Saturday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Today's Mass Readings

We get an overwhelming sense from today’s readings that God’s saving work is accomplished… but not always in the ways we expect!

What a great story in today’s first reading. Jacob was the younger son of Isaac and Rebekah and therefore not the one who would receive Isaac’s special blessing and inheritance. These things would go to Esau, who would become the new patriarch. Yet Jacob was his mother’s favorite and Isaac falls for their plot (right down to the goat’s hair stuck on his skin and the smelly clothes!). Jacob (renamed Israel) would become the father of the twelve tribes of Israel, the one with whom God’s covenant continues. Notice how it’s the crafty schemers that win the day. We learn later that their deceit has earned them separation from each other (Gn 27: 42-45). Yet even through deceitful people, God brings about the salvation of His people. What can we learn from this today?

On the one hand, God will bring about his purposes, even using us sinners as instruments, however faulty we are. This is perhaps the view from Jacob’s shoes.

On the other, we must recognize that God’s ways are not our own. Our expectations and plans are often shattered by God, often to bring about greater good. How many of us have had our carefully-laid plans deeply disrupted, only to find greater joy in the entirely unexpected situation? Often this joy comes on the other side of much distress. We learn something here about how God works. This is the view from Isaac’s position.

Thinking about God’s plan of salvation as it continues into the New Testament, God saving his people through a Messiah was expected. There are numerous promises in the Old Testament. But the manner in which Jesus brought about this salvation was very different from many expectations. This is the word, too, that Jesus speaks in today’s gospel passage from Matthew. The Kingdom that Jesus preached didn’t fit as neatly as some hoped with Jewish expectations – the new isn’t simply poured upon the old but is new in its entirety (Mt 9:17). This newness of God’s work throws fresh light on what God has done in the past so that the past must be re-read through it. Thus, we read the Old Testament in light of the New. We read the prophets in light of Jesus.

We can be confident in expecting God to work. But today’s Scripture readings teach us to be less confident in our own neatly arranged plans of how exactly God will work.

- Tim Gabrielli