Saturday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time

Today's Mass Readings

Today’s readings encourage us to reflect upon our ability to listen, especially to words that we may not want to hear, and to discern the voice of God.

The prophetic profession is not easy. Even the valiant Jeremiah of today’s first reading had protested to God that he was too young to be a prophet when God called him (see Jer 1:6). It’s not easy because it often demands delivering God’s word to people who don’t want to hear it. Jeremiah has warned the Jews that their infidelity to the covenant will lead to their destruction (Jer 26:13). In return, the leaders want to kill him. In today’s gospel John the Baptist speaks truthfully about the marriage of Herod to his brother’s wife Herodias. Sexual intercourse with one’s sister-in-law was prohibited by the law (see Lev 18:16). Herod and Herodias throw John in prison and then have him killed. Unlike the royalty in the first reading (Jer 26:16), they are unable to recognize and listen to the prophetic words as a message from God.

As the vocation of prophet is not easy, so too we see that listening to a prophet is not easy, especially when it indicts us. It’s at least a little easier to listen when we can recognize the word as of God, as we see in today’s first reading. But the word of God can come to us from anywhere. Jeremiah was prophesying at age thirteen. John the Baptist was regarded a something of a hick who ate locusts, wore camel’s hair, and lived in the desert.

The question becomes, “how are we able to recognize the words of God when they’re being spoken to us?” That, of course, is not easy either. We might begin by receiving Christ in the Eucharist as often as possible. Seeing Him there will help us to see Him in other people and places. Other spiritual practices – prayer, the works of mercy, fasting, reading about the lives of the saints, observing a time of silence – can also help to open our hearts to the voice of God, wherever it may come from. Let us spend some time today in silence – maybe 15 minutes – to be free of the myriad noises of everyday life and to reflect upon how God might be speaking to us. Perhaps we’ve even blown Him off… or wanted to kill His prophet.

- Tim Gabrielli