19th
Week, Monday, August 14
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."
***
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?
***
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.
***
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.
***
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.
***
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.
***
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
***
Father Kolbe, Like Jesus, Offered Himself
Feast Day August 14
During the Second World War, Father Maximilian Kolbe gave
shelter to thousands of Polish people, both Christians and Jews. He risked his
life to help these suffering people. On February 17, 1941, he was caught and
sent to a prison in Warsaw. A guard who saw his Franciscan habit and his rosary
asked, “Do you believe in Christ?” Father Kolbe answered, “Yes, I do.” The
guard struck him in the face and asked again. Father Kolbe kept giving the same
answer, and the guard kept beating him.
After that, Father Kolbe was given a striped convict’s uniform
and the number 16670. He was sent to a concentration camp, where he endured
very hard work and beatings that almost killed him. Even then, he secretly
heard confessions and spoke to the other prisoners about God’s love. When food
was brought in, he let others take their share first. Sometimes there was
nothing left for him.
One day a prisoner escaped from the camp. To punish the rest
of the prisoners, the officers said 10 men would be killed. These men would be
dropped into a pit and left to slowly and painfully starve to death. The guards
chose the 10 men. As the men were gathered, one cried out, “My wife, my
children! I shall never see them again!” From the watching crowd, another
prisoner stepped forward. “I will take his place,” he said. It was Father
Kolbe, prisoner 16670.
While they were in the pit, Father Kolbe led the nine other
men in prayer and song. The depths of that pit sounded like a church full of
people. No one had heard anything like it in the prison before. Father Kolbe
prayed and suffered bravely, as Jesus did. He gave his life for another, and he
lifted the spirits of the other nine men who died.
After his death, the news of Father Kolbe’s great love spread to the whole world. In 1982, he was canonized. We celebrate this saint’s feast day on August 14. Pope John Paul II said of Father Kolbe, “He won a victory of love. He loved both his fellow prisoners and those who put him to death. There is no greater love than this.”
