TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME - SEPTEMBER 1, 2024

TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

The greatest indication of a life poorly lived is usually the lengths to which someone is willing to be disobedient. Every society, community, family, and collection of people must have some set of rules or list of laws so that they might flourish together; when there are no rules, anarchy reigns supreme, everyone becomes their own god, and people are no longer bothered by unjustly treating their neighbor. A lack of rules and especially disobedience of already established rules automatically makes everyone's life worse. Obedience to just laws and benevolent rules is very simply the best way our lives can be stress-free, producing good fruits and nourishing love for neighbors.

READ THIS SUNDAY'S MESSAGE

For all of the “rules” and “laws” that drive the everyday practice of the Catholic faith, we might be challenged by the public ministry of Christ, especially when we encounter a scene like the one found in today’s Gospel, where Christ apparently skirts the rules of his society in a very explicit way. We must remember a few things to properly understand his apparent disobedience: first, he did not heed the frivolous laws that were policed by the hypocritical leaders, though he always remained obedient to the Law of Judaism because he was a Jew. In fact, later he tells his followers to be obedient to these leaders anyway, despite their hypocrisy. But even if Christ was unapologetically disobedient to the most fundamental laws of Judaism (which he never was), he had the right to; after all, he was the author of that Law, the literal Word of God, God Himself. To then assume, based on a misreading of his public ministry, that we are empowered to disobey the laws of his Church because he seemed to disobey the laws of Judaism is to equate ourselves with God. The New Law, the New and Everlasting Covenant established by Christ, was shared with us by God, and we are now just as responsible to obey it as the Jews were responsible to obey the Law of Moses. But Christ would have also solemnly obeyed the words of Moses found in this Sunday’s first reading: “hear the statutes and decrees…that you may live.” Rules and laws can be arbitrary when they are tools for domination, but if these laws come directly from God, we know that they are in our best interest so that we may live fully. We must be obedient for the sake of loving God, but as a consequence, our lives become immeasurably more blessed by doing so.