THE GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY : Friday - July 21, 2023

 

Friday - July 21, 2023

"Mary, give me your Heart: so beautiful, so pure, so immaculate; your Heart so full of love and humility that I may be able to receive Jesus in the Bread of Life and love Him as you love Him and serve Him in the distressing guise of the poor."  

-- Blessed Mother Teresa 

July 21, 2023

Friday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 393

 

Reading I     

                                                                                                Ex 11:10—12:14

 

Moses, hearing the voice of the LORD from the burning bush, said to him,

"When I go to the children of Israel and say to them,

'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,'

if they ask me, 'What is his name?' what am I to tell them?"

God replied, "I am who am."

Then he added, "This is what you shall tell the children of Israel:

I AM sent me to you."

 

God spoke further to Moses, "Thus shall you say to the children of Israel:

The LORD, the God of your fathers,

the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob,

has sent me to you.

 

"This is my name forever;

this my title for all generations.

 

"Go and assemble the elders of Israel, and tell them:

The LORD, the God of your fathers,

the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,

has appeared to me and said:

I am concerned about you

and about the way you are being treated in Egypt;

so I have decided to lead you up out of the misery of Egypt

into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites,

Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites,

a land flowing with milk and honey.

 

"Thus they will heed your message.

Then you and the elders of Israel

shall go to the king of Egypt and say to him:

"The LORD, the God of the Hebrews, has sent us word.

Permit us, then, to go a three-days' journey in the desert,

that we may offer sacrifice to the LORD, our God.

 

"Yet I know that the king of Egypt will not allow you to go

unless he is forced.

I will stretch out my hand, therefore,

and smite Egypt by doing all kinds of wondrous deeds there.

After that he will send you away."

 

Responsorial Psalm                                                          Ps 116:12-13, 15 and 16bc, 17-18

 

R. (13) I will take the cup of salvation, and call on the name of the Lord.

 

How shall I make a return to the LORD

for all the good he has done for me?

The cup of salvation I will take up,

and I will call upon the name of the LORD.

R. I will take the cup of salvation, and call on the name of the Lord.

 

Precious in the eyes of the LORD

is the death of his faithful ones.

I am your servant, the son of your handmaid;

you have loosed my bonds.

R. I will take the cup of salvation, and call on the name of the Lord.

 

To you will I offer sacrifice of thanksgiving,

and I will call upon the name of the LORD.

My vows to the LORD I will pay

in the presence of all his people.

R. I will take the cup of salvation, and call on the name of the Lord.

 

Alleluia         

 

R. Alleluia, alleluia.

My sheep hear my voice, says the Lord,

I know them, and they follow me.

R. Alleluia

 

Gospel                                                                       Mt 12:1-8

 

Jesus was going through a field of grain on the sabbath.

His disciples were hungry

and began to pick the heads of grain and eat them.

When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him,

"See, your disciples are doing what is unlawful to do on the sabbath."

He said to the them, "Have you not read what David did

when he and his companions were hungry,

how he went into the house of God and ate the bread of offering,

which neither he nor his companions

but only the priests could lawfully eat?

Or have you not read in the law that on the sabbath

the priests serving in the temple violate the sabbath

and are innocent?

I say to you, something greater than the temple is here.

If you knew what this meant, I desire mercy, not sacrifice,

you would not have condemned these innocent men.

For the Son of Man is Lord of the sabbath."

 

**********************************

God desires mercy, not legalistic sacrifices

While Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a journalist asked him (on Nov. 30, 2002) about maintaining fidelity to old Church teachings while being open to the Holy Spirit for new interpretations. “How is it possible not to fall into the extremes of rigidity or rupture?” he asked.

 

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI replied that although “fidelity and openness seem to exclude one another,” they do not. He explained that authentic fidelity to the Church “is a dynamic fidelity. … [and] participates in the dynamism of the person of Christ, who can open himself to the different challenges of reality, of the other, of the world, etc.”

 

This dynamism — the ability to adapt to life’s challenges instead of remaining static — is what shook up the safe little world of the Pharisees when Jesus replaced legalism with love. In the Gospel reading today, they didn’t attack Jesus simply to give him a hard time. They truly believed that to be right with God, one must obey all the laws and rules literally and exactly. They also insisted that laws and rules were to be obeyed equally; rules that dealt with rituals were kept as rigidly as the laws that dealt with morality. So when Jesus broke some of the ritual laws, they could not imagine how he could be a holy man, let alone the long-awaited Messiah.

 

To explain his position, Jesus said: “It’s mercy God desires, not sacrifice.” It’s a sacrifice to obey a law that’s unpleasant. This is virtuous! However, forcing the disciples to go hungry on account of an over-ritualized definition of “work” would have been unmerciful. Jesus responded dynamically to the needs of the disciples based on the real purpose behind the commandment to rest on the Sabbath. What was the real purpose? Love! God’s love for us! He knows that we need to rest and that without making it a commandment, those of us who work hard wouldn’t get around to resting.

 

A sacrifice that’s unloving is not what God wants. Remaining legalistically static when a situation calls for deeper examination and merciful consideration comes from a fear that any perceived disobedience is a violation of God’s will and therefore deserves punishment. We forget to look at the loving purpose of the law.

 

The bottom line and original reason for every commandment of God and every regulation taught by the Catholic Church is love. However, this can be hard to see when we’re relying on simple obedience to make us “good” enough for heaven, which will never happen. Thank God that Jesus is our Savior, not the law.

 

Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath; his love has authority over the Sabbath. His love is the authority over all our religious laws, rules, and norms today. When they fail to convey the love of Jesus or they work against a person’s eternal salvation, we have to rediscover their real intention and determine how to apply it to the current situation. This is how we remain faithful to the Church’s teachings without being merciless.

 

Since the real intention of religious laws, rules, and norms is to draw us closer to God’s love, it’s important to investigate what the Church’s teaching on it is. Then, if we are humble enough to be dynamic Christians, we will realize why it’s good to obey it and our attitude about it will change. This is especially true of moral laws, which are never changeable.

 

And when others are slow in understanding the truth of the Church’s teachings, we need to be patient with them mercifully. We will never change anyone’s mind without explaining the truth with loving compassion — and often the process takes quite a lot of time.

 

Mercy is a dynamic response to the challenges of a changing world. If we want to imitate Christ, we have to become dynamic Christians.

 

Prayer

 

Lord, may Love be the engine of my faith life. May I never lose sight of the love behind every Commandment. Help me always remain aware that the life of every human, whom You love so much, is worth more than any human law. Amen.

 

God Bless You.....

The Rosary Family

The mother of Jesus promised St. Dominic that, “one day through the rosary & the scapular I shall save the world!”