Let's begin reading a simple sentence given humanity by St. Augustine: "You have called us to a prophetic vocation in Christ., help us proclaim your might deeds." The prophet Jeremiah in today's liturgy's first reading speaks again for God: you can have it both ways! That's right! You cannot be in the temple on Sabbath and then do whatever it is that you like to do on the until you return to worship.
What Jeremiah is calling to our attention is this: there are times when we have allowed our hearts, our souls to be held hostage by the evils in our society, in our world. In the same liturgy, in reading the gospel verse of St. Matthew we are encouraged by the fact that our God puts up with the evil people and practices that happen in his garden. Rather than pull the weeds, he wants them left there until the harvest time with the hope that there can be redemption.
Our society in the USA today is most demanding of those who serve in public office as well as those who have office in our Church. Is there a radio talk show or TV commentary that does not point out how this official or that Archbishop or Pope has failed? Jeremiah would speak to these moments with the words in the first reading: you can't have it both ways, folks. You cannot live lives that are really far from God's expectations of you and then attend worship services with the expectation that life will be just fine. It doesn't work that way.
The challenge for us today is to be honest. Transparency, transparency. How about ourselves? Are we as honestly transparent as we should be? "Timing is everything!"
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