Wednesday, August 12, 2026

 

Wednesday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time

(Ezekiel 9:1-7.10:18-22; Matthew 18:15-20)

The scribe with the stylus makes a “Thau” sign on the foreheads of faithful Israelites.  The “Thau” is the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet and has the shape of an “x” in the Canaanite script.  It was likely seen as a simple mark like a check or an “x” that people use today to indicate the presence of something.  In Ezekiel’s vision the “Thau” distinguishes faithful believers in God from the syncretists of the time who mix their belief in God with pagan elements.  The paganisms were received from non-Jewish neighbors. 

The “Thau” should remind New Testament readers of the seal of God in the Book of Revelation.  The seal was given to distinguish true “Servants of God” from the heathen masses.  The Servants of God are to be spared the impending slaughter of unrepentant sinners.  Church Fathers equated the “Thau” with Christ’s cross which the minister of Baptism makes on the foreheads of those about to be baptized.

All of us have been marked with Christ’s cross.  The symbol represents the expectation that we will be faithful to Christ by not mixing our beliefs with pagan elements.  It is a daunting challenge today with so many wondrous goods competing for our allegiance.  We must remember to put Christ first and foremost in our lives and not give ourselves over to abominations to which the Internet gives us access.

Wednesday, August 14, 2024

Memorial of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, priest and martyr

(Ezekiel 9:1-7.10:18-22; Matthew 18:15-20)

Bishop Robert Barron believes that right worship matters most in life as it does in the Bible.  He says when humans worship God duly, everything else falls into place.  But when they fail to worship the one, true God, their lives likely fall apart.  Today’s first reading from the prophet Ezekiel shows this breakup taking place.

Ezekiel is permitted to see the occurrences in Jerusalem from his exile in Babylon.  The Lord is scourging His people for having followed false gods to the extent of placing idols in the Temple.  Now the impious are being slain with their cadavers piling up in the Temple completing its defilement.  Meanwhile, those who have shunned the defilement are being protected.

We give right praise when we keep holy the Lord’s Day and give thanks to Him every day.  Right praise is also a matter of not defiling our bodies, which have become temples of the Holy Spirit, by excess of material pleasure.  Right praise is acknowledging that the Lord is the source of our life and its completion.

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Wednesday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time

(Ezekiel 9:1-7.10:18-22; Matthew 18:15-20)

Internet applications like Skype and Facetime give contemporary women and men the experience of talking to others face-to-face without actually being in their presence. However, marvelous such conversations may be, they are hardly as intimate as being in one another’s presence.  In fact one of the current issues in prison reform is assuring that prisoners have direct, not electronic, access to visitors. In the first reading today, Moses is exulted for having known the Lord “face to face.” But what do these words mean and how do they compare with Christian belief that Christ saw the Father?

Various interpretations of the words are given.  Some say they do not indicate a direct encounter with the Lord because in the Book of Exodus God tells Moses that “’no one shall see me and live’” (33:20).  Of course, there is also the very real question of God, a purely spiritual being, having a material face.  It is best to conclude that Moses enjoyed a spiritual intimacy with God like no one else before the writing of the Book of Deuteronomy. 

At one point in Deuteronomy Moses himself mentions another prophet who will come after him.  This prophet will have God’s own words in his mouth and bring a definitive revelation of God’s will.  We find fulfillment of this prophecy in Jesus Christ.  The Gospel of John quotes him as saying, at least indirectly, that he has seen the Father: “’Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father’” (6:46).  His seeing of the Father constitutes a knowing that goes beyond Moses’ spiritual intimacy.  It is a divine indwelling whereby as Jesus again says in John: “(He) and the Father are one’” (10:30).  An approximation of this indwelling with its accompanying knowledge of God is what is promised to followers of Jesus in the beatitudes: “’Blessed are the clean of heart for they shall see God’” (Matthew 5:8).

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Wednesday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time

(Ezekiel 9:1-7.10:18-22; Matthew 18:15-20)

One moral question on which there has been a distinctive change in Catholic teaching is the freedom of conscience. Where for centuries the Church taught that it is permissible to punish members of the community who adopt foreign beliefs, she now honors the integrity of individual conscience. Freedom of conscience demands that no one be forced to declare as true what she or he does not believe. The age of the Inquisition, however inaccurately it may have been understood, is definitively past.

Still it might be pointed out that religious persecution has biblical roots. We see in the reading from Ezekiel how the Lord calls for the purification of idolaters in the time of Ezekiel. To be sure, the reading has more than a simple chastisement in mind. Rather, the Lord demands the death of those who have worshipped other gods in the Temple. Today we stand aghast at the suggestion of such practices in some societies.

Can such intolerance be justified in retrospect? Certainly something may be said that in times of less developed economies social cohesion standing on common beliefs and religious practices was critical. We can add that there is a progressive development in biblical teaching which reaches its culmination in Christ. The people came to understand God’s ways slowly and imperfectly until God sent His Son to reveal them in their fullness. Even now we continue to grapple with Jesus’ teaching and, even more challenging, how to put it into practice.