Saturday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time
August 5, 2023
Daily Reading from the USCCB: Leviticus 25:1, 8-17
Just as there is a dimension of holiness to time, so there is also there is a dimension of holiness to property. Our possessions are not ours pure and simple. Everything we have is on loan to us from God, and is to be restored to him at regularly established intervals.
The Promised Land belonged to God. He didn’t give it outright to Abraham and his descendants, but retained its ownership and its disposition. The people of Israel was merely God’s tenant, and the gesture of restoration to God that was expressed in the sabbatical and jubilee years was a sign of God’s real ownership.
The land was holy because it belonged to God, and giving it back to God was a sign of that holiness.
