Good Morning. I slept in a little, so this is running late.

Today we start off with Amos 2:6-10, 13-16

I scanned around Amos a little, because I've never read it before. It spent all of Chapter one outlining other crimes against other tribes or nations. It looks like they were all pretty bad, (murder, treason, slavery), but God was the most angry at Israel because they disregarded his laws, took advantage of the weak and poor, sold their own people into slavery, heedlessly worshipped other idols, and something weird about father and son visiting the same prostitute. There are probably multiple laws broken on that prostitute thing. My study bible says that the crimes are "infidelity and idolatry". And we thought we lived in a corrupt society today.

At the end of verse six, where God, through Amos, says "I will not revoke my word," I thought that meant that God was going to stand by Israel, but apparently not. According to everything that came up with when I googled it, it means that he "will not withdraw his threat of punishment." Ouch. He goes on to tell Israel the great things that he's done for them, with the destruction of the Amorites, the being led out of slavery, and giving them the promised land. And then, tells them that they are really in for it because they have ticked him off. "Really in for it" doesn't exactly cover it, right? He's about to crush them. It is basically a very scary "I brought you into this world, I can take you out" kind of dad-speech. I don't know any more to say. Let's see what the next reading is:

Matthew 8:18-22

I don't understand how these tie together at all. I also think that Jesus is really tired in this passage, and maybe a little cranky. First of all, he sees that he's drawing a crowd, and he just wants to get in a boat and go across the lake, away from them. When a scribe tells him that he wants to follow him anywhere and everywhere, Jesus just basically tells him that he's got nowhere to go, and nowhere to rest. Then, when one of his disciples asks permission to go and bury his father, Jesus denies him in what even today sounds shocking and uncaring. “Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead.” Maybe the tie in for these two passages is that God gets real ornery sometimes. The New American Bible says this: "Let the dead bury their dead: the demand of Jesus overrides what both the Jewish and the Hellenistic world regarded as a filial obligation of the highest importance. See the note on Luke 9:60." Still very harsh.

So I googled around again, and I found this article: Holy Spirit Interactive: Fr. Francis Jamieson: The Hard Sayings of Jesus: Let the Dead Bury the Dead. This article basically says that Jesus is trying to demonstrate that following him and seeking the kingdom of God overcomes every earthy obligation, no matter how pious or important.

Now for the news of the day, in case you were interested in what the pope said about the new Pauline year: Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul links missionary and unitive dimensions