we are not entirely good. We have to live with it in faith and in hope and leave it all in the hands of God.

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Prayer: Almighty and inaccessible God, you have made yourself our God and placed yourself into our hands. Make us conscious of all the tender love that prompts you to take the risk of entering our life and death, of sharing our fleeting hopes and destiny, of being with us all the way. Give us the faith to take the risk of seeking you with all our hearts, that you may indeed be our God and we your kinfolk and people through our brother, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen