YOU DID NOT DANCE…

Isaiah 48:17-19
17 Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: “I am the LORD your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you in the way you should go.
18 O that you had hearkened to my commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea;
19 your offspring would have been like the sand, and your descendants like its grains; their name would never be cut off or destroyed from before me.”

Matthew 11:16-19 

6″But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market places and calling to their playmates,17 ‘We piped to you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’18 For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’;19 the Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Behold, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.”

MEDITATION

ISAIAH makes the point that it is God’s will to teach and direct us to heed His commands, which will be beneficial to us and our descendents in so far as it is purposed to complete our state of righteousness and instill in us a sence of perfect peace. Moreover our children’s children will be good-natured, compassionate magnanimous individuals who shall not be cut off from God’s graciousness and mercy. To put it another way is to say that what we sow, we shall reap.

THE GOSPEL READING: Our Lord comments about the state of society in His time, noting that even children have exchanged warm joyful friendships to chase after money, success and worldly goods. Most agregiously, the people have become numb and immune to the needs of those who suffer pain and the consequential loss of human life, caused by an uncaring society. Conversly individuals such as John the Baptist who lived a life of fasting and temperence is considered to be out of his mind, whilst Christ is viewed as a glutton and drunkard, because He sat at table with the so-called dregs of society!

Christ provide us with salient advice when he notes that “wisdom is justified by her needs,” implying that in all circumstances the believer or pastor or teacher should prudentially judge the environment we traverse or individuals we engage. Most certainly we must avoid being drawn into nor identify with, promote or affirm scandalous lifestyles or propositions that are at odds with magisterial teachings that is rooted in the ‘euangelion’. To put it another way, we aught not dance to the tune of secularism neither disgrace nor denigrate or dismiss the law of the Lord—Sacred Scripture or Sacred Tradition—to fit in or comport with societal disorders!  

LET US PRAY:Psalms 1:1-4,6

1 Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers;2 but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.4 The wicked are not so, but are like chaff which the wind drives away.6 for the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

Commentary. Henry R SYLVESTER Note: The daily scripture readings are taken from the Roman Missal which the Catholic Church use in the daily Celebration of the Holy Eucharist throughout the world.Some weekly readings may differ because of the celebration of local feast days.