THE MAGIC OF SABBATH
THE MAGIC OF SABBATH
Homily for Fri of the 15th Wk in Ordinary Time,
21 July 2023, Mt 12:1-8
I saw a funny video a few days ago. One day a husband saw his wife sorting out the clothes for laundry and stopped her. He said, “Don’t touch it! Believe me dear, there is some magic happening in this house since we got married and started living in this house. You just leave the dirty clothes there on top of the washing machine and come back the following morning and you’ll see—everything will be fresh, clean, and well-folded again!”
The wife was puzzled. The husband even took her to the living room and said, “Every night I watch TV and make a big mess on this sofa table with my snacks while watching Netflix movies. I just leave the mess there and the following morning, it’s all cleaned up and back in order! I tell you, somebody must be sneaking in our house every night to fix up our mess for the following day.”
Well, the following day, the wife was gone. The man called the police and reported that somebody must have abducted his wife, that it must have been the person who sneaked into their house every night to clean up his mess. Can some people be so stupid, you might ask? Well, Jesus is driving home precisely this point in our Gospel reading.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus is criticizing the Pharisees for their narrow-minded understanding of the law. They were behaving like the ridiculous husband character in that video—who enjoyed his rest, totally unmindful of his wife who worked silently every night to make sure all the mess left by her husband was in order the following day.
Jesus even gives two funny examples himself: first, of David and his soldiers coming home hungry after defending the nation in battle and eating the bread of offering reserved only for the priests. Second, he asks if the priests who work in the temple on Sabbath day are violating the law. If he had lived in modern times, he would have applied the same question on priests, doctors and nurses and many
