Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Today's Mass Readings

The first reading today from the book of Isaiah deals with a very important event in Israelite history. The people of Israel were taken as exiles to Babylon in 587 BC. For fifty year they lived in a foreign land with no temple to worship, no land to own, and no future to look forward to. This was the single most devastating tragedy to befall the people. The important things is that no one questioned God because of the tragedy that befell them. In 537 BC, the Persian king Cyrus set these people free to go back to their own country. However, the way the people reflect on the event is very different from the way we are doing it during the tragedies today. The prophet Isaiah and the people of Israel are not afraid to look at the entire episode and relate it to God. They do not try to escape the implications of the tragedy nor do they run away from God. They seem to say, “Yes! The exile is tragic. But God is saying something to us through it.” Isaiah explains even the emergence of King Cyrus as God’s work. In these words Isaiah teaches the most important theological lesson to his people – that only God directs human history. Even if human beings or nature disrupt it, God can redirect it to his eternal plan. There is God and no other.

To look and find God is all events of life is a very liberating experience. I think of Mary and how she dealt with the tragedy of the death of her Son. I think of the Israelites and the fifty year exile and how they dealt with it in faith. I think of Jesus on the cross and how he cried out, MY God, My God.” I am sure each of us has some personal events that make us ask the deeper question of life. Why did this happen to me? What is the meaning of life now? Where is God now? On the cross Jesus did exactly what he had told the Pharisees in today's gosdpel reading, “Give to God what belongs to God!” (Mt 22:21). Sometimes, the best approach to all of life is an unconditional abandonment of our lives into the hands of God. This is the greatest act of faith, of liberation, of salvation

In the strangest way, then, today we are being invited to look at all of history - the good and the bad, to look at life itself – every Like the people of Israel, like Isaiah, like Mary and Jesus we should not be afraid to do that. Let us give to God what belongs to God.

- Fr. Satish Joseph