17th Week, Monday, July 26
Exodus 32:15-24, 30-34 / Matthew 13:31-35
The
Israelites sin gravely; They fashioned a golden calf.
Lord of the
Flies is a novel by William Golding. It takes place during World War Il. A
plane evacuating 14-year-old schoolboys from bombed cities in England crash-lands
in the sea. The pilot and co-pilot are killed instantly. But the boys escape
unharmed and make it to a deserted island. At first, life on the island is
orderly and good, but gradually it breaks down. Then it deteriorates rapidly,
and the boys begin to turn into wild savages. Something like this happened to
the Israelites when Moses left them for a while. A lesson we might draw from
both episodes is that sin is never far from our lives. We must constantly be on
guard against it.
***
How do we
guard against temptation? We can't break God's commandments; we can only break
ourselves against them.
***
Babies and very young children have this peculiar tendency. They will cry out in distress when they don't see their parents around them. Their parents are certainly still around; just that they are momentarily out of sight. This tendency is especially manifested on the first day of nursery, when the parents leave their children under the care of teachers. The reaction of the children can be anything from frowning to hysterical cries. Such is the need of children for a visible presence of their parents.
We see a similar situation with the Israelites in the 1st reading. Moses had left them to go up to Mt Sinai, and they began to feel abandoned and insecure. They needed a sense of security and they turned to a thing to satisfy them. Yes, we might criticize them for being idolatrous, etc. But what they felt only illustrates the human desire for the presence of God in order to feel secure. The presence of God is like the mustard seed and the yeast parables that Jesus used to describe the Kingdom of God. Where God is made present, there is the Kingdom. We are like the mustard seeds and the yeast. God is within us and He is waiting. He is waiting for us to make His kingdom present in the world.
***
Cued by the Bible, in many languages “to worship (or adore)
the golden calf” means to be inordinately after money and riches. In the Bible,
it means to try to make oneself a god in the image of the human person, a god
that one can control and use for one’s own ends, instead of a free, invisible
God; also, making one’s own little gods out of created things. It can be power,
prestige, authority, possessions, and in modern society, production, economic
empires, science. Not that these things are bad in themselves; they become
idols once they are no longer means toward a more humanized society but made
into ends existing for their own purpose.
***
The
mustard seed shows that out of one tiny seed a big bush can grow. Every word of
Christ has, like the little seed, that power m it. Sentences of Jesus spoken
once, two thousand years ago, have in them the power even today to change the
history of the world. Five such sentences will make this clear. Jesus said:
'You are Peter, the rock and on this rock I shall build my church". Today
we have the 264th successor of Peter.
He
can look back over an uninterrupted line stretching over 1900 years. At the
last supper, Jesus said: "Do this in memory of me". Today round the
clock, mass is celebrated in countless churches and chapels in memory of him.
Men have used their greatest skills as architects, painters, musicians in his
memory. "Go out into the whole world", he said, and the apostles and
after them in every century, missionaries mustered the courage to go to the
farthest and wildest corners of the world. "What you have done to the
least of my brethren, you have done to me" started Christian charity. The
word 'hospital', derived from the Latin word for 'host', reminds us that the
sick are the guests of Christ. "If you want to be perfect, go and sell
whatever you have", he said once to a fine young man and after that began
that movement in the Church where men and women offer themselves for the love
of God to the service of man.
***
A tiny seed becomes a tree. At the
beginning, when one hears it and accepts it, the Word of God is only a tiny
seed, and when it is contested and contradicted, as it was in the early Church
and is often again today, it looks insignificant, negligible. What is it, in
comparison with the powerful media? But it is meant to grow and to become
little by little a kingdom of love and justice that overcomes all contradiction
and hatred.
