Homily for September 7, 2019

Homily for Saturday of the 22^nd Week in Ordinary Time – September 7, 2019

When the Pharisees questioned Jesus’ disciples about lawfulness of their picking and eating the heads of grain as they walked through the field on the Sabbath Day, Jesus replied with simple common sense. He defended them by calling to mind the time when David and his men were allowed eat what was normally reserved for priests. Proper observance of the Law allowed for serving the poor and the needy.

Jesus concludes His response by telling the Pharisees that “the Son of Man is LORD of the Sabbath.” In other words, it is He who has great authority, even authority over the Laws that govern the activities of the Sabbath Day.

Jesus was proclaiming to the Pharisees, a group that was obsessed with the letter of the Law (the letter of the Law as they interpreted it), that He, as God made flesh and as the Author of the Law, was greater than even the Law and that He could, for the sake of the good, ignore the Pharisees' complex and confusing system of obeying the Law. Once again, Jesus points us to the spirit of God’s Law, to the spirit of the Gospel, as being greater than the pious practices and picayune gestures to which the Pharisees clung.

Let us pray that our practice of the faith may not be blinded by narrow-minded legalism, and that it may open us up to the true spirit of the Gospel and the Law of God. +