Today’s readings present the mysterious way that God leads us through this life. It says in the Gospel that Jesus “goes out of the house,” just as the sower goes out into the world to sow. Jesus, the Word of God goes out from His intimate dwelling – the Trinity – into the world created through Him and by Him. He is the word He speaks, and when we listen with our hearts He is the seed planted in our soul and the rain that waters it and gives it growth. This image is so positive and full of hope and life. He teaches us through parables that we must take care how we listen and receive His words – our heart is the soil in which the seed (the word) is planted and watered. St. Augustine reminds us that our hearts are all at different times and in different ways these different types of soil. Some days our hearts are the rocky soil – God’s Word bounces off and is scorched in the heat. Some days our hearts are shallow soil – we listen gladly to the word but don’t ponder it so it dies. Some days our hearts are good, but we have surrounded our lives with anxieties and worldly pursuits and experience a kind of suffocation – the little plant of God’s life is suffocating in our hearts. Perhaps this third situation is the one we have to be careful of most as we try to be in the world and not of the world. We will never be fully at home before heaven, so if we try to settle here permanently we will lose our sense of freedom and life.
Friday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
The core of the Christian struggle is for peace. We are certainly called to bring about a just society, but only because it makes for peace. If we decide to use methods or measures to bring about so-called justice at the expense of peace, will we ever truly have peace? Peace is worth fighting for, but the techniques we employ must come from hearts that are fundamentally decided on peace. In today’s Gospel, the Lord gives us an interesting teaching about conflict. He doesn’t tell us to avoid the wolves altogether, but to be aware of them and to have the inner attitude of sheep around them. When persecution becomes fierce, however, we should in fact flee – not just to live another day, but to bring the Gospel elsewhere. This is part of the reason the Gospel spread so quickly at the beginning: when and where it was poorly received, time was not wasted insisting or fighting.
Thursday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
EPHREM THE SYRIAN:
Because Israel, symbolically called “son” since Egypt, had lost its sonship through having worshiped Baal and offered incense to idols, John gave them a name which suited them: race of vipers. Because these had lost that title of sonship, which had been poured over them through grace in the days of Moses, they received from John a name congruent with their deeds. After the Lord went down into the land of the Egyptians and had returned from there, the Evangelist said, “Now the true word spoken by the prophet is accomplished.” He said, “I will call my son out of Egypt.” He also said, “He will be called a Nazarene,” because in Hebrew nezer means a “scepter,” and the prophet calls him a “Nazarene” because he is the Son of the scepter.