Life is Change

June 26: Thursday of Week 12 of Ordinary Time, Year A-II:

2Kings 24:8-17; Psalm 79:1-2, 3-5, 8, 9; Matthew 7:21-29

A thought for those who want to reveal the risen Jesus in their lifestyle.

“ When Jesus had finished saying these things...” Matthew 7:28

Today’s Gospel concludes the first of five “discourse sections” in Matthew’s Gospel. They all end with “When Jesus had finished…” (see 7:28, 11:1, 13:53, 19:1, and 26:1).

After Jesus presented his New Law in the Sermon on the Mount, “the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.” The scribes just passed down, unchanged, the teaching from the past. Jesus revised and perfected it on his own authority.

The modern-day “scribes” are teachers who uncritically echo the “official” (but not infallible) teaching of the Church common in their time. They passed down to generations of Catholics approval of slavery, torture, racial discrimination, war, and innumerable ways of exploiting the poor. The “scribes and Pharisees” were the worst enemies of Jesus. They still are today.

Pope Francis criticizes those who “feel superior to others because they remain intransigently faithful to a particular Catholic style from the past…. a supposed soundness of doctrine or discipline” that is not… really concerned about Jesus Christ or others” (Joy of the Gospel 94).

The “prophets” speak with the “authority” of the Holy Spirit. They are faithful to the authentic past, but also open to new interpretations and insights from scholarship, reason, and prayerful reflection on their groundlevel experience of the world around them. They understand the New Law.

PRAY: “Put your law into my heart.”

PRACTICE: Open your mind to change.