Saturday June 27, 2009

Saturday June 27, 2009 of the 12th Week in Ordinary Time
Scripture Readings” Genesis 18: 1-15 Psalm Luke 1: 46-55 Matthew 8: 5-17
Response: “The Lord has remembered His mercy”

The continuing saga of our father in faith, Abraham, we see an additional reference to the three persons in one God, in the first verses. When Abraham recognized the deity of the images before him, he naturally bowed low to show his adoration and homage.
The meal Abraham prepared would feed a mob but it didn’t deter him from his heritage of hospitality. God approved of his offering and dined with him and his family.
In the banter during the meal, God revealed His plan to have His will completed in Sarah’s pregnancy to produce the heir to the promise in a son, Isaac.
On hearing the prospect, and knowing her age and the probability, Sarah laughed emulating her husband, who had laughed before at the prediction.
They were an old couple by anyone’s standard but God’s. Aware she had passed the term of her cycle of production of ovum, she, like us, were skeptical.
Ever get in an inscrutable frame of mind with no escape and prospects dim? Almost everyone would immediately call upon their God to do something, usually, all the while, filled with doubt but still hoping.
Sarah was thrilled at the prospect but antsy about how this was to take place.
Her question, “Am I still to experience sexual pleasure? This wasn’t in the sense we might attribute to the question but as a hope to produce progeny for her husband and become a whole woman! Hebrew woman felt it was a curse not to be able to conceive!
Compare that with our generation where pregnancy becomes a burden, not a gift from God and an easily corrected mistake. For shame!

Luke’s expression of our mother Mary’s Magnificat alludes to the attitude we should take when a detour from our plans becomes a reality. According to Tradition, Mary had vowed to remain chaste even in the marriage arranged for her by her parents, she wished to serve God alone. However, when His angel announced her conception, she immediately supplanted her will for the Will of God as the angel proclaimed.

The gospel story of the faith of the gentile Roman Centurion has been repeated by us in the prelude to receiving our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament until Vatican II when the words were changed. I prefer the old way personally. However, as a faithful Catholic, I adhere to the teaching office of the Church which states in its dogmatic constitution on the Church, mandates, “No one, not even a priest, can change one word in the Rubrics of the Mass”.
The faith of the Centurion is rewarded when his servant is healed remotely just as his faith had stated. Peter’s mother-in-law also was healed by Christ with just the touch of His hand.
We may not be in His physical presence to receive personal healing but His presence is always there when we receive Him in the Eucharist. The healing will come about in Christ’s way and time, if, you have the faith of the Centurion too!