Robert Frost began his poem "Mending Wall" with "Something there is that doesn’t love a wall" and ends it with "Good fences make good neighbors." In today’s gospel, Jesus rebukes the Pharisees who criticize His disciples for plucking and eating some heads of grain while walking through a field.
Jesus knew the Mosaic law prohibited work on the Sabbath to allow people to rest. But he didn’t lower himself to argue whether plucking grain to eat was work. Instead, he used an example of David who broke one of the laws when he was hungry and concluded that the sabbath was "made for man, not man for the sabbath" and that "the Son of Man is Lord even of the sabbath." In other words, the law of God was intended to give us a framework for living. They were not intended to limit us, but to allow us to live as we are meant to live.
The Pharisees were so caught up in their own extensions of the Mosaic laws that they had lost sight of the original law and its intent. God had told Moses to set aside the Sabbath as a day of rest and worship. God created the Sabbath for our benefit: a day to take time to relax, focus on Him and be restored both physically and spiritually. God created the Sabbath for our benefit, not his own. For the Pharisees, their extensions of Sabbath laws had become more important than Sabbath rest. The prophet Isaiah says the Lord will honor those who refrain from doing their own pleasure on and Sabbath and commends those who share their bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into their homes while fasting. Both David and Jesus understood that God's law intends to provide us with a framework in which to promote love for God and others.
Dorothy Day is an example of a contemporary American saint who understood that God intends for us to promote love for God and others. She started the Catholic Worker movement and opened homes for the homeless and community farms for the down-and-out. She loved those who came, believed in them, and gave them hope.
As we think of the gospel message today, let us remember that the laws were not intended to limit us, but to give us a framework of guidelines that allow us to live as we are meant to live. Relax on the Sabbath with your family, but don’t refrain from helping those who need help on the Sabbath. Jesus didn’t.
.jpg "Father Pinto Paul, C.S.C.")