These men are my priests

Friends in Christ, today we see Our Lord and his disciples walking though the grain fields picking the heads of wheat and eating them. The Pharisees were outraged, because picking grain, that is, harvesting wheat, is work – and you aren’t supposed to work on the Sabbath.

.

But our Lord defends his disciples. ‘These men are innocent’ he says. Why?

Well, in the temple every Sabbath, the priests had to replenish the Bread of the Presence, it was part of their rituals, and they ate that bread. So Jesus says, ‘look, your priests are doing this WORK on the Sabbath, replenishing the Holy Bread, working in the Temple, eating bread; they do this on the Sabbath, and they do not sin because they are priests. They are innocent. So too, my men here, who are picking wheat, and eating it. Even though it is the Sabbath, they are innocent!’

.

Why is he saying this? Jesus is implying that the apostles are also – priests! In eating this wheat, they are symbolically being prepared to offer, not the bread of the Old Law, but the sacred Bread of the New Law. These men are innocent when they work on the Sabbath, because they are priests too!

.

Winding all through the Sacred Scriptures, is the fact that Christ is preparing his 12 Apostles to be his priests, priests of the New Law.

We pray for priests, and for those young men that God is calling, that they respond and give him their life.