Daily Retreat 08/01/08

2008 Aug 1 Fri Jer 26: 1-9/ Ps 68(69): 5. 8-10. 14/ Mt 13: 54-58   From today's readings:  "Thus says the LORD: If you disobey Me, not living according to the law I placed before you and not listening to the words of My servants the prophets, whom I send you constantly though you do not obey them, I will treat this house like Shiloh, and make this the city to which all the nations of the earth shall refer when cursing another....  But I pray to You, O LORD, for the time of Your favor, O God!...  Jesus came to His native place and taught the people in their synagogue...."   Omit Nothing!   The Bible is by all accounts a big book - even many people who have discovered the treasure of Scripture have yet to read the entire Bible cover to cover.  So it's natural for people to be more familiar with some passages, and basically ignorant of others.  And indeed, some books of the Bible are objectively more important than others, e.g., the lengthy book of Jeremiah is more significant on all counts than the pithy 21 verses of the prophet Obadiah (the only book of the Bible that appears no where in the lectionary cycle!).   Yet the overwhelming nature of the Bible does not give a person license to pick and choose, to focus exclusively, for example, on only the comforting verses which assure us of God's forgiveness, while ignoring the lofty but demanding moral exhortations and precepts!  While this is especially tempting for those charged with preaching God's word to pass over the most unsettling "hard sayings" in Scripture so as not to irk listeners, God's insistence that his prophet Jeremiah "omit nothing" applies as well to all of us who hear or read His word today.   Most people are woefully ignorant of too many essentials found in the deposit of our faith because God's demand that we "omit nothing" has conveniently been ignored.  We simply cannot be God's faithful people without a lifelong commitment to accept the whole of His revelation -  living this commitment in practice means meditating on the Word of God daily and studying all the tenets of our faith regularly so that we may put into practice in our lives all that we believe, and omit nothing!