16th Week, Saturday, July 23
Exodus
24:3-8 / Matthew 13:24-30
God
covenants his people; 'This is God's covenant with you.” The covenant
experience transformed Israel from a mob of ex-slaves into a chosen people. It
gave them an identity and a destiny. A modern Jew, Will Herberg, puts it this
way: "Israel is not a 'natural' nation; it is, indeed, not a nation at all
like the nations of the world. It is a supernatural community, called into
being by God to serve his eternal purposes in history." Israel's covenant
experience at Mt. Sinai gave the people a uniqueness. Apart from Christianity
and Islam, which owe their origin, in part, to Israel, no other religion
originated as Judaism did. Other religions sprang from nature; Judaism sprang
from an event in history.
***
Do we
recognize our spiritual debt to Israel? "Apart from the covenant, Israel
is as nothing and Jewish existence is a mere illusion. The covenant is at the
very heart of the Jewish self-understanding of its own reality." Will Herberg
***
Today’s
first reading describes the rite of the covenant, by which Israel became God’s chosen
people with whom God made a blood compact, a “sangduguan” (was an
ancient ritual in the Philippines intended to seal a friendship or treaty, or
to validate an agreement. The contracting parties would cut their wrists and
pour their blood into a cup filled with liquid, such as wine, and drink the
mixture., whereby they became his blood relations.) “I am the Lord thy God” (in
the singular, “thy”, term of intimacy). The tremendous, inaccessible God of
Sinai is the God who is present to every person and who accepts to go along
with people in their adventures of hope and love, of life and death. He is the
God of his people. By taking the risk to be with us, he obliges us to take the
risk of faith to seek him and to be near to him. Christ will raise this
covenant to a deeper level and make it everlasting. At the heart of every
eucharist, in the consecration, he tells us: “You are my blood brothers and
sisters. This is the blood of the new and everlasting covenant.”
***
We may know of some people who have left the Church because of a bad experience. The bad experience can be anything from being told off by a priest to an argument with another Catholic in Church. And their common grouse is this - How can Church people/ Catholics be like this? Yes, how can Catholics or people who go to Church be like this? Just what is the Church all about?
Well, ideally, we would think that the Church is made up of good and nice people who would not give any kind of trouble whatsoever. After all the Church is called the Holy Catholic Church. Yet if Jesus came for sinners, then the Church is also refuge for sinners and a place where sinners will slowly learn to be saints.
The Church is essentially the font of God's grace for these kinds of people, and no one in the Church can ever say that he is without sin. In other words, the Church is certainly not a garden without weeds or darnel, as reflected in the parable in the gospel.
Even Jesus
Himself did not weed out people like Peter and Judas, and He even gave hope to
sinners who want to repent. May we acknowledge that we are indeed sinners but
let us also acknowledge the power of God's grace. May we journey on in
repentance and conversion and may others see the Church as a sign of salvation.
***
All around
us, but in our hearts as well, weeds are growing together with the wheat – the
bad with the good. This is life, and it is not easy to take. We see first of
all the weeds growing in the garden of our neighbour, and we want him to pull
them out. But we should look into our own hearts as well. What to do? To pluck
out the bad as best as we can. And not to be upset that, after all, we are not
entirely good. We have to live with it in faith and in hope and leave it all in
the hands of God.
***
Prayer: Almighty and inaccessible God, you have made yourself
our God and placed yourself into our hands. Make us conscious of all the tender
love that prompts you to take the risk of entering our life and death, of
sharing our fleeting hopes and destiny, of being with us all the way. Give us
the faith to take the risk of seeking you with all our hearts, that you may
indeed be our God and we your kinfolk and people through our brother, Jesus
Christ our Lord. Amen
