Jan 17., 2023   /   General, Homilies, Soul Food

New Paths

(Homily by Fr. Oliver Dy, SJ on 17 Jan 2023, Tuesday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time)

GOSPEL: Mark 2:23-28

As Jesus was passing through a field of grain on the sabbath,
his disciples began to make a path while picking the heads of grain.
At this the Pharisees said to him,
“Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the sabbath?”
He said to them,
“Have you never read what David did
when he was in need and he and his companions were hungry?
How he went into the house of God when Abiathar was high priest
and ate the bread of offering that only the priests could lawfully eat,
and shared it with his companions?”
Then he said to them,
“The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.
That is why the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”

“As Jesus was passing through a field of grain on the sabbath,
his disciples began to make a path while picking the heads of grain.”

One can imagine Jesus and his disciples as an itinerant group. In their moving from place to place, they would often pass through known roads and paths traveled by others. However, in today’s Gospel, they are moving forward from point A to point B without a fixed road. The path is made by walking as they pass through a field of grain.

In an era of synodality, there is likewise no fixed path into the future, only a process of walking together just as Jesus and his disciples walk together along the same path. Forging a path forward calls for the discovery of the “new” as one pushes forward into the unknown and untested. It calls for a new interpretation of the word of God, just as Jesus himself presents a new midrash or interpretation of the Scripture of his time, one appropriate to their context.

So as we feed on the grains of the word of God, let us seek for that new interpretation of the word for our own life situations, as we move forward together into the future in the spirit of synodality.

(Photo by Adil Ahnaf for Pexels)