Monday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time
Years back a friend of ours from our former parish in Cincinnati lost her forty year old husband suddenly to a heart attack,
leaving her to raise their four boys alone. She was a convert to Catholicism, raised in a strict fundamentalist faith. Her father was a preacher in that faith.
The funeral liturgy was both beautiful and heart breaking. There was just one oddity. And it was a whopper. Her father preached the sermon (not really a homily) and it was all fire and brimstone. He used the opportunity to warn those of us who didn’t accept-Jesus-Christ-as-our-personal-Lord-and-Savior (according to his formula) that we would be dragged down into the pit by Satan himself. And the word he emphasized continuously was the word “Woe.”
It went something like this: “Woe to you who would fall into Satan’s grip! Woe to you who would not repent and cry for salvation! Woe to you who give a bad example to kin and neighbors! Woe to you who would lead others down the path to perdition! Woe! Woe! Woe!” Most of us were not used to hearing such a message at a funeral liturgy (or anywhere else). All I could think of was the pain it must have brought to a widow and her young sons, the extended family, as well as the gathered people.
We have heard the expression “Oy Vey” – a Jewish way to react when you learn how much your son’s root canal will cost, or when you find out that there is a two-hour wait for a table at the restaurant. Oy and Vey are two very old Yiddish expressions which both mean “woe,” expressions of lament that Jesus speaks three times in today’s Gospel.
Rather than an outright condemnation of those religious leaders who opposed him (not all did), perhaps we are too quick to assign a manner/tone to Jesus. Was the evangelist’s (Matthew) intent in writing the tale that the preacher from Nazareth should sound like that preacher at the funeral of his son-in-law? What is more consistent with Jesus’ manner and mission, as well as the intent of the evangelist, is that he is lamenting the current state of things. The religious leaders should know better and recognize that the message of the Kingdom of God is not unlike that of the prophets of old nor is it out of sync within Judaism. And that was lamentable. Oy Vey!
We are given the Holy Spirit, the scriptures, the sacraments, the angels and the saints, the continuity of the Church, the community of believers – woe to us if we do not live as the Lord would have us live.
Before we are quick to tsk-tsk and shake our heads at certain scribes or Pharisees we might ask, “For what reasons might the Lord Jesus lament ‘Oy Vey’ when looking upon our own Bread of Life Family? What does the Lord lament about us?”
—Timothy J. Cronin
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN Bible series is offered by yours truly at IC (chapel) this fall on Wednesdays Sept. 11, 18, 25/ Oct 2, 9, 16, 23 7-8:30pm. This is not limited to IC parishioners. Register at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..