Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time / Msgr. Owen F. Campion
The Sunday Readings
The Book of Exodus is the source of this weekend’s first reading.
One of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, its concepts were attributed to Moses himself. As such, it is part of the Torah, the fundamental document of Judaism.
As its title implies, its focus is upon the flight of the Hebrew people from Egypt, where they had been enslaved, to the land promised to them by God as a haven and as their own homeland, a land that is “flowing with milk and honey.”
The journey from Egypt to the Promised Land was not at all easy for the Hebrew people. Often, the natural elements seemed to assail the refugees. The fleeing Hebrews also encountered hostile human forces. Dissidents among them sowed seeds of confusion and alarm. Armies pursued them.
This weekend’s reading is about one such encounter. The Hebrews had to fight, and only when Moses held aloft the staff given to him by God did the people prevail in the battle.
After a while, Moses, by this time old and weary, could no longer lift his hands so his brother, Aaron, the first high priest, and Hur, another faithful disciple, helped Moses by holding up his arms as he held the staff.
For the second reading, the Church turns to the Second Epistle to Timothy.
As was the case in past readings, this weekend’s selection reassures Timothy, and challenges him, in his task of discipleship and of serving as a bishop.
The reading stresses that Jesus alone is the hope of the redeemed, indeed the hope of all people.
St. Luke’s Gospel furnishes the last reading.
During the first century A.D. in Palestine, widows were very vulnerable. Poverty was rampant. There was no “social safety net.”
Since a wife could not inherit from her husband under the law, she had to rely upon her children to survive. Virtually nothing was available to help a woman make her own living.
Therefore, the woman in this story surely was desperate. It is easy to assume that, frantic before her circumstances, she boldly confronted this judge.
It also was a time when women were not expected to speak, or indeed rarely to be seen, in public.
The judge is hardly admirable. Evidently, he was a minor judge and a Jew. The Torah would have required him to be particularly solicitous about widows.
Yet he was not at all interested in this widow’s plight. But, at last, he acted as much to save his own image before the community as to still her entreaties.
Jesus uses the story to illustrate a lesson about God. Constant, loud pleas will not weary God. Unlike the judge, God will be merciful. He has promised mercy to his people. But in order to ask God for mercy, the people must believe in God and in God’s promise to be merciful.
Reflection
The readings this weekend from the Book of Exodus and St. Luke’s Gospel easily can create several rather simplistic, childish and incorrect views of God.
Exodus might give the impression that some seemingly foolish and unrelated gesture, such as holding arms aloft, will guarantee God’s help in a crisis. But that is an invitation to magic, not to a trusting relationship with the divine person, the Almighty God.
St. Luke’s Gospel then can be misconstrued to suggest that people must flood the kingdom of heaven with thundering calls for their petitions to be answered with the responses that they want in life.
Instead, these two readings call us to develop an attitude about prayer that is both humble and trusting.
In humility, we realize that we can do little on our own. We can do some things, but we cannot fully control our destiny. As did Moses, we must depend on God.
We also must trust God, even in moments of great concern. Unlike the indifferent judge, God will provide for us, giving us what we cannot achieve for ourselves—life eternal.
As we pray, so we must trust God. †