10th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A) 06-08-08 Scripture Readings First Hosea 6:3-6 Second Romans 4:18-25 Gospel

Matthew 9:9-13 Prepared by: Fr. Peter John Cameron, O.P. 1. Subject Matter

How God uses our affliction/resistance/sin to draw us to himself Trusting in the promises/the effective Word of God Following Christ

2. Exegetical Notes

In their affliction, people will say: Let us strive to know the Lord God does not wait until man has ceased to be unjust in order to love him; he loves him already in his unjustness. If God does not wait for us to be just in order to love us, it is because his love is, precisely, the only force that can make us just. The love of God reveals itself as the great, the unique power which is truly creative; the supreme creation of God is discovered to be this new heart which God wishes to place in man. The purest souls of Israelwill be the first to realize this life of humility in faith, of which the Gospel Beatitudes are only the final achievement. And this is a very special kind of humility, founded as it is on a feeling of the nothingness of sinful man in which is mingled no bitterness, no despair. It is, in fact, the assurance that God has taken this same nothing into his merciful and all-powerful hands, to draw from it a new creation which reveals him. (Louis Bouyer) Abrahamdid not weaken in faithdid not doubt Gods promise. Hewas fully convinced that what God had promised he was also able to do Abraham is our father, and his faith is the type of Christian faith. Though Abraham had so many human motives for despairing of ever having a posterity, he believed, in virtue of the confident hope that the divine promise inspired in him. He took God at his word and believed in the creative power of God to do what seemed impossible. Abrahams faith is the pattern for Christian faith, because its object is the same: belief in God who makes the dead live. (Joseph Fitzmyer) Matthew got up and followed him Jesus authoritative Word, which calms the storm (8:26) and pronounces forgiveness (9:2), also compels human response. Jesus powerful Word creates discipleship. The story should not be psychologized; nor should the reader

speculate about previous contact between Jesus and Matthew, on the basis of which he was ready to follow. The point is the Jesus call is effective. People do not volunteer to be disciples. (NIB) 3. References to the Catechism of the Catholic Church

CCC 2100: Outward sacrifice, to be genuine, must be the expression of spiritual sacrifice: "The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit. . . . " The prophets of the Old Covenant often denounced sacrifices that were not from the heart or not coupled with love of neighbor. Jesus recalls the words of the prophet Hosea: "I desire mercy, and not sacrifice." The only perfect sacrifice is the one that Christ offered on the cross as a total offering to the Father's love and for our salvation. By uniting ourselves with his sacrifice we can make our lives a sacrifice to God. CCC 27: The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for the dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he is called to communion with God. This invitation to converse with God is addressed to man as soon as he comes into being. For if man exists it is because God has created him through love, and through love continues to hold him in existence. He cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and entrusts himself to his creator. CCC 1431: Interior repentance is a radical reorientation of our whole life, a return, a conversion to God with all our heart, an end of sin, a turning away from evil, with repugnance toward the evil actions we have committed. At the same time it entails the desire and resolution to change one's life, with hope in God's mercy and trust in the help of his grace. This conversion of heart is accompanied by a salutary pain and sadness which the Fathers called animi cruciatus (affliction of spirit) and compunctio cordis (repentance of heart). CCC 706: Against all human hope, God promises descendants to Abraham, as the fruit of faith and of the power of the Holy Spirit. In Abraham's progeny all the nations of the earth will be blessed. This progeny will be Christ himself, in whom the outpouring of the Holy Spirit will "gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad." CCC 52: God, who "dwells in unapproachable light", wants to communicate his own divine life to the men he freely created, in order to adopt them as his sons in his only-begotten Son. By revealing himself God wishes to make them capable of responding to him, and of knowing him and of loving him far beyond their own natural capacity.

4. Patristic Commentary and Other Authorities

St. John Chrysostom: Why is it then that nothing is said of the rest of the Apostles how or when they were called, but only of Peter, Andrew, James, John, and Matthew? Because these were in the most alien and lowly stations, for nothing can he more disreputable than the office of Publican, nothing more abject than that of fisherman. St. Bede the Venerable: Jesus made a just man of a publican, a disciple of a tax collector. As he progressively increased in grace, Jesus promoted him from the ordinary group of disciples to the rank of apostle, and not only committed to him the ministry of preaching, but also that of writing a gospel, so that he who had ceased to he an administrator of terrestrial

business matters might start to be an administrator of heavenly currency. Doubtlessly the reason why heavenly providence arranged for this to happen was so that neither the enormity of one's wicked deeds nor their great number should dissuade anyone from hoping for pardon.

St. Ambrose: How was the cure of the sick man Matthew effected? In three ways. First, Christ bound him in fetters; second, he applied a caustic to the wound; third, he did away with all the rottenness. Hence, Matthew, says: I am bound with the nails of faith and the soft shackles of love. Jesus, take away the rottenness of my sins while you keep me bound with the fetters of love. Cut away any rot you find in me! So much for the first way. I shall hold every commandment of yours as an applied caustic, and if the caustic commandment burns, it will be burning away the corruption of the flesh lest the contagious poison spread; and if the remedy stings, it still removes the poison of the wound. So much for the second way. Come quickly, Lord, cut into the various secret, hidden passions, open the wound quickly lest the noxious fluid spread, cleanse all that is fetid with a pilgrim bath. So much for the third way. Bl. Jacobus de Voragine: Granted, therefore, that Saul, David and Matthew were sinners, their repentance so pleased the Lord that he not only forgave their sins but heaped his gifts upon them in greater abundance. He made the cruelest persecutor the most faithful preacher, the adulterer and homicide a prophet and singer of Psalms, the covetous seeker of profit an apostle and evangelist. Therefore the sayings and writings of these three men are recited to us so frequently so that no one who might wish to be converted would despair of pardon, when he sees that such great sinners were also so great in grace. Andre Louf, O.S.C.O.: Follow me a person can only permanently attach himself to Jesus out of love. Regardless of who we are and what our spiritual experience is, we always lack something needed to follow Jesus closely. Or perhaps we always possess something superfluous which distances us from his intimate love. When the time comes, however, he will teach us to be detached with an enormous gentleness which only his grace can filter into our heart. Pope John Paul II: The human willor rather the human heartimpels man to be for others, to have generous relationships with others. It is in this that the essential structure of personal and human existence consists. Man exists not merely in the world, not merely in himself; he exists in relationship, in self-giving. Only through disinterested giving of himself can man attain to full discovery of himself. Without relationship and without self-giving, the whole of human existence on earth loses its meaning. Luigi Giussani: Matthew, the tax collectorwas considered a public sinner because he served the Roman economic power. Jesus simply said to him as he passed by: Come! And, recognized, taken hold of, accepted, he left everything, and followed him. Luigi Giussani: What must we do with our freedom? The same thing we have to do with faith. How does one learn to be educated in freedom, so that freedom truly becomes the force in our life?... By follow: by following the companionship in which the Lord, who calls us, has placed us. Following, nothing is more intelligent than following. Following who is before you means asking: How can you live this? How does one live this? Understand that here, the principal accent is one desire. Its the desire to live that makes you ask: How do you manage to do it, how do you fulfill what you understand?

5. Examples from the Saints and Other Exemplars

An example of following Christ, not weakening in faith, and striving to know the Lord amidst personal afflictions: A devout woman of Roman birth, Tetta by name, who dwelt in St Savior's parish, was very much devoted to St Dominic. She had but one son, and he still a child and dangerously ill. While St Dominic was one day preaching in St Mark's church in Rome, this woman, in her eagerness to hear the word of God from his lips, left her sick boy at home and went to the church where the saint was preaching. On her return after the sermon she found the child dead. Stricken to the very heart with silent grief, and putting all her trust in God's power and St Dominic's merits, she took up her dead son in her arms and carried him to St Sixtus, where the saint was then staying with the brethren. Now, whereas the house was being got ready for the sisters, anyone who chose could walk in, the workmen being still all about the place, so she walked straight in and found him standing at the door of the chapter-house, as if waiting on purpose. Seeing him, she laid her son down at his feet, and then going on her knees entreated him to give her back her child. Then St Dominic, touched by her great grief, withdrew a short distance and prayed for a few minutes. After his prayer he rose, and going over to the boy made the sign of the cross over him, then taking him by the hand he raised him up alive and well and gave him back sound to his mother, forbidding her to say a word about it to anyone. The experience/testimony of Venerable Charles de Foucauld: You made me experience a melancholic emptiness, a sadness that I never felt at other times. It would come back to me every evening when I was alone in my rooms; it kept me silent and depressed during our socalled celebrations: I would organize them, but when the time came, I went through them in silence, disgust, and infinite boredom. You gave me the ill-defined unrest that marks an unquiet conscience which, though it may be wholly asleep, is not completely dead. I never felt that sadness, that distress, that restlessness apart from those times. It was undoubtedly a gift from you, O God. How far off I was in my doubting! How good you are!.And having cleansed the filth from my soul and entrusted it to your angels, you, O God, planned to reenter it yourselffor even after having received so many graces, it still did not acknowledge youThen you breathed into it a taste for virtue, the virtue of the pagans: you let me search through the works of the pagan philosophers, and I found nothing there but emptiness and disgust. Next you let me glance at a few pages of a Christian book, and you made me conscious of its warmth and beauty. You made me realize that I might find there, if not truth (for I did not believe that men can know truth), at least the elements of virtue, and you inspired me to look for instruction in a virtue completely pagan in Christian books. Thus you brought to me an awareness of the mysteries of religion.

6. Quotations from Pope Benedict XVI

Gods approach to his people is presented with the language of conjugal love, while Israels infidelity, its idolatry, is designated as adultery and prostitution. In the New Testament, God radicalizes his love until he becomes himself, through his Son, flesh of our flesh, authentic man. Thus, Gods union with man has assumed its supreme, irreversible and definitive form. And in this way, the definitive form of human love is also drawn, that reciprocal yes that cannot be revoked. It does not alienate man, but liberates him from the alienations of history to return him to the truth of creation. Christs grace is not superimposed from outside of

mans nature, it does not violate it, but liberates and restores it, by raising it beyond its frontiers.

God has come to meet man. He has shown him his face, opened up his heart to him. The great and central task of the Church today is, as it ever was, to show people this path and to offer a pilgrim fellowship in walking it. We know God, not simply with our understanding, but also with our will and with our heart. Therefore the knowledge of God, the knowledge of Christ, is a path that demands the involvement of the whole of our being. Abraham, the father of faith, is by his faith the rock that holds back chaos, the onrushing primordial flood of destruction, and thus sustains creation. Simon, the first to confess Jesus as the Christ and the first witness of the Resurrection, now becomes by virtue of his Abrahamic faith, which is renewed in Christ, the rock that stands against the impure tide of unbelief and its destruction of man. What should be said therefore of the temptation, which is very strong nowadays, to feel that we are self-sufficient to the point that we become closed to Gods mysterious plan for each of us? The love of the Father, which is revealed in the person of Christ, puts this question to us. In order to respond to the call of God and start on our journey, it is not necessary to be already perfect. Weaknesses and human limitations do not present an obstacle, as long as they help make us more aware of the fact that we are in need of the redeeming grace of Christ. Christ draws us into his life, into the act of eternal love by which he gives himself up to the Father, so that we are made over into the Fathers possession with him and that through this very act Jesus Christ himself is bestowed upon us. Thus the Eucharist is a sacrifice: being given up to God in Jesus Christ and thereby at the same time having the gift of his love bestowed on us, for Christ is both the giver and gift. Through him, and with him, and in him we celebrate the Eucharist.

7. Other Considerations

On Caravaggios famous painting The Calling of Matthew: X-rays suggest that the clumsy figure of Saint Peter, almost totally covering the slender youth playing the part of Jesus, may have been added at a later stage for dogmatic reasons, illustrating how the Catholic Church intermediates salvation. The genius of this painting lies in the contrast between how an everyday scene from the streets of Rome is combined with the biblical calling of Jesus and Peter thereby giving new force to the message of the gospel: to leave the worldly goods to live a life in poverty and piety. A couple of details should be noted: The hand of Jesus is an echo of the hand of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, whereas the hand of Peter is like the hand of God himself. This likeness may or may not be coincidental, but if intended it must be meant to refer to the human nature of Jesus as well as the divine nature of the Church. http://home.worldonline.dk/lfmat/Contarellifiles/contarellibottomeng.htm

Recommended Resources Benedict XVI, Pope. Benedictus. Yonkers: Magnificat, 2006.

Biblia Clerus: http://www.clerus.org/bibliaclerus/index_eng.html Cameron, Peter John. To Praise, To Bless, To PreachCycle A. Huntington: Our Sunday Visitor, 2001. Hahn, Scott: http://www.salvationhistory.com/library/scripture/churchandbible/homilyhelps/homilyhelps.cfm. Martin, Francis: http://www.hasnehmedia.com/homilies.shtml