Tuesday, IX Week -- Memorial of St. Boniface
(Tobit 2)
Tobit tries to please God and to help his neighbor. But often his emotions overcome his better judgment moving him to make terrible blunders. In the episode of his story today he accuses his hard-working wife of stealing. We can almost hear Tobit cry out in remorse, “God, what a mess I make of everything. Why don’t you take my life?” Perhaps some of us, after having submitting to similarly impulsive tendencies, have felt the same self-disgust.
Neither Tobit nor we need despair, however. God hears the cries of those who call to him. We must curb the inclination to judge others’ harshly while continuing to live according to God’s commands. Later this week we will see how Tobit’s story ends happily as indeed will ours when we remain faithful.
As an aside, we can note that Tobit lives in ancient Nineveh which is presently the city of Mosul in Iraq. Persecution there today resembles that of twenty-seven hundred years ago when Tobit was a minority Jew among the Assyrian populace. Radical Muslim elements are now targeting Christians there. On Sunday, a Chaldean rite priest and three young deacons were found murdered outside their church. According to the Vatican press report, no one dared to pick up their bodies out of fear of being attacked. We want to pray in solidarity for Iraqi Christians and indeed for all suffering such outrage.
Homilette for Monday, June 4, 2007
Monday, IX Week
(Mark 12)
Philosophers debate the existence of God by telling the story of two men who come to a clearing in the jungle where there are many beautiful flowers. One says that there must be a gardener who planted the flowers. The other disagrees. So they decide to experiment by waiting around to see if a gardener appears. After a couple of days without anyone coming to tend the garden, the man who proposed that a gardener planted the garden says that the gardener must be invisible.
God, for those who choose to believe in Him, is the “invisible gardener” who created the world and all its contents. Atheists will say “no” there is no “invisible gardener” but only an imaginary one existing in the minds of believers. In the gospel Jesus certainly accepts the proposition of an invisible gardener. The vineyard he mentions is like a garden, and God is the one who planted it. Therefore, God has a right to demand that the vineyard’s caretakers produce fruit for Him. Of course, generally we understand Jesus’ vineyard as the earth and the fruit which God expects as justice for all people. But we might see the earth as simply the environment. God wants us humans to care for it wisely. We must not pollute it, wantonly kill the creatures that inhabit it or wastefully deplete its resources. The Book of Genesis underlines this duty by telling us “God then took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden to cultivate and care for it” (Genesis 2:15).
Obviously, one does not have to believe that God is an imaginary gardener to care for the environment. But we who do so believe should be environmentalists. We might also question how people who argue that God is but an imaginary gardener would defend the universal need to care for the earth which is felt so strongly today.
(Mark 12)
Philosophers debate the existence of God by telling the story of two men who come to a clearing in the jungle where there are many beautiful flowers. One says that there must be a gardener who planted the flowers. The other disagrees. So they decide to experiment by waiting around to see if a gardener appears. After a couple of days without anyone coming to tend the garden, the man who proposed that a gardener planted the garden says that the gardener must be invisible.
God, for those who choose to believe in Him, is the “invisible gardener” who created the world and all its contents. Atheists will say “no” there is no “invisible gardener” but only an imaginary one existing in the minds of believers. In the gospel Jesus certainly accepts the proposition of an invisible gardener. The vineyard he mentions is like a garden, and God is the one who planted it. Therefore, God has a right to demand that the vineyard’s caretakers produce fruit for Him. Of course, generally we understand Jesus’ vineyard as the earth and the fruit which God expects as justice for all people. But we might see the earth as simply the environment. God wants us humans to care for it wisely. We must not pollute it, wantonly kill the creatures that inhabit it or wastefully deplete its resources. The Book of Genesis underlines this duty by telling us “God then took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden to cultivate and care for it” (Genesis 2:15).
Obviously, one does not have to believe that God is an imaginary gardener to care for the environment. But we who do so believe should be environmentalists. We might also question how people who argue that God is but an imaginary gardener would defend the universal need to care for the earth which is felt so strongly today.
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