FEASTS FOR THE LORD

July 30, Friday

SEVENTEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

 

      God gave feasts to the Jews and to us not merely to celebrate God’s wonderful deeds of the past but to relive them in the present and to draw strength from them for the future. Modern society has largely lost the sense of festivity. We go to sport festivals or watch them on TV: they are spectacles to be watched, not to participate in. We have turned religious feasts into Sundays and holidays of obligation. But joy, spontaneity, sharing and encounters cannot be commandeered. We have to create the sense of true community wherein there is again room for creativity, spontaneous joy, a sense of gratuitousness. Our ultimate destiny is not to work but to love…

      Jesus is not welcome either among his people, in his town, his home country, for he is disturbing people’s consciences. He confronts them with the challenging reality of God and his ways. Christ shakes his people from their security in laws and outward practices. How dare he, one from their own town and street? Who does he think he is? Dare we to be the prophet’s voice needed today? Dare we to be unconventional?

 

First Reading: Leviticus 23:1,4-11,15-16,27,34b-37

God spoke to Moses:

“These are the appointed feasts of God, the sacred assemblies which you are to announce at the times set for them:

“God’s Passover, beginning at sundown on the fourteenth day of the first month.

 “God’s Feast of Unraised Bread, on the fifteenth day of this same month. You are to eat unraised bread for seven days. Hold a sacred assembly on the first day; don’t do any regular work. Offer Fire-Gifts to God for seven days. On the seventh day hold a sacred assembly; don’t do any regular work.”

God spoke to Moses: “Tell the People of Israel, When you arrive at the land that I am giving you and reap its harvest, bring to the priest a sheaf of the first grain that you harvest. He will wave the sheaf before God for acceptance on your behalf; on the morning after Sabbath, the priest will wave it.

“Count seven full weeks from the morning after the Sabbath when you brought the sheaf as a Wave-Offering, fifty days until the morning of the seventh Sabbath. Then present a new Grain-Offering to God. Bring from wherever you are living two loaves of bread made from four quarts of fine flour and baked with yeast as a Wave-Offering of the first ripe grain to God.

 

“The tenth day of the seventh month is the Day of Atonement. Hold a sacred assembly, fast, and offer a Fire-Gift to God.

“Tell the People of Israel, God’s Feast of Booths begins on the fifteenth day of the seventh month. It lasts seven days. The first day is a sacred assembly; don’t do any ordinary work. Offer Fire-Gifts to God for seven days. On the eighth day hold a sacred assembly and offer a gift to God. It is a solemn convocation. Don’t do any ordinary work.

 

Gospel: Matthew 13:54-58

Jesus returned to his hometown, and gave a lecture in the meetinghouse. He made a real hit, impressing everyone. “We had no idea he was this good!” they said. “How did he get so wise, get such ability?” But in the next breath they were cutting him down: “We’ve known him since he was a kid; he’s the carpenter’s son. We know his mother, Mary. We know his brothers James and Joseph, Simon and Judas. All his sisters live here. Who does he think he is?” They got their noses all out of joint.

But Jesus said, “A prophet is taken for granted in his hometown and his family.” He didn’t do many miracles there because of their hostile indifference.

 

Prayer

God of joy,
you invite us to celebrate feasts
in honor of your name
as moments of intense encounter
with you and with people.
Make our drab existence explode,
at least from time to time,
with spontaneous and contagious joy
for your wonderful deeds of salvation
and for the happiness of being together.
Keep a sparkle of laughter in our eyes
as we plod along
toward the complete freedom and joy
of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

Reflection:

The Scandal of Incarnation
After the “Discourse of the parables” (Mt 13: 1-52), the Gospel of Matthew presents Jesus in the synagogue of his native, in Nazareth, rejected by the people who knew him well. Nazareth is the place of faith, because it is the place where that famous response to the invitation of God took place: “Let it be done to me according to your word!” It is the place where humanity responds fully to God for the first time through the response of Mary. It is the place of willingness to accept God’s plan, but it is also the place of unbelief.

People of Nazareth were suspicious and perhaps jealous of his popularity and acceptance in the neighbouring villages. Their refusal to accept novelty of his teaching prevented them from being healed by his compassion. We run this same risk when we take the gospel for granted. When we read a passage from the Bible, do we think, “Oh, I know this already!” Unless we spend time with the Word of God to meditate and reflect on it, we failed to be inspired and healed by the Word.
During his Angelus prayer on July 4 this year, Pope Francis gave a beautiful reflection on the attitude of the villagers of Nazareth: Jesus’s fellow villagers knew him for thirty years in the same way and they thought they knew everything! They remained at the exterior level and refused to know what was new about Jesus.
When we allow the convenience of habit and the dictatorship of prejudice to have the upper hand, it is difficult to open ourselves to what is new and allow ourselves to be amazed. We think we know Jesus, that we already know so much about Him and that it is enough to repeat the same things as always. And this is not enough with God. But without openness to God’s surprises, without amazement, faith becomes a tiring litany that slowly dies out and becomes a habit, a social habit.
Pope Francis stressed on the word “amazement”. Amazement happens when we meet God: The people who encountered Jesus and recognized him felt amazed. And we, by encountering God, must follow this path: to feel amazement.
Why didn’t Jesus’s fellow villagers recognize and believe in Him? Because they did not accept the scandal of the Incarnation. They thought it was scandalous that the immensity of God should be revealed in the smallness of our flesh, that the Son of God should be the son of a carpenter, that the divine should be hidden in the human, that God should inhabit a face, the words, the gestures of a simple man. This is the scandal: the incarnation of God, his concreteness, his ‘daily life’.

Pope Francis concluded by quoting St. Augustine who said “I am afraid of God, the Lord when he passes by.” But Augustine, why are you afraid of God? “I am afraid of not recognising the Lord when he passes by.”

 

Video available on Youtube : The Scandal of Incarnation