Week 19 Saturday (Year 1)

Readings: Joshua 24:14-29;Psalm 16; Matthew 19:13-15

Human beings are not angels. Much as we might like to be, it becomes very clear in many circumstances that we are not pure spirits but belong rather to the animal kingdom. There are basic animal activities that we do every day - eating and sleeping, digesting and aging - as well as activities like reproduction and others like study which go along with our being rational animals, rational yes but still animals.

The need to re-affirm our commitments could be seen as one of those activities that the rational animal needs to engage in. If we had angelic minds then our decisions and commitments would be once off. There would be no ‘changing our minds’ any more than there would be growing tired or getting distracted, losing interest or simply forgetting.

So from time to time throughout the scriptures there are moments in which the covenant is renewed. Sometimes the initiative for this comes from the people, through their leaders, usually in response to hard times coming their way. They link difficulties with sin, the need for repentance and renewal with starting over again. The first reading today records one such moment of covenant renewal when the people had settled in the land, the conquest was effectively complete, and they could now get down to the business of being God’s faithful people in the land that He had promised their fathers ages before.

So will you serve the Lord, Joshua asks. Yes, we will. The answer is as enthusiastic as that of the disciples to Jesus’ question some days ago, ‘do you understand all these things’? yes, we do. Magari, as the Italians say, ‘if only’. Joshua asks them a second time. It is another aspect of being a human animal that we need to confirm our attention and our commitment even in the moment of making it, if it is to register with us. Thomas Aquinas is supposed to have said that it is impossible to pray the Our Father without getting distracted. Which could be a reason for saying it three times each time we say it: perhaps then we will succeed in giving attention to each of its phrases!

But it is not only that which urges Joshua to ask them a second time. He is saying: ‘do you understand what you are taking on’? ‘do you realise the implications of this commitment’? They say that they do and that they want to live in the way that the Lord asks them to live in order to enter into the life that is promised by the covenant.

So a stone is set up. Here is another thing we do as human animals: mark not only territory, as many animals do, but mark important moments in our personal or group history. There are statues and other monuments, plaques and treaties, seals and symbols, rings and special clothes – all kinds of ways in which we mark the sealing of covenants, the making of agreements, the pledging of hearts, the making of commitments. It may seem quaint, even crude, to think of a stone hearing the words being exchanged between Joshua and the people. It expresses the same instinct as people carving their initials in a tree, remembering the lamppost under which they first kissed, cherishing gifts and other items that are otherwise valueless, but become charged with ‘sentimental’ value because they were present at such key moments in a person’s life and may even function as symbolic of those key moments.

We might even dismiss it as childish. But Jesus in today’s gospel is once again defending the children. Do not prevent them from coming to me, he says, because the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. Be careful in your rejection of children and their ways. There is something about them, and about their experience of life so far, which it is crucial for us to remember. Something in their enthusiasm and spontaneity which we have all experienced when we were young and which we try to recover in our moments of recommitment and renewal.

‘Charm back the luxury of a child’s soul’, prays Patrick Kavanagh. Help us to live our lives more generously in fidelity to the commitments we have made and the relationships we have established. God understands our human weakness, that we are not angelic creatures, which is another reason why His grace is made available to us in the sacraments, each day offered to us, in that order of signs in which he has placed himself, for our healing and forgiveness, for our nourishment and strength.