Homily for March 26th, 2014: Deut. 4:1, 5-9.
Just three weeks ago I told you that
God’s chosen people, the Jews, were slaves in Egypt for more than four centuries,
over double the life of slavery in our country. Oppressed people follow the law
of the jungle, inflicting on one another the cruelty and oppression inflicted
on them by their oppressors.
So the ragtag group of people who
crossed the Red Sea with Moses had grown
accustomed for centuries to a life of lawlessness. The Ten Commandments, given
by God to Moses, were designed to bring order out of chaos, to establish
justice and peace among a people who had long since forgotten the very meaning
of those words. The Commandments were not then, nor are they now, fences to hem
people in. They were and are ten signposts pointing the way to human
flourishing , freedom, and peace.
That is
why Moses tells the people in our first reading to observe God’s
Commandments “that you may live.” Doing that, Moses says, “will give evidence
of your wisdom and intelligence” to other nations. But Moses tells them that
they must do more. “Take care … not to forget the things which your own eyes
have seen, nor let them slip from your memory as long as you live, but teach
them to your children and to your children’s children.” What things is Moses
referring to? He is speaking about the whole marvelous, indeed miraculous,
story of his people’s deliverance from their more than four centuries slavery.
Why is this
remembering so important? Why does Holy Scripture so often record the story of
God’s mighty deeds in the past? Because God
never changes. The record of God’s miraculous care for his people in the
past assures us of his care today, and its continuance into the future. As we
read in the letter to the Hebrews: “Jesus Christ is the same: yesterday, today,
yes and forever” (13:8).
The Church’s
central act of worship, the Mass, is a recalling of what God’s Son, Jesus, has
done for us at the Last Supper, on Calvary,
and at his Resurrection. But this recalling is not merely mental. Because the
Mass is a sacrament, it makes present, spiritually but truly, that which it
commemorates. We are there with the apostles in the Upper Room. We are there
with the Beloved Disciple, Mary, and other women on Calvary;
and we are with them also, astonished, at the empty tomb, with but one exception. We
cannot see him with our physical eyes; but we do see him with the eyes of
faith. And seeing, we adore.
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