Friday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Today's Mass Readings

I was a pastor when the COVID-19 lockdown occurred. Every church in the U.S. was reduced to a congregation amounting to a handful and livestreamed Mass. After we were told that two weeks would continue on for some time, I started to hear strange things about my parishioners’ experience of livestreamed Mass. Some said they actually enjoyed it because they could watch Mass while doing other work! On Easter Sunday I had to remind them that Sunday is a day of rest given more time over in particular for God.

Jesus will tell the Pharisees over and again that the Sabbath was made for human beings, not human persons for the Sabbath. This is a gift that God gave to us, for our good. However, the perfect should never be the enemy of the good. The Lord created man and woman as the height of creatures and called them good. If our bodies were not good and worthy of dignity, then how could feeding the body be sinful on the Sabbath?

Just as weakening the Sunday observance for God can be a problem, so can becoming too legalistic in what benefits the Father’s children on this day. As a rural pastor, I had to learn that in March I would not see a couple of the farmers in the community on Sunday because they would have to deliver a calf. This was about the good of the animal under their stewardship and their families’ livelihoods. If God had made cows to give birth every day but Sunday, it would have been great. Since he did not design bovines that way, I must be humbled by His will. The letter of the law must always challenge us in our weakness, but the spirit must call us to remember its intent.

Reflection by Fr. Pachomius Meade, OSB