July 24, 2010
Saturday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Reform your ways and your deeds, so that I may remain with you in this place. Put not your trust in the deceitful words: "This is the temple of the LORD! The temple of the LORD! The temple of the LORD!" Only if you thoroughly reform your ways and your deeds; if each of you deals justly with his neighbor; if you no longer oppress the resident alien, the orphan, and the widow; if you no longer shed innocent blood in this place, or follow strange gods to your own harm, will I remain with you in this place, in the land which I gave your fathers long ago and forever. Jeremiah 7:3-7
“…if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until harvest; then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters, “First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning; but gather the wheat into my barn.”” Matthew 13:29-30
Piety
What We're Praying for This Week (From www.crs.org)
As Catholics, we recognize that prayer is of the utmost importance, an invaluable contribution to helping the poor overseas. We invite you to join us in bringing to Our Lord the following intentions and thanks.
Haiti: Let us pray that Our Father guides every minute of our five-year effort to help Haitians rebuild, recover, and regain independence and productivity.
Poverty: Let us pray that Our Father continues to move the hearts of His followers to confront and alleviate global poverty.
Peace: Let us pray that Our Lord gives us his peace, the peace we wish to bring to others in our lives and in the rest of the world.
Basic needs: Let us thank God for the gifts He gives us in such abundance that we are in danger of taking them for granted: food, water, shelter, schools and freedom to worship
Study
There is something greater here. All week, we have been hearing, readings and studying variations on that theme. All of life is choices. Sometimes we choose between good and evil. Sometimes, though, the harder choices are between good and good.
It is probably pretty easy for the workers in the field to tell the difference between the wheat and the weeds. They can easily separate it into two piles and burn the weeds. It is probably easy for us to separate the good from the evil. Shall I go into Safeway and walk out without paying for a loaf of bread? Shall I steal my neighbor’s lawnmower when mine breaks? Morals teach us what not to do. However, the moral lessons can get blurred if we are not careful at discerning…a good Salesian word…the good from the good.
Jeremiah is trying to get the people to recognize that “apparent” goods being done in the temple are not consistent with the teachings of the Lord. Reform your ways. Thoroughly reform your ways and your deeds. He outlines a fairly good three-step prescription for living a life in friendship with the teachings of Jesus: deal justly with his neighbor; do not oppress the resident alien, the orphan, and the widow; do not shed innocent blood or follow strange gods to your own harm.
Action
What do Jeremiah’s words matter to us? How do we separate out the wheat in our lives from the weeds that sometimes seem to overtake our garden party?
After all, we have Catholic Charities, CRS, the Campaign for Human Development, and many more institutions set up by the Church along with more than a million tax-exempt charities to help us help the poor, widows and orphans here and around the world.
But are we really doing all that we can do? Or are we wasting money at Best Buy, Micro Center, B&H Photo Video, and Target on unnecessary electronic gear while people remain homeless and hungry? How many televisions, IPods, IMacs, IPods and digital cameras does the world need?
This week Apple led the way in positive earnings news that helped the stock markets gain. Raise your hand (to yourself, of course) if you checked the balance in your investment account this week as the Dow went back above the 10,300 mark? Our portfolios may look better today than they did in 2008. But the world still looks bleak to amputees in Somalia, drought-stricken farmers in Latin America, fishermen on the Gulf Coast and children pressed into labor or military service when they should be playing soccer or going to school.
CRS continues to push a campaign to enlist more Catholic in real action to confront global poverty. Will you become one of the million voices that CRS is working to enlist to speak out and take action against global poverty? If so, then you can sign up right here: http://actioncenter.crs.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ccgp_signup
