ABUNDANCE
Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, hears of the great miracles which God 
performed for the people of Israel, and comes from Midian to the Israelite camp, bringing with him Moses’ wife and two sons. Jethro advises Moses to appoint a hierarchy of magistrates and judges to assist him in the task of governing and administrating justice to the people.
The Children of Israel camp opposite Mount Sinai, where they are told that God has chosen them to be His “kingdom of priests” and “holy nation.” The people respond by proclaiming, “All that God has spoken, we shall do.”
Seven weeks after the Exodus, the entire nation of Israel assembles at the foot of Mount Sinai. God descends on the mountain amidst thunder, lightning, billows of smoke and the blast of the shofar, and summons Moses to ascend.
God proclaims the Ten Commandments, commanding the people of Israel to believe in God, not to worship idols or take God’s name in vain, to keep the Sabbath, honor their parents, and not to murder, commit adultery, steal, bear false witness or covet another’s property. The people cry out to Moses that the revelation is too intense for them to bear, begging him to receive the Words from God and convey it to them
Filed under: Weekly Readings
PARENTS
Each of us is descended from parents. Without exception, a man and a woman were involved in your inception and birth, and generally in your childhood, teen years and early adulthood as well. How are we to respond to these people; how should we adjust to our own increasing powers of understanding, physical strength and financial ability in the light of the gratitude and respect we owe our parents for the care we received at an earlier age?
Owing Them Honor
That we owe our parents honor and reverence is a ‘given’ in Biblical tradition. The command of honoring the father and mother is the Fifth Commandment of the Ten Commandments, standing halfway between the first four–dealing with the relationship with God–and the last five–establishing standards of social morality. That placement speaks of the insight that parents represent a bridge between God and the world, between our own personal drama of Creation and our entry into the world of human interaction and expectation.
Biblical scholars teach that three parts are involved in the birth of every person–God, mother and father. One of the roots, then, of our obligation to honor our parents is their role as a pre-eminent source of life.
Parents teach, through their raising of children, that the world is reliable and basically good. Each time a mother comforts a screaming baby, each time a father offers a bottle to a hungry infant, the child receives a concrete lesson that they are not abandoned in a meaningless void, that needs are met, that compassion and love are real and potent. In nurturing their children, parents establish the emotional base for a subsequent relationship between their child and the Sacred.
As we would expect in any instance where we are given a gift without having earned it, showing gratitude is an integral part of a child’s relationship to parents.
No one does something to deserve being born. Each of us is gratuitously created and nurtured for countless hours, through illness, temper and the normal self-absorption of childhood. As adults ourselves, we honor our parents with a demonstration of gratitude for those years of unearned service.
Even in those families where the child’s faith commitment is more consuming or elaborate than that of the parents, the core of the child’s identification is still a product of who the parents are and of the nature of their family and friends.
If parents are so central, then why doesn’t the Scripture mandate the love of parents? The lack of such an imperative is the result of recognition that there is no relationship as complex, multi-layered and deep as that between a parent and child. Experiences of total dependency, of complete rebellion, of increasing similarity are all commonplace between the generations. Spouses can divorce, and friends can separate, but a parent is forever.
Given this overwhelming variety of feelings–due to the overwhelming variety of relationships–that each individual has with each parent, it would be impossible to reduce that bundle of feelings to any one emotion. The entire range of human passions applies between parents and child. But only a narrow range of behavior is healthy and appropriate.
For all these reasons, then, tradition places a great emphasis on honor and reverence towards parents. As the people to whom we owe life itself, as the people who provided years of care, and as transmitters and links to Christ and the Christian past, our parents merit our honor and respect.