Many years ago, a couple on
the brink of divorce sought the assistance of a counselor. The wife had decided to leave but they were
giving it a last-ditch effort to save their marriage. She told how she had tried to get her
husband’s attention for years, but he wasn’t there. She would have to beg him
to spend time with her and the kids on weekends. She would talk to him but he didn’t really
listen. If she asked him to help her
with housework and all the things she had to do, he would put it off. She felt she was raising those kids on her
own. She was lonely and frustrated.
Then, the sink broke in the
kitchen and the plumber came to fix it. After
he did the job, she offered him a coffee and they sat at the kitchen table and
talked for a half hour. That’s it. Nothing more happened. But when he left, she made up her mind to get
a divorce. She realized that the
plumber, a perfect stranger, gave her more attention in that half hour than her
husband had in the entire past year.[1]
Our readings today continue
the conversation of understanding our identity as a people of God and our need to maintain relationships. It seems so easy
to lose ourselves and track of relationships in the things and culture of this world.
Whether it be work, social groups, even ministry can be taken so far
that we lose important relationships and assume an identity quite different from our original identity. Elijah is appealing to the children of Israel
to get off the fence, to remember who they are and who their Lord and God is.
Now we most likely will not
see a slaughtered calf, grain, altar and water lapped up by the Lord’s
all-consuming fire. Jesus does remind us
he came to fulfill the law, that not even the smallest letter or the smallest
part of a letter will pass from the law, until heaven and earth pass away.
The fourth commandment
illuminates other relationships in society. In our brothers and sisters, we see
the children of our parents; in our cousins, the descendants of our ancestors;
in our fellow citizens, the children of our country; in the baptized, the
children of our mother the Church; in every human person, a son or daughter of
the One who wants to be called "our Father." (CCC 2212)
As we enter into the
communion procession, let us be keenly aware whose children we are, who our
brother and savior is, and that our relationship with each other and the world is a proclaim
that “the Lord is God. The Lord is God!”
(1 Kgs 18:39)
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