Monday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Franciscan Preacher

Lectionary: 395

Some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Jesus,
"Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you."
He said to them in reply,
"An evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign,
but no sign will be given it
except the sign of Jonah the prophet.

Those scribes and Pharisees who demanded a sign from Jesus might have done well to study today's first reading from the Book of Genesis. Pharaoh had seen more than a few signs to persuade him of God's authority. Clearly the king of Egypt was no match for the King of Heaven and Earth; but he was headstrong and his arrogance made him stupid. Fear, greed, and lust can do the same thing, as the Scriptures amply demonstrate with many other stories. 

Faith in God begins and ends in an encounter with the Living God. Persuasive arguments have their place; they can help the heart explain to the mind why we're doing this. But they do not persuade a heart enslaved to lesser gods. 

Listening to a video lecture recently, I learned that the great philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was the first to show that slaves are more free than their masters, because the slave knows he is dependent upon the master, but the master does not see, understand, or admit that he is more dependent upon his slaves. Arguments and persuasions mean know more to them than colorful images mean to the blind. 

Whereas a slave can be freed by another's decision, the master can be freed only by his own decision. And he is decidedly against making such a decision! He cannot even imagine it, much less see the necessity of it. But the slave can imagine both. To make matters worse, the master's descendants might never recognize how unfree their ancestor was, while the slave's descendants see clearly the bondage that persists from year to year and century to century. (On December 6 of this year, it will 160 years since slavery was abolished in the United States. We were among the last of slave-owning nations to make that decision.) 

The scribes and Pharisees in today's gospel are possessed by their fear that Jesus might be the Messiah, and that God has finally decided to intervene in human affairs. They could not recognize the Visitation when it came. 

• Wisdom 14:11 Therefore, upon even the idols of the nations shall a visitation come, since they have become abominable amid God's works, snares for the souls of men and a trap for the feet of the senseless.
• Sirach 2:14  Woe to you who have lost hope! what will you do at the visitation of the LORD! 
• Luke 19:44 They will smash you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another within you because you did not recognize the time of your visitation."