10th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

Hos 6:3-6; Rom 4:18-25; Mt 9:9-13

There is an old Jewish legend about Moses walking through the desert and meeting a shepherd. He spent the day with him. In the evening after he had milked his sheep, the shepherd filled a big bowl with milk and carried it off into the distance and left it there. When Moses asked what that was all about, he answered, “I always offer God my best milk.”

Moses then told him, “But God is a spirit; He doesn’t drink milk.”

But the man refused to change his mind. And so Moses told him to pay attention to what happened to that milk on the next night. After he had seen what happened, the shepherd admitted, “You’re right. God does not need any milk. An animal has emptied the milk bowl. But now you have taken away from me the only means I had of showing my love for God.”

(The story is told by Friedrich Dietz in The Next 500 Stories by Frank Mihalic, SVD)

Hosea reminds us that it is love that God desires, not sacrifice. Matthew quotes Hosea but uses the word “mercy”, instead of “love”. Bible commentators are quick in pointing out that here God is not discounting the value of sacrificial offerings. What God denounces is the practice of sacrifice unaccompanied by obedience. Bringing material goods to the Church or doing a penitential act is worthless if the person doing it is not loving or merciful.

To offer a sacrifice is one form of worship. When we give to the Church a part of the fruits of our labor, we are acknowledging the fact that God is the source of all goodness and blessings. We know that apart from God we can do nothing. Giving material or monetary donation is our expression of gratitude to God for making us productive or successful. Moreover, when we deny ourselves of something good (food, drink, recreation, etc.), we are reminding ourselves of our fragility and total dependence in God. The sacrificial act becomes a discipline that would bring us closer to our Lord and Maker.

No matter how important sacrificial offerings are, they can be done inappropriately, or for misguided motivations. A person, for example, may donate a huge amount of money to the Church in order to get the admiration of others. Another person might do some sacrificing to secure the favor of God, as if God needs sacrifices for His survival. Still, one might think that by offering sacrifices he makes God indebted. The person expects God to answer his prayer-requests because he believes he has sacrificed enough.

We know, however, that God doesn’t need our sacrificial offerings for His happiness or sustenance. We are encouraged to make sacrificial offerings not for God’s sake but for ours. When we make genuine sacrifices, we become more and more generous and loving, and by becoming so, we glorify God.

The Pharisees were faithful observers of the Law. They fasted and gave tithes to the temple on a regular basis. Yet, these sacrificial practices did not make them compassionate and understanding with one another. Instead they became self-righteous, arrogant and condemning to sinners. What went wrong to the spirituality of the Pharisees? The gospel seems to question the purity of the Pharisees’ intentions of their spiritual exercises. Jesus called them “hypocrites” and “whitewashed tombs” for they worshipped only with their lips, not with their behaviors or actions.

Today’s liturgy should inspire us to continue offering genuine sacrifices inside and outside the Church. May our donations and sacrificial actions be shared with pure intentions so that people will experience the love and mercy of God through us!

Mother Teresa of India once told the following story.

Two young people came to our house and gave me quite a sum of money to feed the poor. In Calcutta we cook for 9,000 people every day. The two of them wished their money to be used to feed these hungry people. I then asked them, “Where did you get that much money?”

And they answered, “Two days ago we were married. Before our wedding we decided that we would not spend any money on special wedding clothes, nor would we have a wedding banquet. We wanted the money we would spend on these things to go to the poor.”

For high caste Hindus to act like this was a scandal. Their friends and relatives found it unthinkable that a couple from such outstanding families should get married without bridal gowns and a proper wedding feast.

So Mother Teresa asked them, “Why did you give me all this money?”

And they gave her this surprising answer, “We love one another so much that we wanted to make a special sacrifice for each other at the very start of our married life.”

(The story is told by Willi Hoffsuemmer in The Next 500 Stories by Frank Mihalic, SVD)