Thursday of the First Week in Ordinary Time

Oh, that today you would hear his voice,
“Harden not your hearts as at the rebellion
in the day of testing in the desert,
where your ancestors tested and tried me
and saw my works for forty years.

“Because I said so!” Sometimes that really is the only way to settle an argument. And, believe it or not, even Franciscan provincials and guardians have to say it once in a while. Reason and conciliation and consensus sometimes cannot do it.

I watched a young teen negotiate with her mother one day during an extended family gathering. The mother had already decided the child would not go out that evening, but the girl was determined. Her mother said to me, “Here she comes again.” It was a routine they’d been through before, though the girl didn’t yet recognize the pattern.

That brilliant brain, just discovering its powers, kept manufacturing new reasons why she should be allowed to go out. And the mother kept saying, “No.” The girl would approach her mother in the crowd and present her newest gem. The mother would say “No” again and the girl would retreat to mull over it some more. Finally she gave up and, with a sulk, followed the family home.

 “Because I said so!” is not supposed to be a good reason. Our rationalistic society wants reasons for everything. They should be logical and persuasive and they should need no authority other than their cogency. No reasonable person could disagree.

We want our judges to administer laws as if they are mathematical formulas, without human intervention. We want our referees and umpires to “call em like you seem em.”

But life isn’t always played by the numbers. My nephew, who is preparing for a career as a referee, told me he sees fouls on every play during a basketball game. His real job is to control the tempo of the game. Sometimes he can overlook egregious fouls, sometimes he must call the least infractions – to keep the game from disintegrating into a fist fight.

Life is not often reasonable. It is not true that reasonable persons usually agree. In fact they usually disagree, and authority must settle most disputes.

That’s the way it is and, oddly, that is the way it should be. Rationality, like the Pharisees’ Sabbath, must finally accede to our human nature, which is created in God’s own image. Neither principles nor ideals make our decisions, people do.

In Saint Mark’s gospel Jesus appears with overwhelming authority. He can preach and heal and go where he wants to go. Neither religious authorities nor demons can lay a hand on him. He is like the lion Isaiah describes:

As a lion or a young lion growls over its prey,
   and—when a band of shepherds is called out against it—
is not terrified by their shouting
   or daunted at their noise,
so the Lord of hosts will come down
   to fight upon Mount Zion and upon its hill .

Saint Mark’s gospel expects and demands our full assent to Jesus’ authority. We need no further proof and the hour is late. He is going to Jerusalem and we must go with him.