Tuesday in the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time, Cycle I
Ex 33,7-11. 34, 5b-9.28; Mt 13,36-43
Feast of St Alphonsus Maria de Liguori
We know that god is a just judge but the way in which he executes justice is a mystery to us. All we know for sure is that it is not up to us to mete out justice. It is the prerogative of God. This is what we read in today's Gospel. Jesus says that it is not up to us to separate the weeds from the wheat, in other words to judge judgement about someone. That is something Jesus tells us, that will happen "at the end of age" and is something that will be done by God and his Angels.
What, then, is our role in the meantime? We can turn our attention to Moses to understand what might be asked of us. Moses has a special relationship with God. He speaks to God face to face. Then he does something paradoxical. First Moses offers praise for God's ability to be just, which includes punishing those who are guilty. But then Moses pleads with God to be merciful with God's people:
If I find favour with you, O Lord, do come along in our company. This is indeed a stiff-necked people; yet pardon our wickedness and sins, and receive us as your own.It is striking how Moses starts all over again. He feels this mercy towards his God's people. It might have been easier for Moses to ask God to destroy all the evil doers. Yet he does not. Moses acts as a mediator. He defends God's holiness and commandments before his people, and at the same time asks God to have mercy on his people.
Throughout the day we constantly find ourselves in Moses's position. We constantly find ourselves between right and wrong, between justice and injustice, between goodness and evil. We are called to act as Moses did, that is, to find the fine line between not passing judgment against others while at the same time speaking out prophetically against all that is evil and disparaging to the weakest members of our society, because ultimately, it is this that offends God.
Before every being able to show others mercy, we must be the first ones to experience God's mercy so that then we can really give from our own experience. This is indeed one of the virtues of the Saint we are celebrating today, St Alphonus Maria de Liguori, who tirelessly taught a balanced and convincing teaching of what God demands of us to respond to two extremes that were present among Christians at the time: strict interpretation of the Law of God in Jansenim, which was motivated simply on fear of a grim and severe God on the one hand and ignorance and permissiveness on the other hand. St Alphonsus instead proposed fostering trust and hope in God's mercy. Just as St Alphonsus kept reminding priests to be a visible sign of God's infinite mercy, who forgives and enlightens the mind and heart of the sinner to convert and change one's life, so let us all be beacons of God's mercy by being ourselves the first one to convert and change our own lives.
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