Monday of Week 10 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on 1 Kings 17:1-6

As stated in the Vatican II Missal:

“Today we begin reading the story of the dramatic man of God, Elijah (9th century BC). The king of the northern kingdom, Ahab, married the pagan, Jezebel.  She introduced pagan cults.  Elijah, chosen by God to battle paganism, announces a lengthy drought as God’s punishment.”

For the next three weeks we are returning to the Books of Kings.  We will be reading from both the First and Second Books.  The readings centre mainly on the great prophet Elijah and also on his successor, Elisha.  Also featuring prominently will be King Ahab and his notorious wife, Jezebel.

What is told here probably belongs to the earlier life of the prophet, and the author takes up the story where it fits into his overall narrative.  It is the description of a serious drought which is seen as a punishment for the introduction into Israel of the worship of Baal.  We are in the reign of King Ahab, who had married Jezebel, a woman from Sidon, and it was through her influence that the king introduced the worship of Baal.  He even built a temple to Baal in Samaria.

All we are told of Elijah’s origins is that he came from Tishbe in Gilead.  Gilead was a region in the northern area on the east side of the Jordan.  The exact location of Tishbe is not now known.  He was being sent by God to oppose vigorously, by word and action, both Baal worship and those engaged in it.

Elijah begins by proclaiming solemnly to King Ahab in the name of the Lord that, until God declares otherwise, there will be a drought in Israel. The reason is clear—it is a punishment for the idolatry of God’s people.

Elijah makes his proclamation in the name of:

…the Lord the God of Israel…before whom I stand…

This is a technical phrase which indicates someone who stands in the service of a king.  Kings and priests were specially anointed to serve as God’s official representatives and spokespersons with the responsibility to see that their people remained faithful to the covenant and in the service of God.  Since the days of Jeroboam, the northern kingdom had not had such a priest, and its kings had all been unfaithful.

Now in the great religious crisis brought on by Ahab’s promotion of Baal worship, the Lord sent Elijah (and after him Elisha) to serve as his representative (instead of a king and priests), much as Moses had done long ago.  In fact, the author of Kings highlights many similarities between the ministries of Elijah and Moses.

The Lord says to Elijah:

…there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.

This form of punishment is significant because, although Baal was seen as a god of fertility and lord of the rain clouds on which that fertility depended, he was powerless against Yahweh’s decision to withhold all rain and moisture.  This will be dramatically emphasised and proved in the scene which brings the drought to an end.

Symbolically, too, Elijah is told to go away from God’s land and hide on the east side of the Jordan.  By this gesture God indicates that he is withdrawing from his people, leaving them isolated from his word (which comes through the prophet) and from his blessings.  The absence of the prophet only confirms God’s separation from his people.  Such symbolic acts by prophets are common in the Old Testament.  The location of the “Wadi Cherith” is not certain.  Possibly it was a gorge formed by one of the northern tributaries to the Yarmuk River.

At the same time, while God’s people in the promised land go thirsty and hungry during the drought that afflicts them, Elijah will drink from the stream in the oasis and, miraculously, ravens will bring him bread in the morning and meat in the evening.  The Lord’s faithful servant was miraculously sustained on the other side of the Jordan (like Israel in the desert in the time of Moses), while Israel in the promised land was going hungry—another clear message to Israel of its vain reliance on Baal.

The fact that Elijah was sustained in a miraculous way apart from living among his own people also demonstrated that the word of God was not dependent on the people, but the people were totally dependent on the word of God. It was not God who had gone back on his covenant promises to his people. It was his people who had violated the covenant by turning their back on him and cultivating the idols of Baal.

Sometimes we think that God has abandoned us, but if we looked more closely, we would find that it is we who have moved away from him.  Our hunger, too, for the most part is a spiritual hunger.  When we are close to him, we can find his presence and his love in every experience that we have.

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Monday of Week 6 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on James 1:1-11

Today we return to the New Testament and for the next two weeks we will be reading from the Letter of James. There is a refreshing directness about this letter. It does not beat about the bush and pulls no punches in calling Christians to order. The emphasis is very much on ‘doing’—actions speak louder than words.

The letter is addressed to “the twelve tribes in the dispersion” (or diaspora), that is, to Jewish Christians scattered over the Mediterranean countries. James sends them greetings of joy. In spite of what he is going to say, he is not to be seen as a ‘pourer’ of cold water.

In today’s reading he makes three related points. First, he begins by addressing his readers as “brothers and sisters”. He does so 15 times in this short letter. He may need to rebuke them, but he does so in a spirit of fraternal love.

He urges his readers to see in their trials as Christians a source of joy:

…because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance.

We see the same when Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount said:

Blessed [Happy] are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. (Matt 5:11)

Speaking from his own experience, Paul said the same:

…we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope… (Rom 5:3-4)

The trials that James mentions here are those that come from outside. In tomorrow’s reading he will speak of the inner trials of temptation to wrongdoing.

In a 2005 Lenten reflection on Gethsemane, a Place to Learn a Lesson, Father Ron Rolheiser writes:

”We don’t want failure, humiliation, sickness, powerlessness, poverty or inferiority of any kind, yet these, more than success and glamour, are what produce character and depth inside us.”

Obviously, we do not go out of our way to look for such things, but when they come, their long-term results can be beneficial both for ourselves and others.

We can get upset sometimes when we see the Church attacked or rubbished in the media. Yet experience has shown again and again that nothing strengthens and matures one’s faith than to have it challenged. When things go too easily our faith becomes flabby and weak. The Church is always strongest where it is the object of persecution and attack.

St Ignatius Loyola once said he hoped that the Jesuits would always experience persecution; for him, it was a sign they were doing their job of proclaiming the gospel. We should not be worried when the Church is attacked; only when it is ignored. Then we really know that the salt has lost its taste.

Second, James tells us to pray for wisdom. Wisdom here is not something abstract and academic. It is not just a vast knowledge of Church doctrine. Rather it is a deep insight into how to live the gospel and do God’s work. It is the gift to know that, even in suffering and setbacks, the love of God may be guiding and strengthening us. For those who ask, it will be given simply and unreservedly. But it needs to be asked for in faith, that is, with a deep trust that God always wants the best for us.

We are not to be like a wave on the sea driven here and there by the wind. Through our faith and trust, the Letter to the Ephesians tells us:

We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine by people’s trickery…but speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ… (Eph 4:14-15)

This search for wisdom is to be done with confidence, sure that God will give this gift which we need to be followers of Jesus. While it gives us a certain self-confidence, it does not mean that we possess all the truth. But we know what we know and are ready to learn more. The vacillating person will not get anywhere. In times of trial this wisdom is greatly needed so that we can respond in an appropriate way, in truth and love.

Third, James says that the poor man should be aware of his special status in the eyes of God:

Blessed [Happy] are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matt 5:3)

With nothing of their own, their total dependence is on God. Throughout the letter the author reaffirms the teaching of Jesus that worldly prosperity is not necessarily a sign of God’s favour, as the people of the Old Testament and even Jesus’ own disciples tended to believe in their early days with Jesus (see Mark 10:24-26).

Remember also the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31). If all his dependence has been on his material wealth, the Rich Man is really in a lowly position despite his status and power. As such, he “will disappear like a flower in the field” and will leave this world with nothing. The rich man needs to be aware of how vulnerable and weak he is. His wealth can evaporate in the same way the hot midday sun makes the grass and flowers droop in its heat.

The truly rich are not those who have the most, but rather those whose needs are the least. James will have a lot more to say to the poor and the rich as the letter proceeds.

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Saint Frances of Rome, Religious – Readings

Commentary on: Proverbs 31:10-13,19-20,30-31; Matthew 22:34-40

The Gospel passage for the Memorial Mass from Matthew comes immediately after a scene between Jesus and the Sadducees who put what they thought was an unanswerable problem to Jesus.  The question concerned a woman whose husband died without producing a son.  By Jewish law, the widow was expected to marry a brother to produce an heir for the dead brother. 

In the hypothesis presented, there were seven brothers whom the widow married one after the other without any of them producing a child. The unanswerable question: In the next life, which of the brothers is the woman’s husband?  It was no problem at all for the Sadducees who did not believe in an after life, but Jesus did have such a belief, so what answer would he give? 

Jesus replied briefly by saying that, one, there would be no marriage in the next life anyway and two, that part of the Scriptures in which the Sadducees believed speaks of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and, as Jesus says:

He is God not of the dead but of the living. (Matt 22:32)

Following this encounter, some Pharisees who did not like the Sadducees or their beliefs were delighted with how Jesus dealt with them.  They then brought forward a problem of their own.  One of them, who was an expert in the interpretation of the Mosaic Law, asked Jesus:

Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?

Apparently, it was a much discussed question.  There were more than 600 laws and they obviously were not equal in gravity.  But which was the most central?  Jesus replied by citing two passage from the Law, the first from Deuteronomy:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. (Deut 6:5)

The second is from Leviticus:

…you shall love your neighbor as yourself… (Lev 19:18)

Was this the answer they were expecting?  And were there two laws here and not just one?

In fact, it is very clear from the rest of the Gospel that there is indeed only one commandment here.  Love of God cannot be separated from love of neighbour.  The only way genuinely to express our deep love of God is through the love and service of every person we encounter.

Frances of Rome observed this commandment to a very high degree.  Although belonging to a privileged class, she was noted for her outstanding care of the poor and sick.

The First Reading is from the very end of the Book of Proverbs.  It describes a wife of outstanding character and the qualities which mark her out.   Just three short passages from the whole section are included in our reading:

A woman of strength who can find?
She is far more precious than jewels.
The heart of her husband trusts in her…

In fact, Frances did take great care of her husband although he was often away for long periods on the battlefield and, when he finally came home, a sick man. Still, she took care of him.

And the second:

She puts her hands to the distaff,
and her hands hold the spindle.
She opens her hand to the poor
and reaches out her hands to the needy.

As already mentioned, Francis herself worked hard, and was outstanding in her care of the poor and the sick.

Finally, she is praised for what really matters: 

Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain,
but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
Give her a share in the fruit of her hands,
and let her works praise her in the city gates.

Frances was likely a charming person and we have no mention of her physical attractiveness, but it is her service of the Lord in the poor and sick for which she is remembered and honoured.

For what will I be most remembered?

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Saint Frances of Rome, Religious

Frances (Francesca) was born in 1384 of well-off parents in Rome, Italy. At the age of 11, although she wished to be a nun, her parents made her marry Lorenzo Ponziano, a commander of the papal troops. During the ongoing wars between popes and anti-popes, Lorenzo was on the side of the former.

Although the marriage had been arranged by the parents, it proved a happy one and lasted 40 years. This was partly because Lorenzo admired his wife and her sister, Vannozza, and partly because he was away at war so much of the time. We know of three children: Battista who carried on the family name, Evangelista, a very gifted child who died in 1411, and Agnes, who died in 1413, the latter two victims of the plague.

Frances was outstanding for taking care of the poor and the sick. She converted part of the family estate into a hospital, and became widely known among the poor by the nickname la Ceccolella (“the Queen”). She won many rich ladies away from a frivolous life to join her in her work.

On 15 August, 1425, Frances founded the Oblates of Mary, a lay congregation of women attached to the White Benedictine monastery of Santa Maria Nuova. Later, they would become the Benedictine Oblate Congregation of Tor di Specchi, which was approved by Pope Eugene IV on 4 July, 1433. The members led the life of religious, but were not enclosed, nor did they take religious vows. They spent their time in prayer and good works. On the death of her husband, Frances became the superior of the group. They are now known as the Oblates of St Frances of Rome.

In her later years, and with her husband’s agreement, Frances practised celibacy and lived a life of deep contemplation. She had the gift of miracles and ecstasy. She was noted for her humility, her detachment from material things, her obedience and her patience, especially during various family hardships (her husband’s long absences, the captivity of her son Battista in war, the death of her children and the loss of family property).

Eventually, Lorenzo would return, wounded, to his wife’s nursing care, and he died in 1436. Four years later, Frances died on 9 March, 1440, and was buried in the Sta Maria Nova Church. She was canonised by Pope Paul V on 9 May, 1608.

In 1925, Pope Pius XI made her patron of car drivers, because of a legend that an angel used to light the road in front of her when she travelled. She will be remembered as one of the great mystics of the fifteenth century.

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Friday of Week 16 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 13:18-23

In today’s Gospel reading from the Parable of the Kingdom, we find the explanation of the parable of the sower. Or perhaps we should say it is an interpretation rather than an explanation. It is presented as coming from Jesus, but it is likely to have come from the tradition of the early Church. There is quite a different emphasis between the original parable and this interpretation. The parable focuses on the sower and the ultimate and inevitable success of his work. The interpretation, however, looks much more at the soil in which the seed falls. The interpretation reflects the experiences of the early Church as it tried to spread the gospel. The four different kinds of soil are taken to represent four kinds of environments into which the Word of God is ‘seeded’. The behavior of the seeds, then, represents four types of responses to the Word of God.

The first kind is like the seed on the stony path. The Word of God never even gets started, but gets plucked away by the evil influences by which the person is surrounded. In our strongly secular world today it is not easy for the Word to take root with so many competing enticements.

The second kind is like the seed that falls on the rock. The Word of God is received with great enthusiasm; the person becomes a devout and active Christian. But if obstacles arise which make the living of the Christian life difficult, the person falls away, maybe quickly, maybe gradually. As the Gospel says, the person has no roots; the faith has not gone deep, and so has not been really assimilated. This must have been the case with many in the early Church who enthusiastically embraced Christianity, but when persecution came, abandoned their faith. In our own time, we see this often enough when, for instance, people are removed from a protected environment where it is easy to live the faith to one where the faith is ignored or even ridiculed.

The third kind is like the seed that falls among the briars and brambles. I would suggest that a very large number of us are touched by this category. Anxieties about many things and the lure of material goods can gradually choke off our commitment to the gospel in its fullness. Our witness becomes seriously compromised and “there is no yield”; that is, we make no real contribution to building the Kingdom and changing the world. We sit on the fence and try to have the best of both worlds; we try to serve God and mammon, which Jesus says is not possible. I am sure many of us have matter for reflection here.

Finally, there is the fourth kind of seed which falls on good soil. This is the one “who hears the message and takes it in”. These people hear the Word, accept the Word, make it their own and it overflows into all they are and do and say. Much fruit for the world comes from such persons.

These four types can still be found and it is for each one of us to determine to which group we belong.

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Thursday of Week 23 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 6:27-38

For many people, even those who identify themselves as Christians, this may be one of the most difficult passages in the Gospel. It seems to express an idealism that is totally unrealistic and unattainable.

We live today in a world of terrible violence, of murder, of terrorism—the horror of attacks on the innocent, of vicious vendettas often stirred up in the press (especially the tabloids) and internet media, of rampant litigation—suing and counter-suing. Are these things not to be avenged?

Where do Jesus’ words fit in? It is worth noting that the passage begins:

I say to you who are listening…

In order to understand what Jesus is really saying to us, we have to put aside our prejudices and assumptions and really listen to what he is saying. This passage, in particular, is one where we are likely to react emotionally.

Jesus says:

Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you.

We may feel that to follow this teaching is to try something which is totally beyond our capacity, that it would require a tremendous amount of will-power, and that it would only encourage those people to behave even worse. In the Old Testament, hatred of evildoers is presumed to be the right attitude to have. But Jesus is extending love to the enemy and the persecutor.

This is the core of Jesus’ teaching, which he himself practised. The Golden Rule, which is sometimes expressed as “Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you”, is expressed here in positive terms.

The first big hurdle is the word “love”. For us, it is a very emotional word, implying both affection and intimacy. For us, in English, to ‘love’ is most often associated with to ‘be in love with’, to ‘be attracted to’, to ‘desire’. But Jesus is not telling us to be in love with our enemies. He is not even telling us to like them. The Greek verb which the Gospel uses is agapao from which the noun agape comes. Agape [pronounced ‘ah-gah-pay’] is a special kind of love. It is not the physically-expressed love of lovers, nor is it the love of close friends. It is rather an attitude of positive regard towards other people by which I wish for their well-being.

This, in fact, is the love that God has for us. It is a one-sided love in the sense that a return is not expected. God reaches out in infinite love to every single person without exception. God wishes every person to experience that love; God wishes the fullest well-being of every single person. That love of his is often not returned; it is often rejected or ignored.

But it continues unabated, like the father in the story of the prodigal son waiting for his boy to come back. The father continued to love his son even in his lowest moments of debauchery and degradation. It was the same with the people who were nailing Jesus to the cross. He prayed for them—for their being forgiven—and that they might come to a realisation of just what they were doing. In this sense, loving our enemies seems altogether reasonable. And not only not impossible, but really the only thing to do.

Who are our “enemies”? First of all, they are not our enemies in the sense that we hate them or want to harm them. In that sense, a Christian should have no enemies. Rather, enemies are people who are hostile to us. They want to harm us, take revenge on us, even destroy us. There are two ways we can deal with such people. We can set out to do more harm to them, to take revenge on them, or try to wipe them out completely. Or we can try and work to turn them round.

Our problem is that we tend to focus too much on ourselves and our own immediate needs, and overlook the needs of others. To love as God loves is to focus more on others. We can only do this if we have a strong inner sense of security and self-acceptance. Then we are not too worried about what people say about us or do to us.

And then, too, we can turn our attention much more to the one who is hating or harming. We will begin to ask why do they have to act in this way. What is hurting inside them that drives them to such behaviour? Already we are, just by thinking in this way, beginning to care for our enemy and beginning to love him or her. And is not this a much better solution to the problem? Is it not better to bring peace back into that person’s life and initiate a healing process in them and between them and us?

Jesus is not at all asking us to do something ‘unnatural’. We do not naturally want to hate or be hated. We want to love and to be loved. We see many parts of the world where, for years, there has been a process of hatred and retaliation in a never-ending spiral of vengeance and loss of life. The only way to break this cycle is to follow Jesus’ advice. It is not a lose-lose or lose-win situation; it is a win-win situation where everyone benefits.

Perhaps words of the late St Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa) are appropriate here:

“Love, to be true, has to hurt. I must be willing to give whatever it takes not to harm other people and, in fact, to do good to them. This requires that I be willing to give until it hurts. Otherwise, there is no love in me and I bring injustice, not peace, to those around me.”

To put Jesus’ teaching into effect is not a matter of strengthening our will to do something very difficult, but to change our conventional thinking at the deepest level, to see things his way. Once we do that, it becomes much easier.

Jesus’ application of this teaching has also been the subject of much mockery:

If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt.

We think that in a world where macho reigns, this is just too much! Only wimps would follow Jesus’ advice because they are afraid to do anything else! Our movie ‘heroes’ know what to do in such cases: mow them down, knock them out, blow them up!

Again, it is a question of seeing things from Jesus’, that is, God’s viewpoint. Turning the other cheek, as it is presented here, is not at all an act of weakness. It requires great courage and great inner strength and an awareness that the one who strikes is the one who is really weak. It is easy to lash out at another person by word or act. It is easy to hit back; it is almost an instinctive reaction, but it is not the truly human response.

To hit back is to reduce oneself to the same level as one’s attacker, and it solves nothing in the long run. Deliberately and calmly not to hit back is to refuse (in the words of Canadian-born psychiatrist, Eric Berne) “to play the other person’s game”. It is to break the cycle and change the level of the playing field and move it to a higher level—the level of mutual respect and human dignity.

Jesus set the example when he was struck on the face during his trial. During the whole degradation of the Passion his dignity shines out, in contrast to the pathetic posturings of his judges and tormentors. This was the spirit that guided some leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr, and which is behind all movements devoted to active non-violence.

Jesus lived the example of the principle: ‘Treat others as you would like them to treat you’. You do not want to be hated or struck so you refuse, no matter what happens, to hate or strike another person. He also said:

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.

So no, we will not react simply in the way others deal with us. As followers of Christ, we see things in a completely different way and we want to behave differently. We believe that not only do we personally benefit from following Jesus’ way, but that others too will benefit and may even come to our point of view.

Finally, Jesus calls us to follow the model of God himself:

Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

In Matthew’s Gospel it is written:

Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
(Matt 5:48)

The meaning is the same: our perfection consists in our empathetic reaching out in compassionate agape to every single person. And, through us, the compassion of God can then be experienced by people.

We are not to judge or condemn persons. (This is not the same as being asked and required to give an objective and discerned evaluation of a person’s behaviour or fitness for some task or position; behavior does have consequences.) And we are to forgive. Then we will not be condemned, and we will in turn receive forgiveness.

The emphasis is on reaching out to others rather than gathering for ourselves and being turned in on our little, insecure selves. Jesus says:

Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.

Jesus put this graphically when he told us to give not only our cloak to someone asking for it but our tunic as well. Given that the poor in those days only had two garments, that would leave the donor totally naked!

But that is the point—the one filled with the spirit of Christ has nothing to lose, nothing of which to be ashamed. Life consists in what we are able to give and not what we can get. Jesus says to us:

…the measure you give will be the measure you get back.

And that, above all, applies to agape-love. Everyone can give an endless supply of that.

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8 January – Reading

Commentary on 1 John 4:7-10

We move today into the third part of 1 John called ‘The Source of Love and Faith’. It is divided into two parts: the first deals at length with ‘love’ (4:7—5:4); the second is about ‘faith’ (5:5-13). Today John emphasises that the initiative for love comes from God and not from us. God does not love us because we love or obey him.

The word ‘love’ (Greek, agape) in its various forms occurs 43 times altogether in this letter. It is used no less than 32 times in the passages that begin today through verse 3 of chapter 5!

‘Love’ is one of the most used (and abused) words in our language. Our music lyrics use it all the time and there have likely been songs about love since the dawn of music. We use it in all kinds of other contexts too. People ‘love’ chocolate or they ‘love’ spending hours watching football on TV. People are ‘in love’ and they ‘make love’. And so on.

What, then, do we mean by love in our reading today? CS Lewis, the Christian writer, wrote a book called The Four Loves. There he describes four kinds, all of which should be part of Christian living. One of these is agape, the form of love that 1 John is talking about. A definition of agape that captures its essence is: “a passionate desire for the well-being of the other”.

This is the love that God unconditionally extends to all his creatures without exception. It is the love that each of us, too, is to extend to every one of our brothers and sisters—again, without a single exception. It is an outreaching love, an unconditional love. It does not depend on mood, liking or disliking. It is based purely and simply on the need and on the good of the other. It may or may not be expressed sexually, but it is definitely not the love (eros) that most of the pop songs are talking about.

No matter what we do, no matter how evil or vicious we are, God’s love for us remains unchanging and unchangeable. The old hymn (Love it was that Made Us) says it this way:

Love it was that made us and Love it was that saved us…

The reason is simple—God is love.

Love enters into his very being. God cannot not love—if he did, he would not be God.

It is strange to say (and for some it may be shocking), but God loves the most depraved person we could imagine and Our Lady or one of the saints in exactly the same way. He cannot do otherwise. Is there no difference then?

The difference between Our Lady and the evil person is not in God’s love for them, but in their response to the love offered to them. One person has a closed heart, while Our Lady, from the moment of the Annunciation, gave an unconditional ‘Yes’ which she never withdrew.

All our loving, then, is simply an opening of our heart, a return of the love that God has first shown us. When we reveal ourselves as loving persons, it is because God’s love is working in us and through us. The sign that we are loving him is also that we are filled with love ourselves, love which originally came from him.

As someone once said, God’s love is like electricity. God’s love is only in us when it is passing through us. It can never stop with ourselves. If we keep that love to ourselves, it dies.

The question then is not: Does God love the drug pusher? (He does.) The question is: Does the drug pusher love his brother? (If he does, he is certainly going about it in a strange way.) Anyone who is a deeply loving person to those around him is already full of God’s love. God’s love never changes, but it can be blocked by a closed heart.

God’s love is available in abundance to anyone who opens his or her heart to him. May I be able to do that. But that love, too, must continue to flow out beyond me to everyone I meet. It is impossible to separate God’s love for me and my love for others. We cannot have one without the other.

Our Christian life, then, is about being loving persons, not primarily about orthodoxy or theological expertise, or conformity to rules, or making sacrifices, or carrying out “religious” duties. As St Paul says in his famous passage in the first letter to the Corinthians:

…if I…do not have love, I am nothing. (1 Cor 13:2)

Today’s reading says:

Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.

If I am not a loving person, all the rest is a waste. If I am a truly loving person, everything else is taken care of. And what is the source of that love? It is not ourselves says John, but rather:

In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us…

The evidence is that God:

…sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Jesus hanging on the cross is the most dramatic sign of God’s love for us, a love that is totally gratuitous (so we call it ‘grace’) and never earned by any action of ours. Let me today look at Jesus on the Cross, say a big ‘Thank you’ to him and then go and pass on his love for me to everyone I meet.

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Saturday of Week 2 of Lent – First Reading

Commentary on Micah 7:14-15,18-20

Today’s Mass readings are about God’s great desire that the sinner repent and experience God’s love and tender mercy. The First Reading comes from the prophet Micah, a contemporary of both Hoseah and Isaiah.

The passage consists of a prayer which appears to be from the time after the return of the Jews from exile in Babylon (537 BC). At this time, the people were still few in number, possessed only a fragment of their former land, and were surrounded by hostile nations.

It is a plea for God to take care of his beleaguered people. But there is confidence because their God is quite unlike any other:

Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity
and passing over the transgression
of the remnant of his possession?

The passage reflects what Jesus tells us about God in today’s Gospel.

The people may at times deserve the anger of God, but it will never last, for God loves his people too much. In fact, it is difficult to conceive now of a God who responds in anger when his people sin. It is never he who distances himself from us; it is we who are unfaithful.

We can always be sure of his “faithfulness” and of his “steadfast love”, which he had promised so long ago and so many times. He had sworn to Abraham and Jacob that their descendants would be as numerous as the specks of dust of the earth and sand on the seashore, and he had promised Abraham that he would be the father of many nations. God will not go back on that promise.

And so, we too have confidence of complete forgiveness and reconciliation. This compassion of God for the sinner and his desire to take him back is graphically illustrated in the marvellous story of the Prodigal Son, the subject of today’s Gospel.

We too, whenever we are truly sorry and ready to change, can be absolutely sure of meeting the same compassion and forgiveness.

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Wednesday of Week 32 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 17:11-19

This story of Jesus’ compassion is unique to Luke. We are told that Jesus was travelling on the borders of Galilee, the northern province of Palestine, and Samaria, which lies between Galilee and the southern province of Judea. Jesus is making for the Jordan valley on his way south to Jericho, one of his last stops before reaching his final destination in Jerusalem.

Just as he entered a village he was met by ten lepers (it does not specify whether they were men or women). As lepers they were not allowed to come in close proximity with other people. This was because it was (rightly) known that the condition could be transmitted to others by physical contact—though we know now it needed to be fairly prolonged contact. (Remember how the famous Fr Damien, the Apostle to the Lepers, eventually contracted the disease through his ministering to a colony of lepers on the island of Molokai in Hawaii.)

Because of their dreaded disease, such people were outcasts, condemned to live their lives on the fringes of society. The tragedy is that, given the limited medical knowledge of the times, many such people were almost certainly not suffering from leprosy at all, but from some other non-contagious, perhaps chronic skin disease.

So, calling Jesus from a safe distance, they cried out:

Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!

Jesus simply told them to go and show themselves to the priests. And, while they were on their way, they were all cured. Presumably they continued on their way to see the priests who would give them an official declaration of being ‘clean’ so that they could once again legitimately return to life in society. A major element of their healing was their re-integration into society.

Just one of the cured lepers then came back to Jesus “praising God with a loud voice”, and in deep gratitude fell at the feet of Jesus:

And he was a Samaritan.

These words are loaded with meaning, for it is presumed that the rest were Jews. In the first place, Jews and Samaritans could not stand each other, and the Jews tended to look down on the Samaritans as ungodly and unclean. But in the misfortune of their leprosy, these Jews and Samaritans, rejected by both their own peoples, found common support in each other’s company.

But now that they are cured, only one of them comes to say thanks and he is still—in the eyes of the Jews—an outcast. Jesus, looking around at the Jews in his company, expresses surprise:

Were not ten made clean? So where are the other nine?

The only one to come back and give thanks was a despised foreigner.

This unexpected action is also reflected in another of Luke’s stories, which we reflected on earlier, that of the so-called ‘good Samaritan’. Today, in this Gospel reading is another good Samaritan. And, of course, there is a third—the Samaritan woman who is featured prominently in John’s Gospel (John 4:4-42).

To the man in today’s Gospel, Jesus says:

Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.

That “get up” or ‘rise up’, which Jesus often uses with those he heals, has echoes of resurrection and entry into new life—a life of wholeness brought about by the man’s trust in Jesus and his acknowledgment of the source of his healing.

In the context of Luke’s Gospel, the story prepares us for developments in the growth of the early Church, described in Luke’s Acts of the Apostles. This is because, as the early Christians (all of them Jews) flee from persecution in Jerusalem, the people of Samaria are among the first to accept Jesus as Lord and to become followers of the gospel. On the other hand, many of the Jews in Jerusalem remained closed to Jesus’ message and call.

We, too, must never give in to a temptation to exclude any people as possible followers of Christ. We must be ready to reach out to all, even the most unlikely. None must be treated as outsiders or untouchables, even those who show themselves extremely hostile to the gospel.

And while there may not be any real lepers in our own society, today is an occasion for us to reflect on who could be regarded as lepers, outsiders, outcasts and untouchables among us at the present time. I might also consider whether I personally treat any person as an outsider in my home, in my work or in other places where I meet people. Such exclusion is totally contrary to what we celebrate in the Eucharist.

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Wednesday of Week 2 of Lent – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 20:17-28

In the Gospel, Jesus takes his disciples aside to let them know what is going to happen to him. This is, in fact, the third time he has told them of this, and it is the most detailed of the Passion predictions. For the first time, mention is made of being handed over to the Gentiles. The text follows Mark very closely, except where Mark says that Jesus will be killed, Matthew explicitly says “crucified”.

The reactions of the disciples are not recorded here, but we know that on previous occasions they were both shocked and saddened. They were also perplexed. How could people do this to the Messiah for whom they had waited so long? How could their own leaders do this to the Messiah? Even worse, how could they hand him over into the hands of the hated Romans? They did not yet understand that, or even how, Jesus would enter into his glory through rejection, suffering and death.

In fact, they have still a lot to learn, as what follows clearly indicates. The mother of James and John approaches Jesus with a request, a typical mother’s request. In Mark’s Gospel, it is the boys themselves who ask the favour. Why Matthew has the mother asking is not clear. There could be an allusion here to Bathsheba, wife of King David, seeking the kingdom for her son Solomon. Another possibility is that Matthew is more deferential to the disciples than Mark, who regularly shows up their failure to understand the meaning of Jesus’ teaching.

Jesus asks her:

What do you want?

If Jesus asked me that question right now, what answer would I give? The mother of James and John asks that her two sons be on Jesus’ right and left in the kingdom. ‘Kingdom’ here is to be taken in the sense in which Jesus normally uses it, that is, the Kingdom of God on earth rather than referring to Jesus in glory. The two disciples envision Jesus as Messiah, King of his people and with a court like every other earthly king.

The mother uses her contact with a person in authority to press for some short-cut privileges for her sons. Understandable indeed, but not the way that God or Jesus works.

Jesus then asks the two disciples:

Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?

“We are able” they say with confidence. They are ready to do anything to get the top spots with the Messiah. They have forgotten the words that, unless we carry our cross after Jesus, we cannot be his followers. And yes, they would “drink the cup” of pain and sorrow and suffering, but that is not what they are thinking about now.

In any case, the places at the right and left of Jesus are not privileges given to the first people who just ask. Jesus works by quite other standards. And besides, Jesus says:

…to sit at my right hand and at my left, this is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.

The other ten disciples are not much better. They are angry and indignant about the backdoor tactics of James and John. Obviously, their thinking is no different. So Jesus teaches them about real greatness.

In the secular world, leaders exert power, domination and manipulation. They control people for their own ends. In Jesus’ world, it is altogether different. To be great is to put one’s talents totally at the service of others, to empower—not to have power. Jesus himself is the perfect example. It is a lesson we do not find easy to learn or to follow.

And Jesus says in conclusion:

…whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave, just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.

The word ‘ransom’ here is to be taken in the sense of ‘liberation, making free’. ‘Many’, as a Semitic expression, means ‘all’. Jesus put his whole life at our disposal so that every single person should experience liberation and fullness of life. We are called to take part in the same great enterprise.

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