Memorial of Saint John Vianney, Priest
Friday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time
August 4, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/080423.cfm

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Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we dip our toes into the Book of Leviticus which is basically a set of instructions on how to live a good life.

Leviticus 23 establishes five holy times of prayer, reflection, and action for the people to grow in friendship with God.

• the Sabbath (vv. 1–3)
• the Feast of the Unleavened Bread, or Passover (vv. 4–14)
• the Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost (vv. 15–23);
• on the Day of Atonement (vv. 26-32)
• the Feast of the Tabernacles (vv.33-44)

As Christians, we may be more familiar with Sabbath and Passover because their patterns are embodied in our Sunday and Easter celebrations. In the other less familiar feasts, we might recognize harvest sharing (Weeks), repentance (Atonement), reflection and recommitment (Tabernacles).

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The Book of Leviticus is a formation manual for Israel’s spiritual life. Realizing that fact this morning, I thought about my Novitiate and early formation experiences in religious life. Readers who are religious sisters or brothers might share my experience, and those who are lay can probably think of their own comparisons. What were our earliest steps in our journey into God?

I wasn’t completely clueless when I came to the convent at 18 years of age. I did have a vigorous spiritual life and a deep desire to grow in relationship with God. What I needed was spiritual discipline and a quiet reverence in my whole being. And, in those early years, I received abundant amounts of both from multiple sources. It was my “Leviticus Time”.

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But our “Leviticus Time” is only a launchpad. If we refuse to leave it, we will never fly. What we must move on to is a personal relationship with God, grounded in loving faith and Gospel commitment. While enhanced by exterior resources, the power of that relationship springs from an interior intimacy with God, as realized so clearly by our saint for today, John Vianney.

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Today’s Gospel shows us a group of people unable to take that next step – beyond rules and practices into committed relationship. (“beyond” not “without” rules and practices – more on that in tomorrow’s reflection)

Jesus came to his native place and taught the people in their synagogue.
They were astonished and said,
“Where did this man get such wisdom and mighty deeds?
Is he not the carpenter’s son?
Is not his mother named Mary
and his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas?
Are not his sisters all with us?
Where did this man get all this?”
And they took offense at him.
But Jesus said to them,
“A prophet is not without honor except in his native place
and in his own house.”
And he did not work many mighty deeds there
because of their lack of faith.

Matthew 13:54-58

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This is such a sad Gospel! Here God was right in the midst of these people! They could see him and hear him. He personally invited them to believe. But they refused to see God in Jesus. All they could see was their stagnated prejudgments and inert definitions.

These were probably good people. They more than likely kept all the Leviticus regulations. They colored within the lines, so to speak. Then Jesus came and asked them to step outside the lines. He asked them to believe that the poor are blessed and the persecuted happy. He asked them to cast their nets again into a sea that had denied them all night. He asked them to walk to him across the water. He asked them to sell everything they had and follow. He asked them to fall into the ground and die, as he would.

Only a courageous few set their safe scroll of Leviticus aside to give Jesus a wholehearted “Yes”.

What might we have done — what are we doing — when Jesus invites us outside the lines?

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Poetry: Of Being – Denise Levertov

I know this happiness
is provisional:

the looming presences --
great suffering, great fear --

withdraw only
into peripheral vision:

but ineluctable this shimmering
of wind in the blue leaves:

this flood of stillness
widening the lake of sky:

this need to dance,
this need to kneel:
this mystery:

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Music: Only You

Something a little different this morning – a picture to contemplate while you listen to a beautiful song. Just click the little white arrowhead in the grey bar below. Let the song take you where it will in your own spiritual landscape.

image by David Mark from Pixabay