Friday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Today's Mass Readings

Today is the memorial of St. Elizabeth of Portugal and American independence day. Like her great-aunt St. Elizabeth of Hungary, after whom she was named, St. Elizabeth of Portugal was also born into privilege, but devoted herself to helping the poor and living a life of holiness and devotion. Today's readings go well with this memorial. In today's Gospel reading from St. Matthew's Gospel, we find some Pharisees upset that Jesus is spending time with a tax collector, someone who would have been seen as sinful and unclean in that society. Jesus points out that the sick need a physician not the healthy. Too often this passage is taken to say that the public sinners are the sick, whereas the Pharisees and other religious leaders are healthy and therefore don't need the Great Physician Jesus.

But, if we pay attention to Jesus' comments to and about other Pharisees we encounter in the Gospels, we recognize that this clearly cannot be the case. Jesus recognizes, however, that these particularl Pharisees are even more "ill" than the tax collector, but they are so ill that they do not recognize their illness. Tradition tells us, on the other hand, that Matthew the tax collector repents of his ways, recognizing his spiritual illness, and becomes one of Jesus' own apostles, and then, inspired by the Holy Spirit, writes the very Gospel of Matthew in which we find this passage.

Matthew the tax collector does the opposite of those among his fellow Israelite ancestors against whom God speaks in today's first reading from the Book of the Prophet Amos. There God is upset with Israel not so much for their privileged position, but rather for the ways in which they desired to defraud the poor and disregard the holiest day of the liturgical calendar----the Sabbath. And all of this for the love of money, which had become an idol for many.

For many of us as well, money functions as an idol. Today may be the memorial of St. Elizabeth of Portugal, but it is also the day the United States celebrates its Independence from England. The United States is the wealthiest nation on earth. We Catholics who find ourselves in the U.S. as pilgrims on our way home to Heaven should really take today's readings and today's liturgical memorial to heart. We need to examine our lives. Do we make more of our daily decisions based upon financial concerns or upon our concern for God and neighbor? Money is not a bad thing, in and of itself. Nor is the increase in wealth a bad thing, in and of itself. But when money distracts us from God, or makes us neglect our neighbors or the poor-----or worse still, when our love of money makes us complicit in oppressing the poor and weak among us, placing money above God, then we are in trouble indeed. We would do well to pray over God's speech in today's first reading from Amos.

Let's take the example of St. Elizabeth of Portugal who used her wealth to help the poor, keeping in mind that the poor can help us just as much as we can help them. In fact, in some ways, the model the poor and downtrodden provide for us can help us more spiritually than our money could ever help the poor materially. Let us recognize how poor of spirit we actually are, and ask for God's mercy and grace in our lives.

Jeff Morrow