We Are all Wounded Children
by Fr. David M. Knight
July 17, 2024
Wednesday of the Fifteenth Week of Ordinary Time
Lectionary 391
Is 10:5-7, 13b-16/Mt 11:25-27
Isaiah 10:5-16 tells us that authentic ministry must always be 1. conscious surrender to God acting in and through us: “Thy will be done”; 2. guided by love: “for building up and not for destroying.” (See 2Corinthians 13:10. Paul is speaking explicitly about “using the authority that the Lord has given me.” He does not want to be “severe.”)
God used Assyria to show his people the consequences of their infidelity. God’s goal was to save them; but it was not Assyria’s:
This is not what he intends... but it is in his heart to destroy.... For he says: “By my own power I have done it, and by my wisdom.... like a giant.”
For that reason, Assyria must learn:
The LORD of hosts will send among his fat one’s leanness, And instead of his glory there will be... kindling of fire. The Light of Israel will become a fire, Israel's Holy One a flame, that burns and consumes his briers and his thorns in a single day.
Ministers, especially when they have authority, must never correct anyone without making certain they appreciate the hurt it might cause, and that they are able to forestall or heal any harm it may do. Every experienced priest knows too many “horror stories” of priests whose momentary rudeness has turned people away from the Church for a lifetime. Rudeness and impatience are especially deadly during Mass or in the sacred but vulnerable encounter of sacramental Confession. Any harshness in those two situations should be reported immediately to the bishop by anyone who knows about it. Unfortunately, in today’s Church the people the bishop usually hears from are those defending the law, not the hurt, the rejected or the oppressed.
The only individual person Jesus ever corrected with harshness was Peter, just after he had made him pope. And the only groups he railed against were the Pharisees and religious officials of Israel. Them he condemned with rage. But individual scribes and Pharisees he rebuked gently and with kindness.
To every other kind of sinner, he was kind and compassionate. To the woman taken in adultery he just said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.” When the Samaritan woman told him, “I have no husband,” Jesus complimented her! “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” He was even gentle with the guard who struck him and with Pilate as he was condemning him to death. (See Matthew 16:23; 23:1-39; Mark 12:34; Luke 7:36-50; John 8:11; 18:19-23, 33-37; 19:9-11.)
Matthew 11:25-27 should be read with tomorrow’s text. Those who “know the Father” will treat others as Jesus does.
Initiative: Deal with every person as you would with a wounded child. All are.
Reflections brought to you by the Immersed in Christ Ministry
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