Episode 47: Year A – 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time
In this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word, we focus on three details from the Mass readings for this upcoming 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A. One of the three comes from the first reading, which is taken from Isaiah 25:6-10a. The remaining two come from the Gospel, which is taken from Matthew 22:1-14. The correlating apologetical topics include the problem of evil, the necessity of good works for salvation, and the reality of Hell.
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Hey everyone,
Welcome to The Sunday Catholic Word, a podcast where we reflect on the upcoming Sunday Mass readings and pick out the details that are relevant for explaining and defending our Catholic faith.
I’m Karlo Broussard, staff apologist and speaker for Catholic Answers, and the host for this podcast.
In this episode, we’re going to focus four details that are relevant to apologetical discussions. Two of the four come from the first reading, which is taken from Exodus 22:20-26, and each deal with separate questions: whether God is a moral monster for killing people and whether charging interest on a loan is sinful. The other two details come from the Gospel reading, which for this 30th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A is Matthew 22:34-40. These details relate to two apologetical topics: the necessity for Christians to keep the ten commandments and the doctrine of purgatory.
Let’s start with the first reading, again, taken from Exodus 22:20-26. We read,
20 “Whoever sacrifices to any god, save to the LORD only, shall be utterly destroyed.
21 “You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. 22 You shall not afflict any widow or orphan. 23 If you do afflict them, and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry; 24 and my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children fatherless.
25 “If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be to him as a creditor, and you shall not exact interest from him. 26 If ever you take your neighbor’s garment in pledge, you shall restore it to him before the sun goes down; 27 for that is his only covering, it is his mantle for his body; in what else shall he sleep? And if he cries to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.
There are two details here that we’re going to briefly touch on. The first is God’s warning that He will “kill” the one who afflicts any widow or orphan: “If you do afflict them [widow or orphan], and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry; 24 and my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children fatherless.”
A question that could arise here is, “Doesn’t this make God a moral monster?”
To begin responding to this question, we must ask, “Why would God be a moral monster here?”
There are only two possible reasons that I can think of.
- Either a) because the idea of an all-good God is mutually exclusive from the act of killing someone, regardless of the reason, such that there is no possible way to affirm both ideas at the same time (If we affirm the existence of all-good God, then we can’t at the same time say that He kills people), or
- b) if we accept that God can kill at least as a form of punishment, perhaps God’s killing here is disproportionate to the crime.
Concerning the first possible reason, this doesn’t hold. The only way that God would be doing an injustice to the human being by directly willing his death is if God owed the human being behavior that doesn’t involve killing him. But this is not something that God owes us.
If God didn’t owe us the coming to be of our corporeal nature, then God doesn’t owe us the sustaining of our corporeal existence. God didn’t owe us the coming to be of our corporeal being because God is not bound to create in anyway whatsoever. Our existence as a corporeal being is pure gift. It follows, therefore, that God doesn’t owe us the sustaining of our corporeal existence either. This being the case, it’s not an injustice for God to permit the ending of our corporeal existence or to directly will its cessation.
Now, someone might counter, “Well, there are some things that God can’t do in relation to us. For example, He can’t command us to perform deviant sexual acts like sodomy because He would be going against Himself in violating the very design that He designed our sexuality with. So too, God can’t kill because He would be violating the very nature of a human being.”
Well, He wouldn’t be violating the nature of a human being by directly willing his death because death is part and parcel of the nature of a corporeal being, which a human being is a particular kind. Consequently, God would be willing something that’s consistent with the nature of a human being, not a violation of it.
“But the timing of a person’s death is something that’s not natural,” so it might be argued. “It’s brought to an end in an unnatural way.”
Actually, it’s not brought to an end in an unnatural way. Rather, the life’s natural end is brought about in a way that’s over and above nature. In other words, the natural end is brought about miraculously.
Concerning the timing of the natural end, there’s nothing that belongs to the nature of a human being that specifies a particular timing of a human’s death. So, God wouldn’t be violating human nature by directly bringing it to an end.
Nor would God be violating human nature as to the means of death because, as mentioned above, God doesn’t owe the sustaining of our corporeal existence.
In sum, God does no injustice by directly willing the natural end of a human’s death at a particular time, even if the reason for willing the death is not for punishment. Therefore, He’s not a moral monster on this front.
What about the second possible reason as to why God is a moral monster? Maybe there is a disproportion between the punishment (death) and the crime (afflicting the widow and the orphan).
I don’t think this works because preying upon the most vulnerable is deserving of the harshest of punishments.
The second detail that’s worth highlighting in this first reading is verse 25: “If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be to him as a creditor, and you shall not exact interest from him.”
This brings up the topic of usury and its sinful character as declared by the Church and known by reason, which Aquinas articulates in Summa Theologiae II-II:78:1. The question, however, is whether the Church has changed her stance on usury in modern times.
Unfortunately, this is too big of topic for us to get into here in this episode. Suffice to say that verse 25 doesn’t forbid the taking of interest on a loan in an absolute sense. Rather, it only forbids taking interest on a loan that’s given to a poor person.
Someone could legitimately ask, “Well, what about taking interest on a loan for someone who is not poor”? This is a question that is much debated. Interestingly, Deuteronomy 23:19-21 permits charging interest for a foreigner: “You may charge interest to a foreigner.”
The Church has been clear in its teachings throughout the centuries that “usury” is a sin. There are too many pronouncements to list here. But consider, for example, Canon 29 of the Council of Vienne (15th ecumenical council, 1311), which states, “If indeed someone has fallen into the error of presuming to affirm pertinaciously that the practice of usury is not sinful, we decree that he is to be punished as a heretic.”
But there are two questions that become very pertinent to the discussion: “What does the Church mean by usury?” and “Are there modern-day examples where an interest on a loan doesn’t count as usury as condemned by the Church?”
As I said, this is too big of discussion to have here. But there are a few resources at catholic.com that you might want to check out.
- An article entitled “The Red Herring of Usury” written by David J. Palm.
- An article entitled “Did the Church Change Its Stance on Usury?” by Christopher Kaczor
- Catholic Encyclopedia article, “Usury”
- Catholic Encyclopedia article, “Interest (monetary)”
Let’s now turn to the Gospel reading for this upcoming 30th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A. Recall, the Gospel is taken from Matthew 22:34-40. Here’s what we read:
34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and one of them [a scholar of the law] tested him by asking, 36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the greatest and the first commandment. 39 The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 l The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”
There are two details that I’d like to focus on. The first is Jesus’ teaching that love of God and love of neighbor sums up the law.
The significance this has is that the Ten Commandments are still binding on us as Christians, contrary to what some Protestants might say. We are not freed from the obligation of keeping the Ten Commandments because we are not freed from the obligation of love.
Jesus reveals in this passage that the Ten Commandments are nothing more than an expression of love, which basically sums up the natural moral law. The first three express love of God. The remaining seven express love of neighbor. Given that love is something we are all bound to, not only as Christians but also as human beings, it follows that we are bound to keep the Ten Commandments.
The second detail that I think relates to apologetics is Jesus’ teaching that we must love God with all our heart. Consider a Christian who dies in friendship with Jesus yet has a remaining unhealthy attachment to a creaturely good, which often happens as a consequence of sin.
Now, the unhealthy attachment is not meritorious of Hell because the creaturely good hasn’t taken the place of God. The Christian still loves God. But due to the unhealthy attachment, he doesn’t love God with all his heart.
If a Christian dies in this state, is heaven guaranteed to him? Yes, because he died loving God, though imperfectly. The creaturely good that he has an unhealthy attachment to hasn’t taken the place of God.
But can he immediately go to Heaven? No, because loving God with all your heart is required for immediate entrance into heaven. As Jesus says in Matthew 5:48: “Be ye perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect.”
Therefore, between death and glory, that lack of love with the entirety of his heart must be made up for. How is the heart brought to where it needs to be? By the purging of the unhealthy attachment. This purging is what we call purgatory. Once that is done, then the Christian can love God with his entire heart and thus enter the Beatific Vision.
So, Jesus’s teaching for us to love God with our entire heart relates to the doctrine of purgatory.
Well, my friends, that does it for this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word. The first reading and Gospel for this upcoming 30th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year gives us opportunity to reflect a few apologetical topics:
- The goodness of God,
- Usury
- The necessity to keep the Ten Commandments, and
- Purgatory
As always, I want to thank you for subscribing to the podcast. And please be sure to tell your friends about it and invite them to subscribe as well at sundaycatholicword.com. You might also want to check out the other great podcasts in our Catholic Answers podcast network: Cy Kellet’s Catholic Answers Focus, Trent Horn’s The Counsel of Trent, Joe Heschmeyer’s Shameless Popery, and Jimmy Akin’s A Daily Defense, all of which can be found at catholic.com.
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I hope you have a blessed 30th Sunday of Ordinary Time.