Memorial of Saint Bonaventure, Bishop and Doctor of the Church

Today's Mass Readings

If today’s liturgical readings had a teaching method, we might say the writers used the method of “teaching by contrast.” The central foundational covenant of God with the Jewish people was clearly this: “I will be your God, and you will be my people.” Through the generations, God was always consistently faithful, but in sharp contrast, the people were often not faithful. The antiphon for today’s Responsorial Psalm catches the contrast: “The Lord will not abandon his people.” I’m reminded of the billboard I once saw along a busy highway. It simply said: “If God feels far away from you, who moved?”

The history of God’s People shows the long process of finding their way back to the heart of the covenant. The story, filled with many false and often painful starts, involved the wandering journeys of exile, occasional idolatry, and the continued warnings from the prophets. Finally, John the Baptist sounded the last prophetic call.

But it was Jesus, the ultimate sign of contradiction, who preached personal commitment to the Father’s will in contrast to the self-serving will of the world. It was Jesus who pointed out that the people most likely to “get it” in the sense of incorporating the hopes and values of the Kingdom were the marginal and the childlike. These are the teachers who, by humbly honoring the diversity of God’s plan, can show the world how to delight in the surprise of God’s presence.

Reflection by Fr. Daniel Petsche, OSB