Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
EXODUS 32:7-11 and 13-14
The Lord said to Moses:
– Go down at once to your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, for they have corrupted themselves. They have quickly turned aside from the way I commanded them; they have made for themselves a molten calf, bowed down to it, sacrificed to it, and proclaimed: ‘This is your God, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt’.
And the Lord said to Moses:
– I see that this is an obstinate people. So let me alone, that my wrath may blaze up against them to consume them. And of you I will make a great nation.
Then Moses implored the Lord, his God:
– Why, O Lord, should your wrath blaze up against your own people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a strong hand?
Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of the heavens, and all this land that I promised, I will give your descendants, and it shall be their heritage forever’.
And the Lord relented from the punishment he had threatened to inflict on his people.
After the proclamation of the Law, Moses has returned to the top of the mountain and has spent forty days there with his God. Meanwhile, the people have asked Aaron for an image of God. It is hard to worship a God without an image. Aaron has given in. With the gold they carried, he has forged an image of God, giving it the form of an animal, as the Egyptians did. That is their sin: they have made an image of God.
God is going to punish them for this disobedience, with the worst punishment: to repudiate them as his people, to exterminate them. Moses intercedes, remembering the patriarchs and the Promise of God, and God, for this time, repents.
The text shows a disagreeably primitive religiosity, related to the God of the flood, to the God of the curse. But it also shows a small step in the knowledge of God: despite the crime, God allows himself to be convinced by Moses and forgives.
It is also alarming that Moses is more compassionate than God. Something similar happens in the false theology of redemption, in which Jesus is the good one who with his blood appeases God, the just. In any case, it is that forgiveness that has attracted here the text to accompany the message of the Gospel.
If we were to look for a text from the Old Testament about God’s disposition toward the sinner, there would be many more appropriate ones. If this one serves us, it is precisely by contrast, to know HOW GOD IS NOT. Those who wrote the book of Exodus were very far from knowing God as Jesus shows him to us. And it is an important lesson to read Scripture well and not say “WORD OF GOD” lightly.
1 TIMOTHY 1:12-17
I give thanks to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has made me competent, trusted me, and entrusted me with this ministry. Although I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But God had mercy on me because I was not a believer and I did not know what I was doing. God lavished his grace on me, giving me faith and Christian love.
You can trust and accept without reservation what I say: that Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and I am the first. And for this reason he had mercy on me, so that in me, the first, Christ might show all his patience and might be a model for all those who believe in him and have eternal life.
To the King of the ages,
immortal and invisible,
the only God,
be honor and glory
forever and ever.
Amen.
The two letters to Timothy and the letter to Titus are usually called “pastoral letters” and are presented as instructions from Paul to his closest collaborators. Due to their vocabulary and mentality, they differ strongly from what is usual in the authentic letters of Paul, which is why it is considered more probable that they were written by disciples of Paul, maintaining his ideas and even collecting fragments of the own Paul. They are usually dated to the end of the 1st century.
In this fragment of the letter to Timothy, we are interested above all in Paul’s confession about his own history. He, a violent and arrogant persecutor, is chosen by God, as a display of forgiveness and free election. This feeling is what moves all his apostolic work, which is a gratitude, a correspondence to the goodness of God with him. This is what is expressed in the final hymn, most likely a liturgical hymn of praise. It is a beautiful summary of life: to live to give thanks and praise God who loved us first.
José Enrique Galarreta