STONES IN PLACE OF OUR HEAVENLY BREAD


FRIDAY, SEVENTEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke, OP

Jer 26:1-9; Ps 69:5,8-10,14; Mt 13:54-58

Sentiments robbing us of our heavenly Bread

The people reject the word of God because of sentiments in the two readings we have today. In the first reading from Jeremiah, Yahweh directed prophet Jeremiah to proclaim his word to the people who came into the Temple of Jerusalem to worship him, to call their attention to their nonconformance to his divine will. The fact that he was sent to the Jerusalem Temple to make the proclamation is something we should take note of. It is always good to be in the Temple or Church, to worship God and commune with the people of God therein. But this prophecy of Jeremiah challenges us to be always open to reforming our inner hearts and our behaviour to conform to the will of God. The best attitude to bring this about is to always receive and treat the word of God for what it is, the word of God and not some human thinking. St. Paul gave this advice to the Thessalonians. Our inability to do this would always hinder our reception of the word of God, thereby allowing the evil one to take it away from us. The word of God, not well received in our hearts, falls by the pathway and is taken away by the evil one, as in the parable of the Sower.

A major hindrance to our proper reception of the word of God is a presentiment about the person of the prophet or preacher. In the case of this prophecy delivered by Jeremiah at the Temple, the presentiment was with the priests and the prophets. “When Jeremiah had finished saying everything that the Lord had ordered him to say to all the people, the priests and prophets seized hold of him and said, ‘You shall die! Why have you made this prophecy in the name of the Lord.” The first problem with the priests and prophets in Jerusalem is their wrong understanding of the Temple of the Lord as consisting mainly of the external structure full of grandeur and beauty; they miss out on the connection of the Temple to the sincerity of the hearts that worship therein. Jeremiah had warned and condemned their delusional belief in the empty phrase ‘the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord,’ without true repentance. Added to this is their sentiment about the person of Jeremiah; why would the revelation be from Jeremiah and not from them? This problem comes from our fallen nature’s proneness to jealousy. Our Lord suffered the same rejection in his hometown. “Where did the man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers? This is the carpenter’s son, surely? Is not his mother the woman called Mary, and his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Jude? His sisters, too, are they not all here with us? So where did the man get it all? And they would not accept him.” They rejected him, his wisdom, and his miraculous powers.

These are common hindrances to our reception of the word of God proclaimed to us. We can overcome the first problem of wrong understanding of the worship of God and the meaning of the Church by ensuring that we make our worship of God personal by understanding our hearts as the first temple where we sincerely worship God. The place of worship becomes meaningful when we worship God in truth and spirit. We overcome the second problem by obeying Paul’s admonition above: to receive the word of God as such and not as a human person’s thought. We must ask for the grace to put the word of God first before the person proclaiming it. By so doing, we would establish a personal and spiritual connection with God, who dwells in his word. The word of God opens direct access to God of heaven. To fail to attend to the word as the word of God is to close the gate of heaven for ourselves. The implantation of this prejudice against the prophet is a very subtle and dangerous gimmick of the devil to take away our heavenly bread and give us a stone instead, which is harmful to our spiritual life. We must watch and pray to prevent him from stealing our heavenly wheat and planting his tare in our hearts.

Let us pray: Grant us, Lord, the grace to attend to your word with undivided attention and enthrone it deep within our hearts and consciousness, that it may gender in us a true and spiritual worship of You who is our God and Creator.    

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