Word to the Wise

Monday, August 4, 2025 - Monday in the 18th Week in Ordinary Time

[Num 11:4b-15 and Matt 14:13-21  or, in Year A, Matt 14:22-36,1031]
Moses asked the Lord, "Why are you so displeased with me that you burden me with all this people? Was it I who conceived all this people? Or was it I who gave them birth, that you tell me to carry them at my bosom like a foster father carrying an infant, to the land you have promised under oath to their fathers?....I cannot carry all this people by myself, for they are too heavy for me. If this is the way you will deal with me, then please do me the favor of killing me at once, so that I need no longer face this distress. [Numbers]

 AUGUST 4,   ST. JOHN VIANNEY
     
     God gave the Chosen People manna in the desert so that they would not starve.  But eating manna everyday seemed to get boring, so they complained again to Moses and asked for meat!  Moses gets so exasperated that he begs God to kill him so he wouldn't have to listen to all the griping anymore.  God's answer was to overwhelm them with quail and also delegate some of Moses' authority to seventy elders.
     The account of Moses' exasperation, however, is something many leaders can identify with.  One cannot please all the people all the time, or even some of them.  A leader's faults and imperfections are on full display and those who complain are quick to call attention to them.  Those who aspire to leadership should be aware of this, but the desire for power sometimes obscures it.  At the same time, all of us from pewperson to Pope are human, and leaders are (at least not yet) not robots.  The Holy Spirit has to work with leaders as they are and sometimes the leaders make the job harder!  Moses would survive the complaints, but he failed to reach the promised land.  Leaders may draw some comfort from that.  One can do only just so much and leave the rest to others.  AMEN

     

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