A Homily for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

+ By inviting Our Lord to his house on the Sabbath, the pharisee put Our Lord to the test. He wanted to know if Jesus would comply with his own understanding of the Law of Moses. Yet his understanding thereof was faulty and needed correction. Our Lord therefore corrected him before doing that good work which He needed to do. In so doing the pharisee was humiliated, having his own test turned against him.

Should it occur that in our prayer we beseech things which are not good for us, we need correction. It is easy to pray for a facile resolution to a difficult situation, but much harder to realise that the answer God makes is far more substantiative and long lasting. It is far harder to await the true answer to our prayer in much patience. How easy it is to lose trust in God under the presupposition that He has not answered a prayer as I want when I want.

This is no less than putting God to the test, as is forbidden within the Old Testament and quoted by Our Lord during His own temptation in the desert. It is an exultation of oneself above God. It claims to know what is best whilst God does not. It can also be an excuse for laziness in claiming that I do not need to work because God will make things right anyway. Or worse that this trial is from God and therefore good for me. Yet our work and effort is necessary. It tests our patience and perseverance, strengthens our charity and maintains our humility. God loves us; He does not serve us. The trial is not given us for its own sake but to strengthen us in virtue through our struggle to overcome it.

Having healed the man brought before Him at the pharisee’s table for bread, Our Lord asks the onlookers: who would not pull their Ox out of a well on the Sabbath? None of them could answer Him. They all realised that they would rescue it, for the value of the beast of burden would be lost if they did not save it when it first fell in. Yet the man in front of Him had a far greater value before God. If the pharisees could not neglect their oxen on the Sabbath, how much less is neglect of neighbour countenanced!

Good towards our neighbour however is not always easy, nor is it always gentle. The apostle opens his epistle instructing the Ephesians not to faint at his tribulation for them. He knows what must be undertaken to strengthen them in charity, with Christ dwelling in them by faith. He knows that this is the best thing that they can receive, and would neglect nothing to assure that they care rooted in Christ. Sometimes this good requires those hard words the apostle was wont to utter in order to bend a stiff back. Yet this can only be undertaken within the right context, having a genuine responsibility for the other, and pronounced in such a way that they will understand it. Otherwise, the correction will usually be counterproductive. Our Lord usually has manner of correction without making direct accusation – such is the parable of the ox in a well on the Sabbath.

God wants to make the richness of His treasures available to us, yet He will always do so on His terms, not ours. He owes nothing to us, rather we owe everything to Him. We have nothing that is not given by Him. Every attempt to tell God how to do things will be met by a rebuttal. Each attempt to conform ourselves to Him will be strengthened and encouraged. That conformity however is often very difficult. It requires the humility to know that we do not know everything. Often we do not know what is best for us. All we can do is persevere in the continual struggle to accomplish God’s will through all trials that we are faced with. +