by Father James Rodriguez
As a teenager, I began to develop a deep love of poetry. The rhythms of language in the hip-hop music I listened to drew me in. It wasn’t always appropriate, but the way artists playfully or bluntly manipulated words opened up new vistas in my mind. By the time I read that one of my favorites wrote his college papers in verse, I was hooked, and names like Wordsworth helped me to find beauty everywhere, even in blades of grass.
These poets, old and new, had a deeper effect on me, since at the time I was also discerning my vocation to the priesthood — sometimes reluctantly, I admit. What I couldn’t deny was my growing love not only for the poetry of man but of God as well, and today’s first reading and Gospel remind me of those days when I first began to love language and the Author of all beauty.
Moses insists on the nearness of this God, whose creation bears the mark of beauty. Despite the wonders he witnessed firsthand, Moses probably couldn’t have imagined that 1,300 years later his words would be fulfilled so deeply in the Incarnation. God the poet gives us historical rhymes separated by centuries in his perfect meter.
Scholars call this scriptural resonance typology, where we can see aspects of the Old Testament, or types, fulfilled in the New. Moses experienced the presence of God in the closest way since Adam, and still it was a preparation for what Christians would come to see as normal. In holy Communion we see the radiance of the Lord, and receive him with the express purpose of becoming one with the One: “It is something very near to you, already in your mouths and in your hearts.”
We cannot overstate the sheer beauty and glory of Catholicism — it is Jesus himself. The passage from Deuteronomy ends with the words “you have only to carry it out,” foreshadowing the end of every Mass when we are sent on mission to literally carry out the Word made flesh, changed by the divine encounter.
In today’s Gospel we are treated to the familiar story of the good Samaritan who is held up as a model for us to imitate.
We’re often struck by the irony that the least expected character does the right thing with magnanimity. What might elude us, however, is the gravity of the situation for the first two passersby. They were avoiding ritual impurity, but they were also weak in the face of abject horror. How easy it is for us to avoid even thinking about the plight of people suffering around us, despite our near-constant exposure to it through the news and other outlets.
We might be tempted to indifference, or even despair, but the Eucharistic Lord stares at us from the hands of the priest, his light pervading our excuses not with guilt and shame but with the purifying fire of his Holy Spirit, source of all grace and true inspiration.
St. Paul, in his own inspired poetry, calls the Colossians to find in Jesus the true fulfillment of the Mosaic promise, as God near us. In his flesh, we are able to meet the One too big for our categories, yet in Whom “all things hold together.”
When we are able to see that presence in everyone, even those we would rather avoid, we come close to him in them. In another holy rhyme, God comes close to us so that we might come close to him — first at the altar, then on the road.
Come, let us adore him.
Father James Rodriguez is the pastor of St. Rose of Lima Church in Rockaway Beach.