Thursday of Week 30 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 13:31-35
Today Jesus is warned by some Pharisees to leave the area where he is teaching. The reason they give is that Herod is after him. This is Herod Antipas, a son of Herod the Great, whom we have already met. The region of Perea was part of his territory as tetrarch. The warning could, of course, have been just a ploy on the part of the Pharisees to get rid of Jesus by frightening him in this way.
At the same time, there could have been something in the threat because Herod had already executed John the Baptist, although there is no evidence that Jesus spoke against Herod in the same way that offended Herod’s second wife.
In any case, Jesus is not moved. He knows that his life is part of a larger plan. He will do his work, including the healing of people and their liberation from evil forces. When the time is ripe, and not before, he will face his passion and death. He will “finish [his] work”—a double meaning about both the end of his life on earth and his being brought to perfection through his suffering and death—an idea explicitly put in the letter to the Hebrews (10:36-38).
Further, it has been ordained that he will face his death in Jerusalem and nowhere else. Herod is not going to change any of that.
Then, Jesus goes on to pray for the city that will be the scene of his death. It is a city that has many times in the past mistreated and killed those sent by God to bring his message. Jesus speaks tenderly:
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings…
But they reject him, as they rejected so many prophets before.
He foretells something that must have seemed to his hearers both blasphemous and impossible:
…your house [the Temple] is left to you desolate.
Yet, just 40 years after Jesus’ death, the Temple will meet its destruction, never again to be rebuilt.
Finally, he tells them that:
…you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’
This could refer to his triumphal entry into Jerusalem at the beginning of Holy Week or to his final coming as Judge and Lord of all.
Our lives too are in God’s hands and nothing will happen to us which is in conflict with God’s wishes and God’s plans. Ultimately, everything is for our well-being. But, let us be on the alert to recognise the Lord coming into our lives often in very unexpected ways and through very unexpected people. Some of those we reject may be bringing—even unknown to themselves—a message from God that we need to hear and follow.
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Fourth day in the Octave of Christmas – Feast of the Holy Innocents – Gospel
Commentary on Matt 2:13-18 (more…)
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Monday of Week 13 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Genesis 18:16-33
For the next two days we read the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. As we begin the reading we see the three mysterious visitors of Abraham preparing to continue their journey to Sodom.
As an act of courtesy on the part of a host, Abraham accompanies them on the beginning of their journey. In parts of the Old Testament, especially in the Pentateuch, God is portrayed as having very human qualities, and this is particularly revealed in the dialogues he holds with various people (e.g. when Moses pleads on behalf of the recalcitrant Israelites).
There is a delightful touch in today’s reading. As Abraham is seeing off his mysterious visitors, one of whom is identified as God himself with two angels as companions, God wonders to himself whether he should reveal to Abraham his plan to destroy Sodom. He knows how good and compassionate a man Abraham is—almost more kind and compassionate than God himself! But Abraham is now an important person in God’s plans. He has become the head of a great nation, and all the other nations will be blessed in him. So in a way, he has a right to be privy to God’s intentions.
In fact, Abraham has been specially chosen to teach his sons and his posterity to follow closely the ways of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the promises made to Abraham will be realised. And the very justice about what the Lord is planning to do is going to be questioned.
Now, while the two angels continue on their journey, the third man—the Lord—tells Abraham he must go down to Sodom and Gomorrah to verify the reports reaching him of their terrible immorality. Again, God is presented in human terms as needing to verify by a personal visit whether what he hears about these cities is true. What was the terrible sinfulness of Sodom and Gomorrah? Israelite tradition was unanimous in ascribing the destruction of the two cities to their moral wickedness, but there were different understandings of what this wickedness consisted.
According to the Yahwist account we are following here, the evil was in a request to have homosexual acts with the three visitors of Lot (one of whom, of course, was the Lord), giving us the origination of the word ‘sodomy’. Others however, would see this not just as a serious violation of the traditions of hospitality, but as a sin of rape. Such acts were abhorrent to the Jews. In that time and culture, it was regarded as the utmost degradation for a man to be abused in this way. Roman soldiers would sometimes humiliate their prisoners of war in this manner.
The idea of permitting this outrage to recipients of a host’s hospitality was beyond conception to Lot. Only the most wicked could even think of such a thing. The degree of abhorrence is indicated by Lot’s offering the people his daughters instead. Though this compromise certainly horrifies us, in that culture and at that time, Lot judged it better to have his own daughters violated than allow his guests to be touched. To Lot, there was nothing more he could have done.
Elsewhere, in Isaiah, the perpetrators of social injustice are likened to the people of Sodom (Is 1:9). Ezekiel likens the immoral behaviour of his people to that of Samaria and Sodom and says his people’s record is even worse:
Your big sister is Samaria, who lived with her daughters to the north of you; your little sister, who lived to the south of you, is Sodom with her daughters. You not only followed their ways and acted according to their abominations; within a very little time you were more corrupt than they in all your ways. (Ezek 16:46-51).
Speaking of the idolatry and sexual immorality of Jerusalem, Jeremiah says:
…all of them have become like Sodom to me
and its inhabitants like Gomorrah. (Jer 23:14)
While two of the men (the angels) continue on their way to Sodom, the third, who is the Lord, stays behind with Abraham, who immediately begins to plead on behalf of Sodom. Surely a God of justice will not wipe out the innocent with the guilty? Supposing there are as many as 50 good people in the city, will God destroy it? Abraham dares to tell God how he should behave! He says:
Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked!
And then Abraham presents the punch line:
Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?
It would be unjust to condemn the innocent, however few in comparison with the many sinners. We have here the age-old problem of why the good should suffer along with and because of the wicked.
The sense of collective responsibility was so strong in ancient Israel that the question does not arise as to whether the just might may be spared separately and individually. God will, in fact, save Lot and his family, but the principle of individual responsibility does not appear until later (e.g. in Deuteronomy and the prophets). Abraham’s argument, then, is that since all will share the same fate he asks that even a minority of good people would be enough to win pardon for all.
Even so, Abraham’s request does not go below the number 10. Beyond that would be too much to ask for. But later we read in Jeremiah (5:1) that God would pardon Jerusalem if only one just person could be found; the same is implied in Ezekiel (22:30). Then, in Isaiah (chap 53), it is the suffering of the one Servant which will save the whole race, but this was not understood until it was seen fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ.
God ultimately agrees to spare the city, if he can find 50 good people in it. But having received this concession, Abraham presses on even further, although he knows he is being very impertinent in speaking to his God like this:
Let me take it upon myself to speak to my lord, I who am but dust and ashes. Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?
No, God says, the city would not be destroyed if 45 innocent people could be found. Abraham then continues his bargaining—40? 30? 20? Even only 10? Each time God concedes and at the end replies:
For the sake of ten I will not destroy it.
With that, the Lord leaves Abraham and continues on his journey to Sodom, while Abraham returns to his home. However, on the following day, he will go back to the place where he spoke with the Lord and where he could look down on Sodom and Gomorrah in the valley below.
Unfortunately, as we shall see, not even 10 good people could be found in the whole of Sodom. Perhaps this would be a good time for us to reflect on the level of our own compassion with people who come into our lives. We may sometimes find ourselves doing the very opposite of Abraham, that is, condemning a whole group because of a small number of misbehaving people. We do need more of Abraham’s attitude of seeing as much good as possible in the world around us.
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Friday of Week 32 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on 2 John 4-9
The three Letters of John all seem to have been written about the same time, by the same person and probably from Ephesus. The dates suggested vary from 85-100 AD. Today we have a reading of just six verses from the Second Letter, which is actually the shortest ‘book’ in the whole of the New Testament, not even taking up one page in most Bibles.
In the book’s first verse, the author calls himself “the Elder”, which indicates a level of authority over the community to which he is writing. Whether he is to be identified with John the Apostle is not certain, but also not very likely.
The Second Letter was written to a church under the jurisdiction of “the Elder”, which referred to in the reading as “the elect Lady”—’elect’ meaning chosen. This was in reply to people there who were publicly denying the truth of the Incarnation—that Jesus was truly God and Man.
Today’s reading is in two parts. In the first part, the author congratulates the church (now referred to as “dear lady”) for following the true teaching:
…walking in the truth, just as we have been commanded by the Father.
He is writing to them, not with a new commandment, but with one they have had since the beginning, that is, since the time of their conversion—namely, that they should love one another. Loving God and loving one’s neighbour was not a new commandment.
In the Gospel they had been taught, they were given love of God and love of neighbor as the most important of Jewish laws (as quoted in Deut 6:5 and Lev 19:18). But at the Last Supper, Jesus gave a “new commandment” which was:
…as I have loved you, you also should love one another.
(John 13:34)
Jesus will spell that out by saying:
No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John 15:13)
Jesus called his disciples his “friends” and he gave his life for them. That is now to be the paradigm for our relationship with those around us.
In the Letter today, this commandment is simply being reemphasised. To love, says the Elder, is to live according to Jesus’ commandments, which can all be summed up in the one commandment:
And this is love…this is the commandment just as you have heard it from the beginning—you must walk in it.
Love, however, should not blind them to the truth. And that brings us to the second part of the reading. The author warns his church about those who are denying:
…that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh…
In other words, they are denying the true humanity of Jesus. The Gnostics taught that the Son of God did not become a human being, but that he temporarily came down upon the man Jesus between his baptism and his crucifixion.
They held this belief under the conviction that all material things were evil, and the good person should withdraw as far as possible from the material world. In this thinking, God could not have taken on a material body. He only had the temporary appearance of being linked to a human.
The teachers of this doctrine are called here the “Antichrist” because they deny the very essence of what we believe Jesus Christ to be. The Christians are warned that to follow this teaching could jeopardise their faith and their ultimate salvation.
The author assumed his readers knew that a great enemy of God and his people was expected to appear before Christ’s final return. That person is called “antichrist”, “the deceiver”, and in Revelation (13:1-10), “the beast”. But prior to him, there will be many other antichrists.
In the Letters of John, the antichrists have the following characteristics:
- they deny the incarnation and that Jesus is the divine Christ;
- they deny the Father;
- they do not have the Father;
- they are liars and deceivers;
- they are many;
- in John’s day, they left the church because they had nothing in common with believers.
The ‘antichrists’ referred to in John’s letter were the early Gnostics. The Elder warns that those who do not keep to the Church’s teaching about Christ, but go beyond it as the Gnostics claimed to do, cannot be with God. They went beyond the apostolic teaching by indulging in pure speculation and presenting that as the teaching and belief of the Church.
However, says the Elder, only those who remain faithful to the original teaching are in union with both the Father and the Son. Because, as Jesus had said:
Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. (John 14:9)
The passage highlights two contrasting attitudes we need to have as Christians. On the one hand, our lives are to be governed entirely by the law of love—loving each other to the same degree that Christ has loved and continues to love us. It must be the touchstone of all our living.
But loving does not mean turning a blind eye to what is against the true or the good. It does not mean absolute tolerance for any idea or any action. We do not love people by turning a blind eye to the harm they may do to themselves or others, by ideas they hold, or the behaviour they indulge in.
In another part of this letter, the Christians are told to avoid giving to false teachers the hospitality traditionally extended to travelling teachers. The Gospel speaks of expelling people from the community when their behaviour is quite out of keeping with the standards that the Church wishes to maintain to be a credible witness to the Gospel.
Yet, love remains the criterion. Expulsion lasts only as long as there has been no repentance or reconciliation. The Church, like its Master, wishes that people be saved and not condemned.
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Tuesday of Week 32 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 17:7-10
Today we have another warning from Luke (and one which is only found in his Gospel) about complacency. As we read this parable we must be careful—as with many of the others—not to confuse matters by dragging in issues which are anachronistic. Jesus asks:
Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’.
Would we invite him to sit down, have his supper and take a good rest?
Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me; put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’?
Would we even express gratitude to a servant who was only doing what was expected of him?
Here, let us temporarily put aside our current understanding of workers’ rights, democracy and the evils and long-lasting repercussions of slavery of every kind. No one in Jesus’ time, either an employer or a slave, would have thought for a moment of questioning what he is saying. At the same time, we might remember Jesus saying that watchful servants will be welcomed by their master who will make them sit down and will wait personally on them (see Luke 12:37), and that Jesus washed his disciples’ feet as an example of service.
What we are dealing with here is our relationship with God. The point Jesus is making is that God need never be grateful to us for anything we do for him. No matter how much we do for him, we can never put him in our debt. Everything we give to God (or to God through others) is simply giving back to him a small portion of what he has already given us. It is well said in Preface IV for Weekday Masses:
You have no need of our praise, yet our desire to thank you is itself your gift. Our prayer of thanksgiving adds nothing to your greatness, but makes us grow in your grace.
God can never be in our debt. He can never be under any obligation to us. Perhaps that is what some of the Pharisees thought. They believed that, because they kept the Law perfectly, God owed them salvation. We see that in the scene of the Pharisee and the tax collector praying in the Temple, where the Pharisee’s prayer gives the impression that God should be deeply grateful to have, among so many negligent people, such a good person as himself.
We can do the same thing ourselves when, for instance, we think that by saying certain prayers or performing certain acts (like novenas, indulgences and pilgrimages), God should jump to attention and do what we are telling him to do or give us what we are asking for.
All our living out of the gospel is not a compliment paid to God. On the contrary, we can never be grateful enough to him for showing us the way to truth, love, freedom and happiness which Jesus taught us, and for giving us the grace to walk in his Way. With God, all our giving is only an imperfect and partial giving back.
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Tuesday of Week 2 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Hebrews 6:10-20
The source of all our security is in the oath God has made to all humankind and whose pledge is in Jesus our High Priest, who has gone before us and on our behalf. Today’s reading begins with words of encouragement to the Hebrews, who are having problems in remaining faithful to their Christian commitment. On the one hand, they are to realise that God is not unmindful of all the good things they have done, and the love they have shown in their service of their fellow Christians. This may include material help given to another church, perhaps the church in Jerusalem which was often in need.
At the same time, he urges them to maintain their former earnestness:
…so that you may not become sluggish but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
He wants them to follow in the footsteps of those who have maintained their fidelity and shown patience in times of difficulty. Paul, in his letters, often encourages people to be “imitators”, to model themselves on outstanding Christians. Paul even suggests that they be imitators of himself.
The author then goes on to use the example of Abraham as one who believed in God’s promise to him and was not disappointed. God had sworn in his own name (for there was no other by whom he could swear an oath) that Abraham would be blessed and that his descendants would be great in number. They would be:
…as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. (Gen 22:17)
This promise seemed impossible of fulfilment when Abraham was asked to sacrifice his only legitimate son, Isaac. Only when, in a great act of trust in God, he proceeded to prepare his son for sacrifice, did God stay his hand. Abraham’s total submission in faith to God had been convincingly demonstrated. Later in the Letter, there is a much longer discussion of faith.
When human beings swear by an oath, they do so by someone greater than themselves and, in normal circumstances, an oath solemnly made is taken as a final guarantee. When God wanted to show that his promise to the heirs of Abraham was genuine, he too guaranteed it with an oath.
So the Hebrew Christians are protected by these two unassailable guarantees—God’s promise and his confirming oath. With such a backing, their hope in their future with God is made sure and firm. And it is made more sure by the backing of our High Priest, a backing which reaches right to God’s presence. This is all expressed in a Temple image:
We have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters the inner shrine behind the curtain, where Jesus, a forerunner on our behalf, has entered, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.
Actually, the anchor as a symbol of hope is not normally found in Scripture, but was common in the culture of Greece and Rome as a symbol of stability. It became a symbol of hope in Christian iconography of the 2nd century AD.
The image is of the Jerusalem Temple, where the high priest once a year, on the solemn Day of Atonement, penetrated beyond the veil or curtain of the Holy of Holies where God was believed to be present, and offered sacrifice on behalf of the people. Jesus, our High Priest and “forerunner on our behalf”, penetrates the veil of Heaven, where God dwells in inaccessible glory. There he intercedes on our behalf. The imagery here anticipates a much longer discussion of the tabernacle later in the Letter.
In our time, Jesus is still our High Priest. In every Eucharist, we celebrate and remember with thanksgiving the supreme offering he made of himself on our behalf. And we, too, are full of faith and hope that the promises made in the Gospel will become a reality in our own lives—provided we open ourselves fully to them.
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Thursday of Week 2 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Hebrews 7:25—8:6
Today’s reading shows again the contrast between the high priests of the Law and Christ our High Priest. The Hebrew Christians (to whom the Letter is addressed) are being reminded, once again, that the Jesus Christ they are threatening to abandon in favour of the old Temple-based worship is on a far superior level.
In the two verses immediately preceding today’s reading, the author reminds his readers that the former priests were many in number because they died off and had to be replaced. Christ, however, holds his priesthood permanently because he endures forever. Hence (and it is here that our reading begins) he is able for all time to be a source of salvation for us because his intercession on our behalf is never-ending.
And it is totally:
…fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, blameless, undefiled, separated from sinners [in their sinfulness], and exalted above the heavens.
In this, Christ is totally different from the Levitical priests. Perhaps it also indicates Jesus’ superiority over Melchizedek. Christ does not need to offer sacrifices every day for the sins of the people and for his own sins. Parenthetically, daily sacrifice is nowhere mentioned in the Mosaic Law. The high priest was only expected to offer sacrifice on the Day of Atonement “because of their transgressions, all their sins” (see Leviticus chap 16).
Jesus made one sacrifice for the whole world and for all time, a sacrifice that does not need to be repeated. The Levitical priests offered animals in sacrifice, but our High Priest makes the unique offering of his totally sin-less self, a single offering that was once for all time.
The Jewish Law appointed:
…as high priests humans [men], who are subject to weakness, but the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a Son who has been made perfect forever.
The fulfilment of God’s oath regarding the priesthood of Melchizedek (“You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek”, Ps 110:4) makes the Son of God the perfect priest forever.
As we enter chapter 8, the superiority of Christ as High Priest is further emphasised. According to the New Jerusalem Bible:
“The argument so far has been to prove that what Christ is, i.e., an eternal and perfect priest, is superior to what the Levitical priests are, since they are mortals and sinners. Now the argument goes on to show that what Christ does is equally superior to what the Levitical priests do: Christ’s sanctuary is better because it is in heaven, while the one on earth is only a copy of it, and the covenant brought by the mediation of Christ is a better covenant.”
Our High Priest is not in a temple made by human hands. Rather, he:
…is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a minister in the sanctuary and the true tent that the Lord, and not any mortal, has set up.
Before the building of the Temple by Solomon, the Ark of the Covenant, representing the presence of Yahweh among his people, was housed in a special tent or tabernacle. God dwells in an altogether superior “Holy of Holies”, and it is there that Christ has access to his Father on an equal and permanent level.
“True” here means “real” in contradistinction to a mere “sketch and shadow”, as the earthly sanctuary is described. The idea that the earthly sanctuary is a shadowy reflection of a heavenly model may be derived from the Platonic concept of a real world of which our observable world is merely a shadow (Plato’s famous cave).
Further, the role of every priest is to offer gifts and sacrifices, and our Priest also has something to offer. But if he were on earth, he would not be a priest in the ordinary human sense, because the priests only made offerings in accordance with the Law, that is, for the sins of the people and their own sins. Christ’s offering, on the other hand, is made purely on our behalf. He does not need to make sacrifice for himself. On the contrary, he is the Perfect Offering, pleasing to the Father.
In addition, the priests make their offering in a sanctuary that is only a pale shadow of the heavenly sanctuary where God dwells. When Moses was about to erect the tent or tabernacle (in which the Ark of the Covenant was placed), he was told by Yahweh to make it exactly according to the instructions he was given on Mount Sinai. As such, it had all the limitations of human workmanship. The use of the present tense here leads some to believe that the Temple was still standing and functioning, and that these words must have been written prior to 70 AD when Jerusalem was sacked and destroyed by the emperor Titus (an event commemorated in the Arch of Titus still to be seen in the Roman Forum).
But Christ as Priest has been given a much higher form of ministry and is the mediator between God and us of a new and better covenant—a covenant which is being carried out according to better promises. All in all, then, how can the Hebrew Christians be thinking of going back to the old dispensation when the new one with Jesus Christ is on a totally different level and can do so much more for them?
It is for us to remember that we, too, are sharers in this new dispensation. Let us thank Christ for the gift of the Church, for his Living Word and for the many ways in which our lives are nourished by our adherence to our High Priest.
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Friday of Week 2 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Hebrews 8:6-13
Jesus, with a far higher ministry, is the mediator of a new and better covenant between God and his people. A large part of today’s reading is taken up with a passage from the prophet Jeremiah, as confirmation of the writer’s argument about the superiority of the new covenant made through Jesus Christ.
The reading opens by stating that Jesus has obtained a better ministry than that of the Levitical priesthood and is the mediator of a better covenant, that is, the covenant that was sealed between God and us by the sacrificial death of Jesus.
The Christ is the only perfect mediator because he is truly human and truly divine. He is the one and only true intermediary between God and the human race. He unites and reconciles them. Through him comes God’s love and complete revelation. And, in heaven, he continues to intercede for those who remain faithful to him.
The author further adds that, if the first covenant had been without fault or defect, it would not need to have been replaced. But God did find fault with it, and that is confirmed by the long quotation from the prophet Jeremiah which immediately follows (from Jer 31:31-34). The author follows the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. Some discrepancies with the official text may be because the author was working from a different version or because he deliberately altered the text himself.
The NIV Study Bible summarizes how the pre-eminence of the new covenant lies in its superior benefits:
- God’s laws will become inner principles which will enable his people to delight in doing his will;
- God and his people will have an intimate fellowship;
- Sinful ignorance of God will be removed forever;
- Forgiveness of sin will be an everlasting reality.
The passage from Jeremiah begins with the prophet’s quoting Yahweh’s words in which the Lord says that he is going to establish a new covenant with the houses of Israel (the Northern Kingdom) and Judah (the Southern Kingdom). This new covenant will be different from the one that was made through Moses on Mount Sinai:
…when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt.
There is need now for a new covenant because the people, in not observing the first covenant, became distanced from the Lord. A reading of the books of Samuel and Kings affords abundant evidence of the people’s infidelity to Yahweh and the Law.
This new covenant will be a covenant in the heart and not just in outward behaviour, such as the observance of external rules and rituals:
I will put my laws in their minds
and write them on their hearts…
And then comes the covenant promise:
…I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.
It is an agreement to be kept by both sides.
From then on, there will be no need for people to teach each other, saying “Know the Lord.” This is because, by their observance of the covenant and the mutual relationship it implies, they will already know their Lord in the way that really matters—finding and serving him in every area of their lives.
Furthermore, God will show compassion for their past sins and even forget them entirely. This idea is central to the new covenant. As we know from Jesus in the Gospel, God only sees us as we are at the present moment. Where our past is concerned, he has a very bad memory!
Then the Hebrews’ author resumes his message. In speaking of a “new covenant”, it is clear that the old one is now obsolete:
…what is obsolete and growing old will soon disappear.
Again, the argument is clear: what are the ‘Hebrews’ thinking of by wanting to go back to a way of life that has lost its validity for them?
We, too, need to remain faithful and vigilant in our commitment to Jesus as our link with God our loving Father. For us, too, it is what goes on in our heart that matters more than what we just do on the outside.
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Friday of Week 1 of Lent – First Reading
Commentary on Ezekiel 18:21-28
The prophet Ezekiel today makes a double point. On the one hand, if the man who has done evil genuinely repents of what he has done, he will be totally forgiven:
None of the transgressions that they have committed shall be remembered against them, for the righteousness that they have done they shall live.
This is because it is God’s desire that we should live rather than die.
On the other hand, if the formerly good man turns to a life of sin, he will die in his sin. Some may object that that is not fair. Why should he be punished when he did so much good in the past?
There was a tendency among the people of the Old Testament to believe that people were not only guilty of their past sins, but even of the sins of their parents. We remember in John’s Gospel, how Jesus was asked whether the man born blind was that way because of his own sin or the sin of his parents. Chronic disabilities—blindness, paralysis, deafness and the like—were often seen as punishment for sin. When the paralysed man let down through the roof came to the feet of Jesus, the first thing Jesus said to him was:
Friend, your sins are forgiven. (Luke 5:20)
And his subsequent healing was taken as proof that indeed his sins were really forgiven, because the cause had also been removed.
But here, Ezekiel is affirming that sin is something that belongs to the individual. And that it is a person’s present disposition, and only this, that determines God’s judgement.
One thing that comes out clearly in the Scriptures, especially the New Testament, is that God has a very short memory. Far from being a defect, it is a quality that very much favours us.
The person God sees is the person that I am now. What matters is my relationship with him now. The past, good or bad, is forgotten. There is not a divine account book with credits and debits that have to be balanced out at the end of the day.
Judas, a chosen Apostle, was lost because of the final choice he made in life. The murderous brigand on the cross with Jesus repents, and goes with Jesus to heaven.
Some may complain that what the Lord does is unjust. But the reading makes the situation clear:
When the righteous turn away from their righteousness and commit iniquity, they shall die for it; for the iniquity that they have committed, they shall die…when the wicked turn away from the wickedness they have committed and do what is lawful and right, they shall save their life.
It is not God who condemns us. It is we who make the choice to be with God or to alienate ourselves from him; and God recognises our choice.
So we too need not be anxious about our past. All that matters is how I relate to God today, and each day forward. And the choice to be with God, or away from him, is all ours. If today I reject God, directly or through the way I relate with those around me, then, however virtuous I have been in the past, I have put him out of my life. If, on the other hand, today I choose God, then I have nothing to fear, whatever I may have been guilty of in the past.
For our own reflection, we can be consoled that, no matter what we did in the past, it will have no effect on our relationship with God provided we reach out to him here and now. On the other hand, there is no room for complacency. Our past good record can be completely undone by our turning away at any time.
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Wednesday of Week 6 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Mark 8:22-26
We are approaching a high point in Mark’s Gospel. And it is preceded by today’s strategically placed story. At first glance it looks like a simple healing story of a blind man but, as in most of Mark’s miracles, there is a deeply symbolic meaning inside.
People bring a blind man to Jesus so that Jesus could apply his healing touch (how much of our touching is healing—or are we afraid of physical touch?). Jesus takes the man aside away from the crowds. He puts spittle on the man’s eyes and asks:
Can you see anything?
The man, who is beginning now to see, says he can see people:
…but they look like trees, walking.
Jesus lays his hands on the man’s eyes again and now:
…his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.
Jesus tells him to go directly home, not through the village. He wants no misplaced sensationalism about who he is. The truth of that is going to be revealed very soon.
The story is clearly linked with other events that have just been taking place. We have seen the blindness of the Pharisees unable to recognise the power of God in the words and works of Jesus. We can see the blindness of his own disciples when he asked them in the boat:
Do you still not perceive or understand? Do you have eyes and fail to see? Do you have ears and fail to hear?
(Mark 8:17-18)
This story, coming where it is, is a parable about the gradual opening of the disciples’ eyes as it begins to dawn on them just who Jesus is. We will see in tomorrow’s Gospel a giant step in their seeing and understanding, while at the same time being aware that they still have a long way to go.
Our understanding of Jesus is also a gradual process and it never ends. Many seem to settle into a complacent level of understanding beyond which they never go. As a result, their spiritual growth is blocked, and also their ability to have a growing faith enrich their lives.
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