Saturday of the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time

Today's Mass Readings

“But I say to you…”

With these words, we hear a turn from the Old to the New Covenant. What kind of mentality, what kind of attitude does one cultivate to enter this change, this movement? The answer in our Gospel today is decisiveness: “Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’”

This kind of decision-making (and decision-carrying-out) does not come easily for us humans! We find it much easier – at least in the short run – to be ‘maybe’ people. It’s understandable. We often cannot see the whole picture and new lights or pieces of information may come to us that we had not seen. We get accustomed to taking a ‘Let’s wait ‘n see’ stance.

But if we learn to direct our lives by the Gospel, we will know a wisdom tradition – living wisely. It is a tradition that grew out of the simple, direct contact which our ancestors, the Jewish people of the Old Covenant, the poor in spirit, lived with their God. Prophets like Elijah and Elisha, whom we are hearing about these days in the first readings of mass, passed along to us this tradition. Our Blessed Mother was steeped in it. When the Angel Gabriel came to her she was not ‘Perhaps!’ but “Fiat – Yes!” And her Son would take up this yes: “Behold I come to do your will!”

Decisiveness comes about through a humble, whole-hearted, and persevering attention to the Word of God, always trusting in the befriending Spirit.

Pope Francis, on one of his return visits to St. Mary Major in Rome, was reminded of this decisiveness in Mary:
You can’t teach, can’t care for one’s health by avoiding problems as if life were a highway without obstacles. A mother helps her children to look realistically at life’s problems and to not get lost in them but to tackle them with courage; not to be weak and to know how to overcome them with the healthy balance that a mother “feels” between the limits of safety and the areas of risk. …

Courage is needed in our inner lives in finding “the healthy balance that a mother “feels” between the limits of safety and the areas of risk.” Mary can be a big help to us in the area of inner decisiveness!

Reflection by Fr. Xavier Nacke, OSB