Daily Reflection Tuesday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time

When I was a teenager, I was given the nickname “the professor” by my family. I was always quick to have an answer for everything and usually the answer was for my benefit. If I had known of the above passage when I was a teenager, I would have quoted it every Sunday when I was being dragged off to church against my all-knowing teenage will. When I was growing up church was not an option, it was “you are going to Mass or else!” Off course my rebuttal was “but why” and my parents reply was “if you don’t it’s a sin and you will go to hell.”  Take about the fear of God yikes! 

In Deuteronomy 5:12-15 the “sabbath” or as we say now the “Lord’s Day” is explained differently. God is reminding the people that they were once slaves in Egypt and that he brought them out of slavey to be a free people. He wanted them to know that for all time they can rest in the Lord on the sabbath. Jesus is reminding the Pharisees of just this when he says the sabbath was made for man. We too are invited to come and rest in the Lord, to turn the chaos of the world off and be nourished. God just wants to share himself with us and what better way is there than meeting him at the altar. 

This past weekend my mother, who is now eight-six years old, called and asked me to take her to Mass. After Mass we were driving home, and she kept staring at me. I asked her what she was thinking, and she said “if you had of told me forty plus years ago that I would be going to Mass with you I would not have believed it. God really is a God of miracles.” I laughed aloud and had to agree. We all come to God in our own time and the beauty of God is that he is always waiting with outstretched arms. It is up to us to then be those outstretched arms for others, and we can only be those arms when we rest in the Lord.