Monday in the Thirteenth Week of Ordinary Time, June 27, 2022

Matthew 8, 18-22

When Jesus saw a crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other shore. A scribe approached and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus answered him, “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.” Another of his disciples said to him, “Lord, let me go first and bury my father.” But Jesus answered him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead.”

This reading is similar to the last part of yesterday’s Gospel reading, and it provides us an opportunity to consider the Lord’s life, how the Evangelists described it, and the nature of a call from God.

First, in thinking about the Lord’s life, we must understand that it consisted of much more than the Gospels tell us.  St. John’s Gospel, for instance, tells us of some of what the Lord said and did on a handful of days.  St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke preserve for us the beginnings of the Lord’s life on earth and the beginnings of his ministry, but the remaining contents of their narratives comes from the last year or last few months of his life here.  The Lord spent most of his ministry moving from one town to another, preaching  repentance from sin and the approach of the Kingdom of heaven.  He preached in the marketplaces and the synagogues.  Largely, he preached the same message.  He would have retold many of the shorter parables which we find in Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels.  He would have answered the same questions in each of the towns.  He did not stay long in any one place, tearing through the land of Israel.  It should not surprise us if dialogues such as those recorded by Matthew and used in this reading occurred in these and similar words throughout the Lord’s ministry.

Then again, perhaps these encounters and words did occur only once, so that Matthew and Luke are both describing the same thing.  Matthew places his telling of it early in his Gospel while Luke places it towards the end, as the Lord Jesus is making his way to Jerusalem for the final time.  In this case, we can see the methods of these two distinct writers.  Matthew tends to write according to theme, but also seems to drop in a story or a saying as it occurs to him.  If we look at the verses surrounding today’s Gospel reading, we see the Lord coming down the mountain, curing a leper, then the centurion’s servant, and after that performing more cures.  Then the verses of this reading, and after them the crossing of the sea at night during a storm.  We see that we can lift the verses of this reading out of chapter eight of Matthew’s Gospel and it does not affect the story of the Lord’s victorious procession after delivering his Sermon on the Mount.  Now, since Luke makes it very clear at the beginning of his Gospel that he has as one of his goals the chronological sequence of events in the Lord’s life, we might look to Luke, then, as putting this account in its proper order.  If this is the exclamation for the difference between the Gospels we can appreciate the more raw, immediate sense of Matthew’s Gospel: reading it is as though we are hearing him tell us about the Lord as what he said and did comes to mind.  We can also appreciate St. Luke’s thorough examination of the Lord’s life from the witness of people who actually saw and heard him.  He heard many accounts from people, and of these a certain number diverged in details of time and place even while they agreed on essentials.  Luke sifted, asked questions, and wrote his Gospel accordingly.

Finally, we see how precious a calling from the Lord is, and how easily it can be reasoned away or rejected out of hand.  Sometimes we even try to answer the Lord’s call, but on our own terms and in our own time.  We  wonder what happened to the first man in today’s reading, who so eagerly promised to follow Jesus wherever he went.  The Lord did not tell him no, but left it to him if he was willing to endure and share in the hardship of his own life.  Perhaps this man went away sad, like the rich young man who would not follow the Lord “for he had many possessions” (Matthew 19, 22).  Then, the second man receives a call (and does not try to snatch one, as the first man does) but has conditions, or, excuses.  Possibly he returns later, like the first son in the Parable of the Two Sons: “A certain man had two sons: and coming to the first, he said: Son, go work to day in my vineyard. And he answering, said: I will not. But afterwards, being moved with repentance, he went” (Matthew 22, 28-29). 

Prayer and practice in cooperating with the grace of God in small things prepare us to serve him completely in the instant he calls.