Who Will Get the Master's Gifts?

Who will get the Master's gifts?
If you know... do you qualify?


It's Sunday!

July 3 - XIV Sunday in Ordinary Time


One of my favorite themes about our Divine Master is that he was far more outspoken - even blunt - than perhaps he is sometimes judged to be. "Jesus, meek and mild," appears when he deals with the sick and with little children, but he made no pretense of politeness in his contacts with the religious leaders nor - on occasion at least - with his close followers. Here was a man who knew what he wanted and who said so, regardless of the listeners.


The opposite view is expressed in our Readings and Gospel today. The First Reading speaks of a king - no less - but riding on a donkey - a clear statement of the sort of king the Master wanted to be: king of humility, king of hearts, king of the poor and dispossessed. And surely in our time these are not in short supply: millions sunk in material poverty and many millions more sunk in the supreme poverty of sin.


The Responsorial Psalm, as we might expect, is a hymn of praise of this great King of ours - and what sort of king is he? The final 2 lines tell us: "He lifts up all who are falling and raises all who are bowed down."


In the Second Reading St. Paul tells the Romans that the coming of the great King into their lives, not historically but spiritually, has transformed them. Their human bodies - "flesh" are good, but Paul uses the term "flesh" to mean the basically
sinful situation of everyone born into the world. By Baptism, however, this situation is reversed and the Spirit prevails, provided the Romans (and everyone else) favors this prevailing.


Finally, the Gospel is a notable exception to the view I expressed at the beginning: Jesus the kind Savior, yearning to make us all eternally happy. But there is a condition: his love and concern are for those who are not "wise and learned." These will not get any of his gifts, nor, indeed, will they look for them. There is a certain mentality which is simply stupid and idiotic and perhaps this mentality is linked to a lack of education or a deprived childhood or some other factor which rules out much attention to the spiritual life. And there is a mentality which is largely Satanic: knowing perhaps the truths of the faith but being quite incapable of accepting them - too primitive, too unprofitable: in other words, knowing but not believing. Finally there is the blessed mentality - perhaps after a conversion in some instances - which eagerly hears the word of God and keeps it.