17th Week, Monday, July 31
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.
***
Prayer: Curb our impatience Lord, when we try to impose your truth and justice and peace in a Church and a world not yet disposed to welcome them. In our powerlessness and discouragement may we learn to accept that all true growth comes from you. We can only plant the tiny seed and it is you who make it bloom into a mighty tree that can give shelter to all who accept your word. We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen
Saint Ignatius of Loyola
July 31
It was during this year of conversion that Ignatius began to write down material that later became his greatest work, the Spiritual Exercises.
He finally achieved his purpose of going to the Holy Land, but could not remain, as he planned, because of the hostility of the Turks. Ignatius spent the next 11 years in various European universities, studying with great difficulty, beginning almost as a child. Like many others, his orthodoxy was questioned; Ignatius was twice jailed for brief periods.
In 1534, at the age of 43, he and six others—one of whom was Saint Francis Xavier—vowed to live in poverty and chastity and to go to the Holy Land. If this became impossible, they vowed to offer themselves to the apostolic service of the pope. The latter became the only choice. Four years later Ignatius made the association permanent. The new Society of Jesus was approved by Pope Paul III, and Ignatius was elected to serve as the first general.
When companions were sent on various missions by the pope, Ignatius remained in Rome, consolidating the new venture, but still finding time to found homes for orphans, catechumens, and penitents. He founded the Roman College, intended to be the model of all other colleges of the Society.
Ignatius was a true mystic. He centered his spiritual life on the essential foundations of Christianity—the Trinity, Christ, the Eucharist. His spirituality is expressed in the Jesuit motto, Ad majorem Dei gloriam—“for the greater glory of God.” In his concept, obedience was to be the prominent virtue, to assure the effectiveness and mobility of his men. All activity was to be guided by a true love of the Church and unconditional obedience to the Holy Father, for which reason all professed members took a fourth vow to go wherever the pope should send them for the salvation of souls.
