Daily Reflection Friday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Today we have the giving of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai in Exodus 20 and Jesus in the one and only time in the gospels where he explains a parable. Finally, tomorrow is the feast day of sibling saints Martha, Mary and Lazarus who now all share this single feast day. They are great saints of the gospels and we know a good deal about beloved Martha in two highly memorable and important gospel passages that feature her, so don’t forget to honor them tomorrow on their feast day.

Yesterday, the stage was set quite dramatically for the giving of the ten commandments we hear today. When the Rich Young Man came to Jesus in Mt 19:16-22 with the question of how to gain eternal life, Jesus told him that by obeying the ten commandments he would find life. It was only after the man had said that he had kept all the commandments since he was a child and asked what more he could do, that Jesus invited him to sell everything he had and give the money to the poor and follow him.

The ten commandments, that’s it. “Do these and you will live,” Jesus tells the young man. In case you’ve forgotten some of the ten commandments, today’s first reading lays them all out. They’re basically summed up in love and honor God, go to church on Sunday, be good to your parents, don’t murder anyone, don’t steal or lie, don’t commit adultery and be satisfied with what you have. If you hadn’t noticed before, they’re not terribly difficult or lofty. But the story of the Rich Young Man also tells us another profound truth. There is always more that we can do. St. Ignatius Loyola called it the Magis. There is always a desire to serve God in more and more intimate ways. In that sense, the Ten Commandments become a kind of spiritual launching pad to greater heights. As Jesus challenged the young man, let us pray that we will allow ourselves to hear what Jesus tells us about this more, this Magis of the Spirit’s call. As the Rich Young Man discovered, it will never be something we expected.

Finally, Jesus explains the parable of the Sower and the Seed, again, the only time he does so in the gospels. The Lord’s explanation has always seemed to imply that people are of various types when it comes to repentance that can be analogous to various types of soil for planting seeds. We can indeed be found to be occupying one of those soil types, as it were, and we would do well to become aware of that if it is so. However, as I’ve said before, we can also see within ourselves, all these various “soil” types existing together in one way or another. Can we seek to find in our hearts that “good earth” that lies somewhere within every heart? Find that and cultivate it as best you can with God’s grace, and it will eventually swallow up all the troubled soil in its rich fulness yielding much fruit.