Daily Reading

First Reading

Micah 6:1-4, 6-8

Hear what the Lord says:
    Rise, plead your case before the mountains,
    and let the hills hear your voice.
Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the Lord,
    and you enduring foundations of the earth;
for the Lord has a controversy with his people,
    and he will contend with Israel.
“O my people, what have I done to you?
    In what have I wearied you? Answer me!
For I brought you up from the land of Egypt,
    and redeemed you from the house of slavery;
and I sent before you Moses,
    Aaron, and Miriam.
“With what shall I come before the Lord,
    and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
    with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
    with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
    the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
    and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
    and to walk humbly with your God?

Psalm

Psalm 50:5-6, 8-9, 16bc-17, 21, 23

“Gather to me my faithful ones,
    who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!”
The heavens declare his righteousness,
    for God himself is judge. Selah
Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you;
    your burnt offerings are continually before me.
I will not accept a bull from your house,
    or goats from your folds.
But to the wicked God says:
    “What right have you to recite my statutes,
    or take my covenant on your lips?
For you hate discipline,
    and you cast my words behind you.
These things you have done and I have been silent;
    you thought that I was one just like yourself.
But now I rebuke you, and lay the charge before you.
Those who bring thanksgiving as their sacrifice honor me;
    to those who go the right way
    I will show the salvation of God.”

Gospel Reading

Matthew 12:38-42

Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to him, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.” But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth. The people of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the proclamation of Jonah, and see, something greater than Jonah is here! The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth to listen to the wisdom of Solomon, and see, something greater than Solomon is here!

Reflection

Friends, in today’s Gospel, the Lord tells his opponents, who asked for a sign, that no sign will be given except the sign of Jonah—that is, the resurrection. According to the early Church Fathers, Christ’s coming precipitated a warfare with the powers that hold the world in their sway. 

In bringing God’s ordo to the world, Jesus had to move into the arena of disorder, but this invasion was not met with passivity or acquiescence. Rather, the principalities of the world—Herod, Pilate, the scribes and Pharisees, the demons—waged a ferocious struggle against him, and it was only through the drama of the cross and resurrection that Jesus managed to defeat them. 

He took all of their violence and, through courageous forgiveness, robbed it of its authority, for violence feeds on itself, surviving only through reproduction. When it is met with compassion and forgiveness, it dissipates, its power source gone. In the language of the Fathers, Jesus thereby tied up the devil, frustrating him into submission, leading our captivity to hatred captive. So, as the hymn text has it, “The strife is o’er, the battle done . . .”