Wednesday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Living well for the Lord is a complex task even on days that it should be easy. The situations we encounter every day cause us to make choices. At the grocery this afternoon, I found some money on the floor near the exit. I quickly picked up the money and handed it to the nearest cashier say it had been dropped. Afterwards, I wondered what would happen to the money. What I really wondered was should I have returned the money or kept it? I wished that question had not entered my mind. Thankfully my initial reaction was the correct response and honest one.
Honesty is not easy to accomplish and sometimes the right choice lies deeper than the reality we can see or comprehend. In today’s gospel, Jesus encounters two people possessed by demons. Ironically, the demons recognize the holiness of the messiah and perceive that he will drive them out of their current victims. So they ask Jesus if they could be driven into a herd of swine, perhaps figuring that they could wait there until Jesus was gone and repossess others later. If such a plan existed, we do not know nor does the narrator of the story, who gives us little clue as to why the demons even asked for that treatment. All Jesus said in this whole story was “Go then!” (Mt 8:32a) With that command, the demons entered the swine and the swine charged into the sea to drown. That swine were being tended here indicates that Jesus was in an area that had a gentile population. This could explain why the swine herders and the town people reacted to Jesus the way he had the demons. This story ends with the whole town saying to Jesus, go then please leave of us. If the people of that gentile village had understood who Jesus was, would they have reacted differently?
If we say we know Jesus, do our hearts testify to that same belief? Are there times when we do like the psalmist says today: we profess our belief in the covenant verbally, yet loath the disciplines of our faith when they require effort. The reality is that we need to practice living what we have been taught so that our example will model the saving power of God.
Obviously, being true to God and faithfully living the precepts of the church was a struggle even in the time of Amos. The prophet was chastising the people of Israel for the way in which they lived. Amos challenged the people to try and make a connection between their prayer, an external reality and the way they lived. The way people lived reflected their interior beliefs. The same is true today. As a scout leader, I teach honesty as one of our Character cornerstones. Yet if I do not live what I teach, then my words are meaningless.
Consider an area in your own life where you perceive a disconnect between what you claim to believe and how you live that belief. Reflect on this situation as an opportunity for growth and then make a specific change in your behavior. In this way, your life will model outwardly that which you claim, a true belief in Jesus.
-Michael Montgomery