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
***
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.
***
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!
***
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.
***
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
