Look To The End
Thursday:
Twentieth Week of the Year: August 18, 2016
Year II: Ezekiel 36:23-28; Psalm
51:12-19; Matthew 22:1-14
The Responsorial
promises: “I will pour clean water on
you and wash away all your sins.”
Ezekiel
36:23-28
is a reading that transfigures all the threats and warnings of previous days.
Like the Resurrection after Christ’s passion and death, it reveals the end, the
outcome and glory of all that God has caused or allowed to happen on earth.
This outcome is what Jesus taught us to
pray for in the “Lord’s Prayer.” Its petitions reveal the goals and priorities
of his own heart. And all its petitions are promises. To pray well is to
conform our desires to his. This is also the key to ministry. This is what we
work to bring about.1
“I will sanctify, display the holiness
of, my great name” — Hallowed be thy
Name!
“The nations will learn that I am the
Lord… I am going to gather you together…” — Thy
Kingdom come
“I shall pour clean water upon you, and
you shall be cleansed of all your defilement” — Forgive us… as we forgive.
“I shall give you a new heart, and put a new
spirit in you… and make you follow my laws…” — Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
“You shall be my people and I will be
your God” — Our Father!
Matthew
22:1-14
focuses on a petition of the Our Father
not included above (but see Ezekiel 36:29): “Give us this day our daily bread.”
Scripture scholars dispute the meaning of the Greek word translated as “daily.”
It appears nowhere else in the Bible. What they agree on is that it does not
mean “daily.” Fr. Ray Brown argues for “future,” the “bread of tomorrow.” The
“bread” we ask for is the bread, the joy, of heaven, Jesus himself, the Bread
of Life.2
In the Gospels, Jesus describes heaven
as a banquet, especially as a marriage feast. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal (no.81) says that “in the
Lord’s Prayer, daily food is prayed for, which
for Christians means preeminently the Eucharistic bread.” Communion at Mass
is a preview and pledge of participation in the eschatological “wedding banquet
of the Lamb.”3
What Jesus teaches us in this petition
is that the one thing we should desire above all and ask God for repeatedly,
every day, is union with, the enjoyment of, Jesus himself. We should ask for
the experience of God. Now. “This
day.”
Do not work for
the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which
the Son of Man will give you…. For the bread of God is that which comes down
from heaven and gives life to the world.”[1]
Today’s Gospel tells us that to spurn
the banquet is to spurn God himself (see John 8:42). And to come to the
banquet, but without showing appreciation for what it is all about (“without a
wedding garment”) is to deserve expulsion. We might apply this to the way we
participate in the liturgy at Mass! If we don’t minister to others through
“full, active, conscious participation” we are “party poopers.” When the party
is God’s party, that is something to take seriously!
Initiative:
Give God’s life: Be a “priest in the Priest.” Live to give the “food that
endures.”
Footnotes:
1New Testament
Essays,
Bruce, 1965.
2Matthew 25:10; Mark 2:19; Luke 12:36,
14:8; John 2:1-11; Revelation 19:9.
3John 6:27, 33.
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