First Reading: Amos 5:14-15, 21-24

God asks us to seek good and not evil. This seems like a really basic thing that he shouldn't even have to ask, so no wonder that the tone of this reading suggests that he's a little annoyed. He goes on to break it down in one of the more basic set of instructions for pleasing him that I've seen, outside of the ten commandments. Then it gets confusing. He tells his people that almost everything that they do to worship him will not be welcome. No feasts, solemnities, cereal offerings, stall-fed peace offerings, and no music. But he will take burnt offerings. Why? Well, this is what the footnotes from the NAB say: "The Lord condemns, not ritual worship in itself, but the cult whose exterior rites and solemnity have no relation to interior morality and justice. The Israelites falsely worshipped him as neighboring nations adored Baal or Chamos, deities which were thought to protect their respective people against their enemies in return for ritual observances, without any relation to right conduct." Okay, so God wants us to act right, pursue justice, maintain an inner morality, and really mean it when we go to worship services. I think that may be a fair assessment of that reading.

On to the next!

Second Reading: Matthew 8:28-34

So Jesus was traveling with his guys, and two demoniacs come out to meet him. Apparently, they were such a common nuisance that nobody traveled that road anymore. They immediately recognize Jesus for who he is, and accuse him of trying to drive them out "before their time". My handy dandy footnotes tell me "that the notion that evil spirits were allowed by God to afflict human beings until the time of the final judgment is found in Enoch 16:1 and Jubilees 10:7-10." But then the demons ask to be put into swine instead of just expelled, and it seems like Jesus takes pity on them. He drives the spirits into the swine, they drive the swine off of a cliff, and the swineherds run to town and tell everybody what happened. (My guess is that they went straight to the bar.) Then everybody from the town comes out to meet Jesus and to ask him to go away. You think they'd be happy to get rid of those two crazy guys that were terrorizing people off of the road. These are my questions:

• Why did the demons want to go into the pigs?
• Why did Jesus do what they asked?
• Why did the demons kill the pigs?
• Why did the townspeople ask Jesus to leave after that?