19th Week, Monday, August 9
Deuteronomy 10:12-22 / Matthew 17:22-27
Moses exhorts the Israelites; “Befriend the alien.”
An old man collapsed on a Brooklyn Street and was taken to Kings County Hospital. From a blurred address in the man's wallet, nurses deciphered the name and address of a marine, who appeared to be his son. They put an emergency call in for the marine. When the marine arrived, the old man reached out his hand feebly. The marine took it and held it tenderly for the next four hours, until the old man died. After the man passed away, the marine asked, "Who was that old man?" The nurse said, "Wasn't that your father?" "No," said the marine, "but I saw he needed a son, so I stayed."
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How far are we willing to inconvenience ourselves for strangers who need our help? If God is our Father, then aren't all God's children our brothers and sisters?
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Verse 15 gives us the theme of the reading: "It was on your ancestors, for love of them, that Yahweh set his heart to love them and he chose their descendants after them, you yourselves out of all nations „ This is a mystery that no man can solve: Why did God choose the Jews? And equally: Why did God choose me? The reply is: It is grace. It only a reply, not an answer. Yet there is no such thing as a cheap grace. Grace implies responsibility. The question is: what does Yahweh your God ask of you? Trust, obedience and love. Trust is to rest very firmly on the memory of what Yahweh has done. Israel has to remember what God has done for his people. It is not to live in the past. What God has done is happening today. The three feasts: Passover, Pentecost and Booths are the past lived every year. Obedience: God continues to be near to his people in the law: Every day he shows the people what he wants from them. To follow God's paths, to cling to him is doing his will in the commandments. To love: Hosea used for this love for the covenant the comparison with another contract: that of husband and wife. Deuteronomy uses the love of father to child.
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A mixed assortment of slaves had been made into a people, obtained freedom, and was on its way to a land of its own. People without hope had been given dreams of a great future. All this because there was a God “foolish” enough to attach himself to these people and to love them without any merit on their part. This love was a call, waiting for a response of life-long fidelity to God’s ways.
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Small matters can become big explosive issues if not handled carefully. Lighting a match-stick to light a candle is a small matter. Lighting a match-stick in a petrol-station is a dangerous thing. More often than not, it is the small irritating issues that explode into raging fires because of the small-mindedness of some people.
In the gospel, the collectors of the half-shekel asked Peter, "Does your master not pay the half-shekel?" But from what Jesus said, we get to know that He didn't have to pay the half-shekel. Why was it that the collectors were asking from Him then? There could be many reasons, one of which could be that they were trying to find trouble with Him so that they could use something against Him.
Whatever it was, Jesus did not want to have trouble with those people nor take their bait. He rather let the fish do it, and the coin in the mouth of the fish solved the problem. For Jesus it was a small matter and that small coin solved the problem.
Neither does Jesus want us to get entangled with small petty issues. He will provide the simple solutions to these small issues for us. What Jesus wants of us is what Moses told the people in the 1st reading: to fear the Lord our God, to follow all His ways, to love Him, to serve the Lord our God with all our heart and all our soul.
Those are the big issues that we must pay attention to. If we neglect those big issues, then the small irritating issues will become explosive and destructive.
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The gospel gives us the image of God-in-civilian Jesus, God’s Son, a man who pays his taxes even when he is not obliged to. It may be a hint for us not to ask for privileges because we are Christians and to act and live as free people, who at times – or often – choose to do what we are not obliged to do, especially in the form of help.
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Prayer
Lord our God, you are present among us in secret, incognito, with the everyday appearance of an ordinary person. God, give us eyes of faith to see that you are among us in the person of Jesus your Son in this eucharist, in the joys and sorrows of life, in the people we meet in the street. Make us attentive to your presence in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
