July 20, 2018 Friday, 15th Week in Ordinary Time
1st Reading: Is 38:1-22
Gospel: Mt 12:1–8
It happened that Jesus walked through the wheat fields on a Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and began to pick some heads of wheat and crush them to eat the grain. When the Pharisees noticed this, they said to Jesus, “Look at your disciples; they are doing what is prohibited on the Sabbath!”
Jesus answered, “Have you not read what David did when he and his men were hungry? He went into the house of God, and they ate the bread offered to God, although neither he nor his men had the right to eat it, but only the priests. And have you not read in the Law that on the Sabbath the priests in the Temple break the Sabbath rest, yet they are not guilty?
“I tell you, there is greater than the Temple here. If you really knew the meaning of the words: It is mercy I want, not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the innocent. “Besides the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the
Assimilated Life
Experience)
In his commentary to Article 10 of the Civil Code of the Philippines Edgardo Paras wrote that “when the reason for the law ceases, the law ceases to be one.” This is about the supremacy of the spirit of (reason behind) the law, and this is also what today’s Gospel is about.
A question on the observance of the Jewish Sabbath Law was raised when the Pharisees noticed the disciples picking heads of grain in the field. Exodus 34:21 known as the Sabbath Law stipulates, “For six days you shall labor but on the seventh day you shall rest even at ploughing time and harvest.” On this basis the Pharisees condemned Jesus’ disciples.
Jesus assailed their narrow interpretation of the Law. Quoting Hosea 6:6 Jesus said: “It is mercy I desire and not sacrifice”. In the mind of the Divine Lawmaker, mercy is supreme even over any sacrificial offering. In pushing for the literal interpretation of the Law the Pharisees ended up being uncharitable, a violation of love which Jesus later enshrined as the summation of all the commandments. He was short of saying that if indeed the Sabbath Law was as the Pharisees interpreted it, it was not binding upon the disciples. As Edgardo Paras rightly pointed out, “when the spirit ceases, the law ceases to be one”.
In expounding this quote Paras explained: “In the application of the law, we should interpret not by the letter that kills but by the spirit that gives life”. There was nothing wrong with the Sabbath Law. What was wrong was their interpretation of it. In Mark 2:27 Jesus declared, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” – (Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., D.M.
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