AUGUST 7 Mon Weekday [St Sixtus II, and Companions, St Cajetan].     Nm 11:4b-15/Mt 14:13-21                                                                               8 Tue St Dominic Nm 12:1-13/Mt 14:22-36 or 15:1-2, 10-14                       9 Wed Weekday [St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross] Nm 13:1-2, 25—14:1, 26-29a, 34-35/Mt 15:21-28                                                                          10 Thu St Lawrence 2 Cor 9:6-10/Jn 12:24-26                                           11 Fri St Clare Dt 4:32-40/Mt 16:24-28                                                            12 Sat Weekday [St Jane Frances de ChantaL BVM].Dt 6:4-13/Mt 17:14-20                                                                                    13 19TH SUNDAY 1 Kgs 19:9a, 11-13a/Rom 9:1-5/Mt 14:22-27

The first readings this week, from the Book of Numbers and the Book of Deuteronomy,  describe the journey of the Israelites to the Promised Land led by Moses. Not an easy journey, not an easy people. Moses faces their grumbling, their jealousies, their doubt. 

The Gospel readings this week from Matthew, chapters 14-17 offer his first account of the miracle of the loaves and fish, the cure of the daughter of the Canaanite woman, the miracle of the storm at sea, and the confession of faith led by Peter. Matthew follows Mark’s narrative but softens Mark’s picture of the disciples and is less harsh on them for their unbelief.  

St. Lawrence and St. Clare are two important saints celebrated this week. Edith Stein, Sr. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross was a Jewish philosopher who converted to Catholicism, entered the Carmelites and was killed in a German concentration camp during the  2nd World War.

For this week’s homily please watch the video below.

The Book of Leviticus, which we begin reading this week, gets its name from the tribe of Levi, Jewish priests involved in worship. Among their duties, they kept the Jewish calendar of feasts, which began with the Sabbath, the seventh day of the week, a day “of complete rest, a declared holy day; you shall do no work. It is the LORD’s sabbath wherever you dwell.”

Leviticus then lists the Jewish feasts of Passover, Unleavened Bread, Atonement, Booths. We can recognize feasts of our Christian calendar – Sunday, Easter, Pentecost. We follow the Jewish calendar as it’s found in Leviticus, now complete with the mysteries of Jesus Christ.

I appreciate calendars more and more, especially our religious calendars. As a psalm says, they help us “number our days aright that we may gain wisdom of heart.” There are “appointment calendars” for marking where or when you might be going to the doctors or meeting someone for dinner, but religious calendars go a step further. They not only mark the day for you, but they put you in touch with the past and point to the future. 

They invite you into the presence of God and the saints. 

I try to put a calendar at the beginning of each month in this blog. We will be publishing a calendar for 2024. For more on the calendar see. https://vhoagland.com/confraternity/

Psalms and scriptural verses following the first readings in our lectionary help us understand what they mean and deepen our reflection on them. Today’s reading and responsorial psalm are an example:

The Book of Exodus says that:                                        

As Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the commandments in his hands, he did not know that the skin of his face had become radiant while he conversed with the LORD. (Ex 34:29} 

The responsorial psalm –from Psalm 99– follows:

Holy is the Lord our God. Extol the LORD, our God, and worship at his footstool;holy is he!Holy is the Lord our God. From the pillar of cloud he spoke to them; they heard his decrees and the law he gave them.

“The LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as one man speaks to another,” yesterday’s reading claimed.( Exodus 33:11) No doubt Moses had a special relationship with God, but our psalm reminds us that the Lord, our God, is holy. We worship at his footstool, with our eyes down. God is beyond human understanding and can be known only in a pillar of cloud, in other words, in a darkness that signifies God’s transcendence. 

Still, when we meet with God in prayer our faces are transformed like Moses, because we have accepted God’s invitation to friendship. Jesus, “ image of the invisible God”, who came in the fulness of time, renews and completes that divine invitation.

When Moses asked God to see his glory, God responded “You cannot see my face, for no one can see me and live.” (Exodus 33:20)

St. Ephrem the Syrian explains our limits from the human experience we have looking at the sun: “Our eyes look at the sun but do not see it. Still, we are aided by what we see, but stay unharmed by what we do not see. Our eyes see what they can, but turn away from what we can’t. “

The image of the sun that lights the world is a good symbol of God, whom we describe in our prayers as light. We have imperfect sight; we only see so much. That is so with God; it’s also so in the way we see people and things around us.

“The tent, which was called the meeting tent, Moses used to pitch at some distance away, outside the camp. Anyone who wished to consult the LORD would go to this meeting tent outside the camp.” (Exodus 33:7)

God came down from a remote mountain top to a tent outside the camp, we hear in today’s reading from Exodus. The tent is taken down and pitched again as his people journey through the desert. Moses asks the Lord. “If I find favor with you, O LORD, do come along in our company.This is indeed a stiff-necked people; yet pardon our wickedness and sins, and receive us as your own.”

God comes along as his stiff-necked people pitch their tents. What a beautiful way to put it!

Eventually the tent becomes a temple, as the Israelites settle in the land. Psalm 15 sees the two together. “O Lord, who can abide in your tent? Who can dwell on your holy hill? Those who walk blamelessly, and do what is right, and speak the truth from their heart. ( Psalm 15.1–2)

N.T. Wright, in his book “The Case for the Psalms” comments on how unbelievable this presence of God seems in today’s world that, like the Epicureans of old, can only accept gods who are remote and uninvolved, or like the Stoics can only accept gods who are hidden in a pantheistic universe. 

The tent and the temple are not convenient gathering places “ they are the place of promise, the place of presence, the place out of all the earth where the living God has chosen to live.”

“The Temple turns out to be an advance foretaste of YHWH’s claim on the whole of creation. We are to see the Temple as establishing, so to speak, a bridgehead for God’s own presence within a world that has very determinedly gone its own way. It is a sign that the creator God is desiring not to provide a way to escape from the world (though it may sometimes feel like that) but to recreate the world from within, to set up a place within his creation where his glory will be revealed and his powerful judgments unveiled.”

(Wright, N. T.. The Case for the Psalms (pp. 91-92). HarperOne. Kindle Edition.) 

Can we see our churches and chapels in that light? Tents for God’s “stiff-necked people”. Temples where he always dwells. Churches that point to a recreated world.

JULY 31 Mon St Ignatius of Loyola, Ex 32:15-24, 30-34/Mt 13:31-35 

AUGUST 1 Tue St Alphonsus Liguori, Ex 33:7-11; 34:5b-9, 28/Mt 13:36-43 

2 Wed Weekday [St Eusebius of Vercelli; St Peter Julian Eymard ] Ex 34:29-35/Mt 13:44-46

3 Thu Weekday Ex 40:16-21, 34-38/Mt 13:47-53 

4 Fri St John Vianney Lv 23:1, 4-11, 15-16, 27, 34b-37/Mt 13:54-58 

5 Sat Weekday [Dedication of Saint Mary Major; BVM] Lv 25:1, 8-17/Mt 14:1-12

6 SUN TRANSFIGURATION OF THE LORD Dn 7:9-10, 13-14/2 Pt 1:16-19/Mt 17:1-9 

Readings from Exodus and Leviticus this week remind us how important the events at Sinai were for the Jewish people and, consequently, for us. God enters into a covenant with his people who receive a way of life. Still, they turn away looking for false gods. Moses intervenes for his errant people. I like his simple prayer: 

“If I find favor with you, O LORD, do come along in our company.This is indeed a stiff-necked people;  yet pardon our wickedness and sins, and receive us as your own.”

Jesus, High Priest of the new covenant and the new Moses, intercedes for us .

Matthew’s gospel this week offers readings from Jesus’ lengthy teaching by the sea. Parables summarize what he taught during his public life. At this point in the gospel, as Jesus faces increasing opposition, his disciples aware of the gathering storm ask about the meaning of the parable of the weeds and the wheat, a parable about the persistent power of evil in the world.(Tuesday)

Matthew’s readings conclude with the death of John the Baptist, (Saturday), a sign of Jesus’ approaching death. 

St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Alphonsus Liguori, St. John Vianney are important saints celebrated this week.

Sunday we celebrate the Feast of the Lord’s Transfiguration, which we can see linked to the Feast of Mary’s Assumption on August 15th.

Readings at : www.usccb.org

For this week’s homily, please watch the video below.

In those days:
God delivered all these commandments: “I, the LORD, am your God, 
    who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.
You shall not have other gods besides me. (Exodus 20:1)

We keep our covenant with God by keeping God’s law as outlined in our reading today from the Book of Exodus. “We should know that the ten commandments are fulfilled in the two precepts of the gospel: love of God and love of neighbor.” St. Caesarius of Arles says, “the Lord said in the gospel, ‘On these two commandments depend the whole law and the prophets.’

Moses proclaimed God’s law from the mountain to those on the desert road to the promised land after escaping Egypt. Jesus proclaimed that same law in his time. That law applies to us on the road today. The language may be old, but the message is not.

Years ago a man who had been away from church for years came to see me about returning.  I asked him why he was coming back. He told me that his daughter had asked him not long before why he wasn’t going to church, and he told her he was living a good life and didn’t need anything else.

She asked him what he believed, and he told her.

“That sounds like the ten commandments,” she said, “You’re missing the help you need to live that life you want.” 

“She was right,” he said. 

In Matthew’s gospel Jesus begins his ministry on the mountain, proclaiming the commandments as blessed teachings bringing happiness to us and to our world. Then he goes down to the people who “live in darkness and the shadow of death” to bring them life. A simple description of our church.