for June 30
Tuesday in the Thirteenth Week of Ordinary Time

“You alone have I favored, more than all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your crimes.” This verse from today’s first reading expresses for me a guiding principle with which I grew up, namely that privilege and responsibility go hand in hand. God, through the prophet Amos, is here reminding Israel that the privilege of being his chosen people brings with it the responsibility of upholding the exacting moral standards of the Mosaic Law as lovingly establish by the covenantal bond. The images in the verses that follow illustrate how closely bound the privilege and the responsibility are. When they fall out of alignment, trouble naturally follows. Jesus makes the same general point about responsibility in the Gospel of Luke: “Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.” (Luke 12:48) The ‘crimes’ referred to by Amos (some translations say ‘iniquities’) are seen in this context as betrayals of the trust God placed in the people.

Amos is early (8^th-century B.C.) in the line of prophets warning the people of the disastrous consequences to come from their neglect of the Law. The negligence of his time had not yet wrought the terrible damage that came later. It was more of what we today might consider (perhaps wrongly) benign neglect. Yahweh was worshiped, but so were idols. The nation as a whole was prosperous, but the poor were suffering. People thought they were abiding by the covenant, but they had become complacent and were overlooking the shortcomings God had tried to bring to their attention. If all this sounds a little familiar, we might consider if Amos doesn’t have something to say to us today. Perhaps we also have let our privilege and responsibility get unbalanced.

One way of describing proper balance is highlighted in the psalm response: justice. The psalmist is pleading for justice and believes God will look kindly upon him because he is not wicked or arrogant or deceitful. He considers himself responsibly following the ways of God (and implies that his persecutors are not) and so expects God to grant him relief. The final verse of the psalm, not part of today’s reading, is: “For you, Lord, bless the just one; you surround him with favor like a shield.” As with Amos, justice flows naturally from being in right relationship with God.

The Gospel passage is the well-known story of Jesus’s calming of the storm on the Sea of Galilee. In juxtaposition with the other two readings, it strikes me that Jesus is not just rebuking the winds and the sea that threaten to capsize the boat but also the disciples that didn’t trust him to keep them safe: “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?” The disciples, as happens repeatedly in the Gospels, are awed by Jesus’s power. But Jesus is not interested in their being dazzled. More important to him is that they should have faith in him. A loving, trusting relationship with Jesus enables us as Christians to be open to the Spirit that guides us in choosing rightly. So too the loving, trusting relationship with God enabled Israel to listen to God’s guidance to choose rightly.

Unfortunately, we all inevitably have our moments of little faith when we place our trust elsewhere and they often lead to wrong choices. To help us get back on the right path we might turn to the psalm response—”lead me in your justice, Lord”—knowing that God’s justice is always the most loving solution.
—Christine Szczepanowski

The readings can be found on the US Conference of Catholic Bishops website.