10-25-26 30th Sunday, Ordinary Time

                                     

                                                   

30th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Our gospel this weekend opens with a scene like the gospel over the last couple of weeks in which Jesus is being tested by different segments of the Jewish authorities.   This time it is group known as the Sadducees, who are asking him, “Which commandment is the greatest.”(Matt 22:34).  The Sadducees were a wealthy, aristocratic Jewish sect who included a number of the Jewish priests but also included a number of Jewish nobles and wealthy Jewish merchants.  They held a strict adherence to the Jewish law, as found in the Torah (the first five books of the bible). ¹                                                                                  Jesus answers their question as they expected but then, he adds that the second commandment is equal to the first.  In other words, it is as important as the first.  In reference to that, he is challenging them to think about how they have cared for (or not cared about) the poor, those who are widowed, and the orphans.  Often such people in this time period were ignored by those in authority.  Ignoring such is a serious offense in the eyes of God which is what is being spoken about in the first readings this Sunday, from the Book of Exodus (one of the first five books of the bible).  In that book God reminds the Israelites that if they treat such people as orphans, widows, aliens poorly, God’s wrath “will flare up “against them.  So much so that their wives and children will then be made widows and orphans or even be forced into becoming dwellers in alien lands.  To Jesus caring about what happens to our brothers and sisters is equally important to our honoring and worshiping of God.  This was such a key understanding in the early church that in the first letter of St. John he writes: “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” (1 John 4:20).   Such love of a brother (or a sister) is not a familial requirement only, it also involves all our relationships with our brothers and sisters whether at work, in the community, in the classroom, or on the sports field, etc.   In other words, the depth and sincerity of our love for God must be borne out in the witness and actions of our love for one another.                                                                                                                               In 2009, a worker named Christophe Germain returned to his job at the Badoit mineral-water plant in Saint-Galmier, France. His young son, Mathys, was suffering from liver cancer. Christophe had taken time away from work to accompany him through treatment, but he was having difficulty continuing to do so without jeopardizing his income because he had used up all his leave and sick time.                                                                                     His supervisor, a man named Marc Séon, wondered why Christophe had returned to work so soon. Christophe explained that he had been warned about his repeated absences and the importance of his attendance at his job because he was not the one who was ill; his son was.                                                                                                                                             Shocked by the reaction of the employer, Marc and the other workers began considering what they could do to help Christophe to be able to be with his son during this critical time.  They could not treat Mathys’s cancer. They could not take Christophe’s place as his father.  But they possessed something that Christophe desperately needed: days off from work to be with his son during his treatments.                                                                                               So, with the company’s agreement, employees began contributing days from their own accrued leave. One worker gave ten days. Others gave what they could. Together, they gave Christophe 170 days off, allowing him to continue receiving his pay while remaining with his son.                                                                                                                               Mathys died on New Year’s Eve that year. The workers’ gift did not change the outcome of his illness.  But it did something important — it gave a father the chance for time to spend with his dying son.                                                                                                                The employees at Badoit had families, commitments, and needs of their own. Their days off were valuable.  Some might have planned to use them for rest, for a holiday, or for time with their own children. No one was required to give those days away, but they did because they saw a brother worker in trouble and knew they could ease his pain and burden.  So, when they saw that Christophe was desperately needed by his family especially his son, they understood that the question was not simply how much leave-time each of them had earned; it was what Christophe needed while there was still time to give it to him, his family and especially his dying son. When the workers at Badoit gave Christophe their days off, they did not know how much time Mathys had left. They just knew that Mathy’s father needed to be with him, and that the days they could give would matter in a way they could not measure.                                                                                                                             According to a later account of the family’s experience, Mathys before he died thanked the workers for giving time for him and his father to be together.  It was a child’s way of saying what their gift had meant to him that his father could be there with him to the end of his short life.                                                                                                                            Going to church and mass each Sunday is very important, because that is how we show our love of God by making or giving up our time for Him.  But equally important are the choices we make between the Sunday’s’ of our lives.  Choices of how we are going to treat or respond to each other.  Choice about how and when we are going to show compassion and love for one another.  Choices by which we seek justice and love as our aim for one another.  The workers in the Badoit factory could not heal Christophe’s son.  But they could accompany Mathy by donating the time needed so that his father could be with him during Mathy’s last days on this earth.  On the scale of what happens in the world every day this gift from Christophe’s coworkers may seem small, but it is like Jesus’s remarks about returning the cloak to man each night, even though he is indebted to you, so he can sleep peacefully.  That action, like the action of the workers at the Badoit factory while small, is founded upon a love for others that is great.  And that in the end is what is important to God.

                       “Commit your way to the Lord, trust in him and he will act                                                       And make your righteousness shine like dawn,                                                                         Your justice like noonday. (Psalm 37:5-6)

1.AI & Godquestion.org                                                                                                                                                                 2. Before The Sun Goes Down, Voicings.com