Wednesday of 15th Week in Ordinary Time
REVEALED TO CHILDREN
God uses Assyria as an instrument to punish God’s people for their infidelity. Isaiah scolds the king of Assyria, a mere instrument, for acting and thinking as if he were God himself; he will be punished for this presumption.
To see God, to know that he is with us, to hear the message of the gospel, one must have the openness and receptivity of a child and be aware of one’s poverty. Salvation is given. Those who are filled with their own wisdom cannot hear or welcome him, for they try to conform God and the gospel to their own ideas, not theirs to God’s.
First Reading: Isaiah 10:5-11; 13-19
“Doom to Assyria, weapon of my anger.
My wrath is a cudgel in his hands!
I send him against a godless nation,
against the people I’m angry with.
I command him to strip them clean, rob them blind,
and then push their faces in the mud and leave them.
But Assyria has another agenda;
he has something else in mind.
He’s out to destroy utterly,
to stamp out as many nations as he can.
Assyria says, ‘Aren’t my commanders all kings?
Can’t they do whatever they like?
Didn’t I destroy Calno as well as Carchemish?
Hamath as well as Arpad? Level Samaria as I did Damascus?
I’ve eliminated kingdoms full of gods
far more impressive than anything in Jerusalem and Samaria.
So what’s to keep me from destroying Jerusalem
in the same way I destroyed Samaria and all her god-idols?’
When the Master has finished dealing with Mount Zion and Jerusalem, he’ll say, “Now it’s Assyria’s turn. I’ll punish the bragging arrogance of the king of Assyria, his high and mighty posturing, the way he goes around saying,
“‘I’ve done all this by myself.
I know more than anyone.
I’ve wiped out the boundaries of whole countries.
I’ve walked in and taken anything I wanted.
I charged in like a bull
and toppled their kings from their thrones.
I reached out my hand and took all that they treasured
as easily as a boy taking a bird’s eggs from a nest.
Like a farmer gathering eggs from the henhouse,
I gathered the world in my basket,
And no one so much as fluttered a wing
or squawked or even chirped.’”
Does an ax take over from the one who swings it?
Does a saw act more important than the sawyer?
As if a shovel did its shoveling by using a ditch digger!
As if a hammer used the carpenter to pound nails!
Therefore the Master, God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
will send a debilitating disease on his robust Assyrian fighters.
Under the canopy of God’s bright glory
a fierce fire will break out.
Israel’s Light will burst into a conflagration.
The Holy will explode into a firestorm,
And in one day burn to cinders
every last Assyrian thornbush.
God will destroy the splendid trees and lush gardens.
The Assyrian body and soul will waste away to nothing
like a disease-ridden invalid.
A child could count what’s left of the trees
on the fingers of his two hands.
Gospel: Matthew 11:25-27
Abruptly Jesus broke into prayer: “Thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. You’ve concealed your ways from sophisticates and know-it-alls, but spelled them out clearly to ordinary people. Yes, Father, that’s the way you like to work.”
Jesus resumed talking to the people, but now tenderly. “The Father has given me all these things to do and say. This is a unique Father-Son operation, coming out of Father and Son intimacies and knowledge. No one knows the Son the way the Father does, nor the Father the way the Son does. But I’m not keeping it to myself; I’m ready to go over it line by line with anyone willing to listen.
Prayer
Lord of heaven and earth
from whom all good things come,
we bless you with Jesus your Son
for revealing to us how much you love us.
Make us humble and receptive of your gifts,
that we may be open to the good news
for you show yourself to those
who are aware of their poverty.
Fill that poverty with your tenderness
and with the certainty that you care for us
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Reflection :
13 July 2022
Matthew 11: 25 – 27
Pride Vs. Humility
Today’s Gospel passage speaks of a thanksgiving prayer of Jesus. He thanks the heavenly Father for revealing the mysteries of God to ordinary people.
The scribes, the religious scholars and the temple authorities rejected Jesus – the mystery of God, while the simple, ordinary people in the villages accepted him. The self-proclaimed intellectuals sought to find faults with Jesus, but the poor, the sick, and those living on the margins of society flocked to him for his message of comfort, acceptance and love. Jesus does not condemn wisdom and intellectual power; what he condemns is the intellectual pride of the learned.
This passage closes with a self-introduction of Jesus: he explains his Mission – that he alone can reveal the true face of God to people and that he is The Son of God. “No one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.” John, the evangelist, puts this differently, where Jesus says, “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn.14:9). What Jesus says is this: If you want to see what God is like, if you want to see the mind of God, the heart of God, the nature of God, and if you want to see God’s relationship with people –look at me!
As the saying goes, “It is the heart, and not the head, that is the home of the gospel.” It is not our learnings which shuts us out of the grace of God; instead, it is our pride. Many learned intellectuals of our times fall into this danger. They refuse to accept God because they consider it foolish to believe in God. It is not our foolishness which makes us accept the message of the Gospel; instead, it is humility. God’s mysteries are revealed to the childlike, who look at everything with the excitement and openness of a child.
A community, the Church, or a family would run into trouble on the day when people begin to develop the attitudes of “I know it all” and “No one needs to tell me.” This is a challenge for the pastors and leaders of Church communities of our times – to keep aside our ego and pride and be humble before the people of God.
Openness and wonder and not being judgmental are the qualities of children, and the Gospel invites us to practice these virtues or learn from the children. This requires humility. Humility brings us to the awareness that we do not have all the answers. This helps us to stand before the mystery of God, wrapped in wonder.