01 July. Friday, Week 13

1st Reading: Amos 8:4-6, 9-12

If injustice is unchecked, absence of meaning will blight our lives

Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, saying, “When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the Sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel great, and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat.”

On that day, says the Lord God, I will make the sun go down at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on all loins, and baldness on every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and the end of it like a bitter day.

The time is surely coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.

Gospel: Matthew 9:9-13

Jesus calls a tax collector to join his group, and is blamed for laxity

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him. And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”

Needing a New Deal

Now here’s a thought for Independence Day (next Monday), when people, not only in the United States but worldwide. will be inclined to reflect on the level of democracy and justice actually practiced in our society. A zealous prophet (Amos) warns that if the society in which he lives does not change, it has no future but destruction. Due to their obstinate social injustice they will suffer a dearth of meaning, a famine for the word of God, a complete break with God’s inspiring word. In the Gospel, Jesus signals that God’s kingdom would reach beyond Palestine and extend to distant lands at the end of the earth. Jesus calls a non-observant Jew, the tax-collector, Matthew, to be an apostle. Everyone, even foreigners, can be saved. The Scriptures may not give us detailed directives, but they provide the basis for all moral choices: changes such as these are within the providence of God. The purpose of religion is to unite us with God, during all the transitions of our lives.

Amos announces a looming crisis for Israel: for ignoring social justice, the people will be driven from the land of promise. On the other hand, profound compassion is the reason why Matthew, a despised tax collector, is called to be one of Jesus’ inner circle. The ease with which Jesus ate with those who disregarded the law was a signal for the later church to reach out beyond Judaism and the narrow circle of those who knew and kept the law of Moses. To paraphrase Amos, the gospel was to move “from sea to shining sea.”

Master of surprises

In his book The God of Surprises Gerald Hughes wrote of how God can surprise us human beings in so many ways. After all, as the prophet Isaiah said, “God’s ways are not our ways.” Jesus, as the revelation of God, was also full of surprises. The gospels record people being amazed at what he said and did. He didn’t behave as the religious leaders of the time normally behaved. Something of his surprising ways is evident in today’s gospel. Jesus calls Matthew, a tax collector, to follow him and he went on to share table with Matthew and other tax collectors. Matthew and people like him would have been regarded by religious people of the time as a sinner, someone who did not keep God’s law. Such people were to be avoided for fear of contamination. Jesus did not follow this path. He was not afraid of being contaminated by others. On the contrary, he knew that his own goodness had the power to transform others for the better. When Jesus went on to say in the gospel, “what I want is mercy not sacrifice,” he was declaring that he wants his own merciful way of behaving to find expression in the lives of his followers. We too are called to transform others by our own goodness. We are all to be agents of the Lord’s transforming love and mercy. [MH]

St Oliver Plunkett, bishop and martyr memorial).

Oliver Plunkett (1625-1681), of an Anglo-Irish family from Loughcrew, County Meath, studied at the Irish College in Rome during the height of the Penal Laws. After ordination in 1654 he taught theology in Rome for 15 years until he was nominated Archbishop of Armagh, returning to Ireland in 1670 during a lull in the persecution of Catholics. Eight years later he was the innocent victim of the so-called Popish Plot (1678), when Titus Oates and others plotted to kill Charles II of England. Despite being on the run and with a price on his head, Plunkett refused to leave his flock. He was arrested in Dublin in 1679 but imprisoned in London, where after a travesty of a trial he was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on 1 July 1681.