A Big Heart for God

Friday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Cycle B, Year I

August 13

Readings (Please click here to read in full)
    Reading I: Jos 24:1-13
    Responsorial Psalm: Ps 136:1-3, 16-18, 21-22 and 24
    Gospel: Mt 19:3-12

Word count: 341
Reading speed
     Slow (100 wpm): 3.4 minutes

    Average (130 wpm): 2.6 minutes

    Fast (160 wpm): 2.1

God’s grace that comes with our vocation can only be received by a big heart for God.

In our Gospel today, Jesus presents to us two vocations; the vocation to married life and the vocation to a celibate life. He emphasizes that God is the source of these vocations. It is He who joined together man and woman, making them "one flesh" in marriage. It is He who grants the gift of celibacy to those who can accept it for the "sake of the Kingdom of Heaven". God, being the source of these vocations, binds Himself to us by making a sacred covenant with us. In this covenant of marriage and celibacy, God vows to be with us always and never leave us in good times and in bad, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, not till death do us part, but rather till life everlasting. On our part of the covenant, we need to respond by living a life of chastity, chastity in a married state and chastity in a celibate state. Chastity, in this regard, is having a heart that is consecrated to God.

Let us be aware that, human as we are, we can break and divorce from that covenant by not listening to God. The Jewish people made this grave mistake. The Gospel tells us, "They said to him, ‘Then why did Moses command that the man give the woman a bill of divorce and dismiss her?’ He said to them, ‘Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning, it was not so." Their hardness of heart, a heart of stone, made them disobedient. And more than just dismissing their wives, they divorced themselves from God’s covenant.

We are then reminded that we can only receive God’s grace that comes with our vocation, with God’s covenant in Married or Celibate Life, by having a heart of flesh and not of stone, a listening heart, an obedient heart, a big heart for God.

Fr. Joel R. Lasutaz, SSS

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