19th Week, Monday, August 8
Ezekiel 1:2-5, 24-28 / Matthew 17:22-27
God appears to Ezekiel; The Lord appeared in a storm.
Ezekiel was in his 20s when Babylonian armies destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple. As he was marched off in chains to Babylon, with thousands of other young men, his dreams of serving as a temple priest marched away with him.
Then one day in Babylon, Ezekiel gazed across the plains and saw an approaching storm: thunder, lightning, and storm clouds. In the storm's midst stood the Lord of glory, in human form, seated on a throne and surrounded by a dazzling rainbow. The great God of Israel was present in Babylon and had come to make Ezekiel his messenger to the exiles in Babylon.
There's a lesson here for all of us. God never deserts his people. He is with them not only in their years of glory but also in their years of drums.
How do we react when God seems to desert us? "God dwells wherever we let him in." Hasidic saying
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A Spanish canon, Dominic de Guzman (1170-1221) discovered his vocation as a missionary to the common people. Pope Innocent III sent him to counteract the Albigensian heresy in Southern France, caused by the people’s ignorance, the clergy’s complicity in politics and money, and the inquisition. He founded an order of friars not compromised like the seculars with the powers of his day, to share the poor life of the masses and to win them back to Christ by prayer and catechesis.
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Death and Taxes
“Death and taxes are the only two certainties in life,” we say. Well, Jesus mentions both in today’s gospel. The matter-of-fact manner in which Jesus mentions his death must make us think. Jesus can speak so because he knows that his death at the hands of his enemies is part of the grand design of God, and he is at home with it. It frees him up to live his life to such fullness that he is also at ease living the life of an earthly citizen with is “taxing” demands. Ernest Becker, in his brilliant book Denial of Death, argues that every undertaking of human being is an effort at denying death. Whereas this denial has given us great advancement in science and technology, how greater would our achievements be, especially at the service of human solidarity, if we can serenely accept the reality of death and live our lives accordingly!
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Tilapia is one of the three main types of fish caught in Biblical times from the Sea of Galilee. At that time they were called musht, or commonly now even "St. Peter's fish". The name "St. Peter's fish" comes from the story in the Gospel of Matthew about the apostle Peter catching a fish that carried a coin in its mouth, though the passage does not name the fish. And if we go on a tour to the Sea of Galilee, then one of the items in the itinerary would be a meal of the fish at one of the restaurants by the Sea of Galilee. It is a common fish, but it became the means of solving a sticky problem between the tax-collectors and Jesus, with Peter being stuck in the middle. The fish that he caught that had a coin in its mouth resolved the problem. It was so ordinary and yet so amazing.
Whereas the vision of Ezekiel in the 1st reading was so astounding and awesome with the glory of the Lord shown in majesty and splendour. But for most of us living an ordinary life and being ordinary people, that kind of vision would be almost out of the question. Yet God will still reveal Himself in the ordinary situations in our lives and in the ordinary people around us. So when we meet with a problem, let us remember that it was a fish that solved the problem for Peter. And God will give the solution to our problems through very ordinary things.
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Opening Prayer: Lord our God, we thank you today for the example of St. Dominic, who studied and prayed that he might read the signs of the times and understand your plans so as to serve the poor better. Help us to understand your plan of salvation and to draw the strength for carrying it out from encountering you in prayer. We ask you this through Christ, our Lord. Amen
