for June 12
Friday of the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time

Today’s first reading is one of my favorite Old Testament passages, though I am not suggesting the prophet Elijah deserves imitation in this context. Elijah has gone off by himself up Mount Horeb, called a mountain of God. Indeed, he is told by a word from the Lord that the Lord will be passing by. I wonder, what was his reaction? There is then the strong, heavy wind, the earthquake, and fire, any of which Elijah probably thought appropriate for encountering the all-powerful God. In fact, on another mountain of God, Mount Sinai, God did come to Moses with peals of thunder and lightning, fire and smoke, and the mountain trembling. But this time that is not where the Lord is found. Rather God is revealed as a tiny whispering sound, literally in Hebrew a barely audible whisper, traditionally paraphrased as a sound of sheer silence.

The Lord questions Elijah why he is there, really challenging him about his running away. He complains that though zealous for the Lord, the people have forsaken the covenant, threatened his life, and that he alone remained faithful, surely a dramatic exaggeration. God however sends him back; there is another promised king and another promised prophet to be anointed and commissioned. The passage tells us something about where God is to be found, how it sometimes requires a deserted place, even if only behind a room’s closed door or in a secluded walk in the park. But theologically we learn revelation is now going to be word as well as event, with Elijah as the first of the five great Old Testament prophets. For us Christians, revelation as word climaxes in the teaching of Jesus as in today’s gospel.

Jesus is continuing his Sermon on the Mount addressed not to the crowds but to at least incipient disciples and therefore to us. In this section he is talking about his understanding of what we call the Old Testament and begins by confirming its significance. The Second Vatican Council did the same when it affirmed: The books of the Old Testament bear witness to the whole divine pedagogy of God’s saving love: these writings are a storehouse of sublime teaching on God and of sound wisdom on human life.

In today’s selection Jesus is continuing to take the proscriptions of some of the commandments and deepen them by moving from behavior to motivation or we might say by interiorizing them. In relation to the sixth commandment prohibition against adultery, Jesus goes further and condemns lust as adultery of the heart, including probably the ninth commandment criticism of coveting another’s wife. We need to be careful not to be distracted by the injunction which follows about cutting off your hand or throwing away your eye if it causes you to sin, clearly not to be taken literally. Minimally, it reminds us of the traditional teaching about avoiding the occasions of sin. Putting it more forcefully could mean being open to a radically re-ordering of priorities. Underlying it all is an ideal for marriage which Jesus implies, defined by one author as a covenant of personal love between spouses which reflects the covenant relationship of God and his people.
—Edward O’Donnell SJ

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