for July 1
Wednesday of the Thirteenth Week of Ordinary Time

Water is an unstoppable force, as anyone who has had a leaky roof knows all too well. Water goes where it will. But when the prophet Amos calls us to “let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an every-flowing stream” (to use the more familiar translation than the one the lectionary offers), he is proposing much more than just welcoming the irresistible progress of God’s justice. No, the prophet calls on us to choose whether to hate evil and to seek good. And both of today’s readings challenge us to fully consider our choices.

One fine summer day long ago, I went hiking with a friend in the Shenandoah valley. We followed a rushing stream until we came to a tiny, perfect waterfall that dropped four feet into a swimming hole. As we picked our way across the top of the falls, I slipped and disappeared from my companion’s view. I remember nothing between that moment and bobbing up in the pool below; no terror, no life flashing before my eyes. The power of the water pushed all of that out of the way. When justice rolls like water, it will likewise sweep aside our pre-occupations and self-absorption. Seeking good is not an easy decision.

Years later, I lived in Memphis, right along the banks of the Mississippi River, and walked my children to and from school along its bluffs, above the spring floods. I remember watching entire trees speed downriver. When the waters receded, an unrecognizable landscape was left behind. When justice rolls like water, familiar landmarks will be destroyed, and new life will need to be rebuilt. Again, it is no easy thing to choose what is good.

A fierce, savage opposition between good and evil is also present in today’s gospel. This passage from Matthew, a section of the gospel intended to demonstrate Jesus’s power, is odd and discomforting to modern ears, with its “demoniacs” and herd of pigs stampeded to a watery grave. In today’s reading, we meet evil not as a free-floating, impersonal force, but as something that requires a living host. We see how evil takes over and destroys the lives it enters. We also hear how evil recognizes the power of God, even before Jesus’s disciples do—remember how yesterday’s gospel ended with the question: what sort of man is this? And while the definitive answer will come in tomorrow’s gospel, today we meet people who would rather the devil they know, living on the outskirts of town, than the power of God that arrives in the person of Jesus. Even the decision to hate evil carries within it difficult choices: will we try to quarantine the power of evil or to exorcise it completely?

The readings today are unsettling ones, perhaps because they are about something that we aren’t that comfortable talking about. Amos and Matthew speak to us about power: the power of evil and God’s power to overcome it, and our power to choose which one of these we ally ourselves with. Today’s scriptures challenge us to avoid ‘going with the flow.’ We must choose whether we, like Jesus, will respond to the evil spirits that we meet with his unqualified, uncompromising command: “Go then!”
—BJ Brown

Today’s readings can be found on the US Conference of Catholic Bishops website.