Friday of Week 32 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 17:26-37

Jesus is coming to the end of his public life. His passion and death are going to be traumatic experiences for his followers, which will take them by surprise and fill them with shock and alarm.

Later still, but before Luke had put his Gospel together, a cataclysm had overtaken Jerusalem when the city was laid siege to and utterly destroyed—the magnificent Temple along with it. The disaster is commemorated in the arch in Rome erected to honour the Emperor Titus’ victory, where one can see bas reliefs of the treasures of the Temple being carried off as loot.

Last of all, there is the end of all things, when our world will be no more. The what or the how of that end is something we know nothing about. In a sense, all three endings are included in Jesus’ warning today. His main lesson is for us to be ready and not to think that we can postpone our preparations. When the end strikes, it will be already too late.

Jesus gives the example of the time of the Flood, when people ate and drank right up to the moment of disaster (and we know from our own media how unprepared people can be when sudden floods and other sudden disasters strike). Similarly in the days of Lot, people were leading their ordinary lives when fire and brimstone (perhaps an earthquake?) rained down on the wicked city of Sodom. Only Lot and his family, who had been previously warned, escaped. In our time, almost every day we see something in our own media of similar cataclysms.

When “the day that the Son of Man is revealed” arrives, that is, when he comes at the end of time, it will be too late to take emergency measures. One will either be ready or not. If one is resting on the roof of one’s house (as was common at that time), don’t think of going down to save something. One person will be taken away and a companion left behind. The words seem to echo what happened at the fall of Jerusalem, and are similar to all natural disasters where some are swept away and those next to them survive. In context, the implication is that one goes to God and one does not.

These texts are not intended to fill us with fear and foreboding of a capricious God. They are timely advice not to be caught napping, but to remain alert to meet the Lord. It is good advice, not just for the end of our lives, but for every day and every moment of every day. If I am always ready now, I will be ready then.

By living continuously and consciously in the presence of God, in that ‘divine milieu’ of the Kingdom mentioned above—in the ever-present now—we are not going to be caught by surprise. Far from being afraid, we will look forward to the day with anticipation, leaving totally in God’s hands the hour of his call. In practice, too, that final call will not coincide with the end of our planet, but with the moment when our individual life on this earth will come to its end. Of the inevitability of that end, there is no doubt.

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Tuesday of Week 12 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Genesis 13:2, 5-18 (more…)

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7 January – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 4:12-17,23-25

Jesus has been baptised in the Spirit of his Father, and he has triumphed over the temptations of the Evil One during his 40 days in the wilderness. He is now ready to begin his public ministry.

When Jesus heard that John had been arrested for accusing Herod of adultery (because Herod had taken his brother’s wife as his own), Jesus withdrew from the region of the Jordan River where he had been with John, and went to the northern province of Galilee where he had grown up.

The word translated as ‘arrested’ literally means ‘handed over’, and is an expression that occurs repeatedly in the Gospel. It first refers to John the Baptist being ‘handed over’, and then to Jesus being ‘handed over’—first to the leadership of the Jews, and then to the Romans. Later, it will be used of the disciples being ‘handed over’ to various authorities because of their preaching the gospel. Finally, it is used at every Eucharist (though somewhat invisible in our present translation). At the consecration of the bread the celebrant says:

This is my Body which will be handed over [given up] for you.

Jesus had left Nazareth and his family, and Matthew tells us he went to live in “Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali”. Capernaum will appear several times in Gospel stories.

For Matthew, Jesus’ going there fulfils a Hebrew Testament prophecy from Isaiah (9:1-2):

Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali,
on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the gentiles—
the people who sat in darkness
have seen a great light…

These two territories were the first to be laid waste by the Assyrian invasion in 733 BC. Isaiah promised them a great future that is now being realised. Matthew stretches things a little to fit the prophecy in that Capernaum was in Naphthali and the sea mentioned by Matthew is the Sea of Galilee, while the prophecy actually refers to the Mediterranean.

Jesus’ preaching is summarised in one sentence:

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.

It is very similar to the message that John the Baptist gave, but coming from Jesus, it is much richer in meaning. John proclaimed the coming of the Kingdom; Jesus himself is the coming of that Kingdom. ‘Repent’ means much more than the meaning we normally give to the word, namely, to regret or to be sorrowful for wrongs we have done. Here it is translated from the Greek word metanoia, which encompasses a complete and radical turnaround in the way we see life. It is not concerned with the past, but rather with the future.

The “kingdom of heaven” does not refer to the future life. It is not saying that we are all imminently about to leave this earth. “Heaven”, here, is a euphemism for the name of God, which Matthew, writing for Jewish Christians, does not want to use. Among the Jews, God’s name was so holy that it could not be uttered by humans. Rather, the phrase ‘kingdom of heaven’ refers to the effective power of God’s presence here on earth, sometimes called God’s ‘reign’ on earth. And that Kingdom is near because it is embodied in the person of Jesus himself. He represents the effective presence of God’s power, and that is seen clearly in the second part of today’s passage. It is the power of love and healing.

At this point in Matthew’s Gospel he also relates the calling of the first four disciples, those who would be partners with Jesus in the proclamation and the realisation of the Kingdom. But it is omitted in our reading for today.

We finish with a summary of the ‘Kingdom work’ that Jesus was doing. He went all over Galilee, teaching in the Jewish synagogues. His preaching consisted of the proclamation of the nearness of the Kingdom, and that was illustrated graphically by his healing all kinds of sicknesses. Healing means restoration to wholeness, and the goal of the Kingdom is a restoration to wholeness of the whole world.

Jesus’ fame even extended to the whole of the Roman Province of Syria, of which Galilee was a part. Large numbers of people came from these places in search of Jesus and they brought to him people suffering from all kinds of sicknesses. In addition to Galilee, they also came from the Decapolis (meaning ‘ten cities’), a federation of Greek cities mainly lying on the east side of the Jordan, from Judaea and its main city Jerusalem, and even from across the Jordan River.

It is time now to stop looking back at the Christmas celebrations, and look forward and examine why Jesus was born and the mission he had to do. Jesus’ coming to Capernaum is the coming of light in darkness. Jesus’ call to repentance is really a call to radical conversion, a turning round completely to face our Lord. In him the Kingdom of Heaven is here among us. That is shown by the work that Jesus does: teaching, announcing the Good News of his coming and healing all kinds of disorders, including the physical, mental and emotional.

May we too experience a deep desire for conversion and also experience the healing power of Jesus in our lives, so that we may become agents to heal others.

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6th day in the Octave of Christmas – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 2:36-40

Today’s Gospel is a continuation of yesterday’s reading about the Presentation in the Temple. It deals with the second person who was present on that day. Her name was Anna and she is described as a prophetess, in other words, a person who was a spokesperson for God. One does not often meet women prophets in the Scriptures—most of them are men. She was also quite elderly:

…having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, then as a widow to the age of eighty-four.

And, as we have said before, widows were at the lowest rung of the social ladder. They had very little chance of getting remarried, and as such, were very unlikely to have children after being widowed.

But Anna was a deeply spiritual person who spent her waking hours in the Temple, praying and fasting. She also came on the scene just as Jesus and his parents were in the Temple. She, too, must have realised the true identity of the Child, and gave thanks to God. She then began to speak about the Child to everyone, especially those awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem.

This short passage says a few important things:

• Our social status is of no consequence where our relationship with God is concerned.
• If we want to be close to God, prayer has to be a very important part of our day.
• Jesus can come into our life at any time and in any place—it may be a church or it may be at a dance.
• Once we really come to know Jesus, we cannot keep it to ourselves, but must share the experience with the people around us, especially those who are looking for some meaning in their lives.

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Saturday of Week 2 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Mark 3:20-21

Today we are told that Jesus “went home”. Yet, at another time Jesus will say that he has nowhere to lay his head. Of course, one can say that anywhere can be the home of Jesus, or that home is where Jesus is. We have seen references already to the ‘house’ or the ‘home’ indicating any house where Jesus is gathered with his disciples, with those who listen attentively to what he says.

At the same time, so many people came looking for him that he did not even have time to eat. This is in strong contrast with what is going to follow. One might think such popularity would be welcomed especially by his family—a kind of reflected glory.

On the contrary, he is an embarrassment to them. They think he “has gone out of his mind”. They think he must be ‘mad’ because he is in conflict with the religious leaders, with the Pharisees and the Scribes. It reminds one of the parents of the man born blind who did not want to have anything to do with their son because of his relationship with his healer, Jesus.

Jesus must be “out of his mind” because a genuine rabbi would never be seen happily in the company of sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers and outcasts. Similarly, teachers of the Law who had come all the way from Jerusalem (news of Jesus must now be reaching that far) were saying that he must be possessed by the prince of demons, and that it was by the power of the prince of demons that he drove out other demons.

From the experience that Jesus had, his followers must not expect, simply because they based their life on truth and brotherly love, that they will be admired, respected and loved in return. From Jesus onward, true followers of Christ have faced misunderstanding, opposition and even verbal and physical violence. And this even comes sometimes from within their own community.

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Friday of Week 14 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Genesis 46:1-7,28-30

After their emotional reunion with the brother they believed long dead, Joseph’s brothers return to their father, Jacob, laden with gifts and with an invitation for the whole extended family to return and live in the region of Goshen, to the east of the Nile in Egypt. In today’s reading we see Jacob (now being called by his given name, Israel) setting out from his home in Hebron and heading to Egypt with all his family members and all his possessions. Hebron lay to the west of the Dead Sea.

Before leaving Canaan he offers sacrifice to the God of his father Isaac at Beer-Sheba, which lay to the west of the southern end of the Dead Seas and south of Hebron on the road to Egypt. Here God speaks to Jacob in a dream. It is the last of God’s appearances to the patriarchs. He commands Jacob to go down to Egypt (the Exodus is already in view) just as he had commanded Abraham to set out for Canaan. The move is clearly presented as God’s will and not just a family decision.

God promises Jacob his protection and tells him not to be afraid to go down to Egypt. There he will make Jacob and his descendants into a great nation. God says:

I myself will go down with you to Egypt…

He also promises to bring Israel back to his ancestral land. Is there an ambiguity here with the name ‘Israel’? It can mean a promise to bring Jacob’s body back to Canaan for burial and also the promise that Israel, as a nation, will return to the Canaan after the Exodus.

And there is a promise that, in death, it will be Joseph, the son he thought he would never see again, who will close Jacob’s eyes. Jacob’s sons, together with their wives and children come to take their father to Egypt in wagons provided by the Pharaoh. The whole family—brothers, wives, children, grandchildren all move to Egypt to settle there.

On the way, Judah, the eldest son, goes ahead to arrange that Joseph should meet his father at Goshen. Joseph, riding in his official chariot, goes to meet his father. One can imagine the feelings of the old man as he saw Joseph, the son he thought was long dead, arriving in a magnificent chariot befitting his rank.

Not surprisingly, it is a very emotional meeting. Joseph throws his arms around his father’s neck and weeps for a long time on his shoulder. Jacob says to his long-lost son:

I can die now, having seen for myself that you are still alive.

Later (not in our reading), Jacob and some of his sons will be introduced to the Pharaoh and are invited to settle in Goshen, which was situated in the north-east part of the Nile Delta, a place very suitable for sheep-grazing. Jacob’s sons were shepherds.

Once again we see how what originally seemed like tragedy turn out to be a source of blessing for so many. It may help us to take a second look at events in our lives in which we wondered where God was present. Often, we may have to wait before we see the final outcome. God, as we have said more than once before, loves to write our life story with crooked lines.

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Wednesday of Week 25 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Ezra 9:5-9

In our last reading from the Book of Ezra, it is Ezra himself who speaks. It is both a deeply felt prayer and an exhortation to his people. He is deeply upset because they have been so unfaithful. He is particularly disturbed that many have intermarried with the unbelieving and idolatrous people around them.

He tells us that at the evening sacrifice, he came out of a stupor. Just before this Ezra has been told that many of the people, including even priests and Levites, have intermarried with women from the non-Jewish (and non-believing) tribes. The result is that the ‘holy race’ has become contaminated and hence liable to fall into the idolatrous practices of their wives.

Actually, in ancient Israel inter-ethnic marriages were not forbidden (see one example in Gen 41:45, where Joseph marries an Egyptian woman), but were later forbidden by Deuteronomy in order to combat idolatry, which gentile women tended to bring with them into the home. The danger increased after the Exile because the majority of the returning exiles were men. The reason for the separation is still religious, but a second reason now emerges here, concern for racial purity.

On hearing all this, Ezra tears his clothes, pulls the hair from his head and beard, and sits down in horror. All who felt the same way about the infidelity shown to God gathered round him in sympathy and support, while Ezra remained sitting there in horror until the evening sacrifice.

At the evening sacrifice, he comes out of his wretched state and, in his torn clothes, falls on his knees, stretches out his hands to Yahweh and begins to pray. The prayer of Ezra, which is also a sermon, is inspired by Deuteronomy and the prophets. It may be compared with those of Nehemiah (9:5-37) and Daniel (9:4-19).

In the name of his people, he tells God how ashamed he is, how he blushes even to lift his face to God. He is ashamed for the terrible sins of his people which are now “higher than our heads” and whose guilt has reached right up to heaven.

This is nothing new for God’s people. From the days of their ancestors until now they have been deeply guilty. The Israelites had a strong sense of their corporate solidarity with their ancestors.

Because of their iniquities, they, together with their kings and priests, have been handed over to the kings of other countries, have died by the sword, been taken away into captivity, been pillaged and looted—and reduced to shame. This is still the case. Much of this suffering was the result of their sins and infidelities. In Ezekiel (21:19) “the sword of the king of Babylon” is described as an instrument of divine judgement.

In spite of all this, now, for a brief moment, the favour of Yahweh their God has allowed a remnant to escape from exile and be given a stable “stake in his holy place”, so that their God can raise their spirits and revive them a little in their slavery. The literal reading of “stake” is a ‘nail’ or a ‘peg’, evoking the image of a nail driven firmly into a wall or a peg driven well into the ground.

However, in spite of somewhat better times now, they are still slaves under a foreign ruler. But God has not forgotten them in their slavery. He has extended his faithful love for them even under the kings of Persia and revived them to rebuild the Temple of our God, restore its ruins and provide them with a refuge in Judah and Jerusalem.

The Achaemenid Persian kings were favourably disposed to Jews (as they were to other religions): Cyrus (539-530 BC) gave them permission to return (Ezra 1); his son Cambyses (530-522), though not named in the Scriptures, also favoured the Jews, as we learned from Elephantine papyri; Darius I (522-486) renewed the decree of Cyrus (Ezra 6); his son Xerxes (486-465) granted privileges and protection to Jews (Esther 8-10); his son Artaxerxes (465-424) gave authorisations to Ezra (Ezra 7) and to Nehemiah (Neh 2).

In God’s strange providence, it was the enlightened policy of the pagan Persian emperors which had made it possible for God’s sinful people to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their Temple. In many ways, it was this exile which helped them appreciate what they had lost. God, too, can make strange and unlikely people be the agents of his bringing us back to him.

In our lives, too, there can be painful experiences. They can either embitter us and drive us deeper into ourselves or we can go through them and see that God in his love and compassion is present there. We then turn such experiences into opportunities for personal growth and deepening our sensitivity for the sufferings of others.

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Tuesday of Week 30 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Romans 8:18-25

Another wonderful outburst from Paul! He has just been describing the difficulties that we face from the negative forces of our lower nature. Now he looks forward in hope not only for Christians, but for the whole of the created world.

Today’s reading is an immediate continuation of yesterday’s. At the end of that reading, Paul had said we would be regarded as:

…joint heirs with Christ, if we in fact suffer with him…
(Rom 8:17)

He begins today’s reading by saying that no matter how much we may suffer in this life, it is as nothing compared to the future glory which will be made known to us. And this is true not only for Christians, because:

…creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God…

That revelation will take place at the Final Judgement when the true followers of Jesus (including, we might say, “anonymous Christians”) will be revealed and then the rest of creation will join them in glory.

Paul’s thinking is that the material world, originally created for Man, shares his destiny. After the sin in the Garden, the material world was also cursed. Yahweh said to the Man and the Woman:

…cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life… (Gen 3:17)

The material world is now deformed, impotent and decadent. However, like man’s body, it is destined one day to be redeemed, restored and glorified. It will share the same glorious freedom of the children of God.

For many of the Greek philosophers, too, matter was seen as evil and the human spirit must be delivered from it. Especially in the form of Gnosticism, it had great influence on Christian thinking. It was a movement which the early Christians had to resist. So Paul is saying that not only are those in Christ set free and destined to share in the glory of God, but that the whole of material creation will also have this experience. The whole mystery of the Incarnation is an affirmation of the inherent goodness of all created things:

And the Word became flesh… (John 1:14)

There were some Christians who were not happy with this and wanted to reduce Christ’s humanity to mere appearance.

This “frustration” imposed on creation did not arise from creation itself, but either as the result of man’s sinful behaviour or as part of the punishment which God imposed on Man. The natural abundance of the Garden is replaced by a world which made Man have to work very hard to make his living. But just as all creation suffered because of Man’s sin, so it will be freed from its slavery to corruption and decay and brought into the same glorious freedom as the children of God.

In fact, the whole of creation, like a mother-to-be:

…has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor, and not only the creation…

But not only creation, rather:

…we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

Although Christians, as the “first-fruits of the Spirit”, are already beginning their new life of freedom in Christ, they are waiting for the final resurrection, the final stage of their adoption, the ultimate liberation when there will be no more tears, no more pain or suffering.

We, too, even though we are blessed with the gift of the Spirit through our incorporation by baptism in the Body of Christ, also await the final liberation of our bodies when there will be no more distress or suffering. As we pray in the Third Eucharistic Prayer:

Welcome into your Kingdom…all who have left this world in your friendship. There we hope to share in your glory, when every tear will be wiped away. On that day, we shall see you, our God, as you are. We shall become like you and praise you forever through Christ our Lord.

Our link with that future is hope:

For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what one already sees?

Hope is an integral part of faith. Faith and hope are based on what cannot yet be seen. But this faith-filled hope expresses an attitude of confidence that promises will be kept. It is not just a wait-and-see attitude. On the contrary, we live our lives on the basis that what we hope for in faith is true and real.

Hope is the basis of our faith. Hope here is not a desire that something may happen. It is a conviction, arising from our total trust in God’s love, that our final liberation and the liberation of all creation is a certainty. But, as Paul reminds us at the end of today’s passage:

But if we hope for what we do not see, [yet] we wait for it with patience.

We cannot speak of hoping for something which is already within our grasp.

We do not know the how or the when, but we live in this constant trust that God will not disappoint our deepest longings. At the same time, experience—our own and that of many other committed Christians—has shown that much of what we hope for is confirmed by our living the Gospel as faithfully as we can. The signs are a sense of inner joy, consolation and peace.

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Thursday of Week 13 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 9:1-8

After the cure of the two demoniacs (see the Gospel passage from Wednesday of Week 13 of Ordinary Time), Jesus and his disciples now re-cross the lake and come into his own town. This refers not to Nazareth, but to Capernaum, which is the centre out of which he operates in Galilee. As usual with Matthew, he just gives the bare bones of a story which is told in a much more interesting way by Mark (2:1-12). Matthew concentrates on what Jesus says and does—he leaves out the details.

Some people brought a paralysed man lying on a mat to Jesus. Moved by their faith in him, Jesus says to the man,

Take heart, child; your sins are forgiven.

In Mark’s version the degree of the man’s faith is indicated by his being carried up on to the roof of the house by some friends and being let down through the roof at the feet of Jesus. Matthew says nothing about this.

The man was probably not expecting to hear Jesus mention his sins. As far as he was concerned, that was not the reason he had come to Jesus. Some scribes nearby were surprised too and even shocked. They were thinking:

This man is blaspheming.

Fully aware of what they were thinking, Jesus asked them:

For which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and walk’?

Obviously, it is much easier to say, “Your sins are forgiven.” How can you know if it has taken place? But Jesus goes on:

But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins—he then said to the paralytic—“Stand up, take your bed, and go to your home.”

And the man did just that: he rolled up his mat and walked out of the house to his home.

The people around were awestruck and praised God for giving such authority to human beings. They did not yet fully recognise the identity of Jesus, but they did realise that God was acting before their very eyes. The scribes for their part were reduced to silence. Matthew’s use of the word ‘men’ seems to point to the power of Jesus being passed on to his followers—his power to heal and to forgive.

To understand this story we need to be aware of the close links that the people of the time saw between sickness and sin. Sickness, especially a chronic sickness, was often seen as a punishment for sin, either the sin of the person himself or of a parent. We remember, in John’s Gospel, how the people asked Jesus if the man was born blind because of his own sin or the sin of his parents (John 9:2). Similarly, after Jesus had healed a man crippled for 38 years, he told him not to sin again, for fear something worse might befall him (John 5:14).

In telling the paralysed man that his sins were forgiven, Jesus was going to the root of his problem. We can probably say that sin in some form or other is at the root of all our problems. Jesus had been challenged for telling the man his sins were forgiven. To prove that he had the power to do this, he cured the man’s paralysis, which, in the minds of the onlookers, was the result of his sin. If there was no more paralysis, which was caused by sin, then the sin had been taken away too.

Nowadays, we do not see something like paralysis or a disability as a punishment from God—we do not believe that God works like that. On the other hand, it is likely that many health problems which we have can be linked with a disharmony in our lives arising from a conflict between what we are truly meant to be and what we tend to be. We refer to some sicknesses as ‘dis-eases’. They are the result of harmful stress when we are out of harmony with ourselves, with other people and with our environment. In that sense, we can see a clear link between sin and sickness.

Perhaps if we looked at our own lives we might see that some of our physical and mental ailments are due to a lack of harmony between God and others and our surroundings. Let’s think about that today.

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Monday of Week 25 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 8:16-18

The message today seems clear enough. The gospel message is not meant to be kept hidden. We are not a ‘mystery religion’ in the sense that the gospel is only for initiates. It is a message that is to be proclaimed from the housetops. If what we believe and say is true, it will prevail.

We understand Jesus to be the Light of the world, and his followers are also to be like lamps shining out for all the world to see. An invisible Christian is a contradiction in terms, yet there are strong tendencies for us to keep our religion to ourselves and not foist it on others.

However, forcing others to believe is not the message being given, even if it were possible. Inviting people to ‘come and see’, to hear the message and have a personal experience of living it, is something else. We also believe that the gospel message offers a way of life that brings great happiness into the lives of individuals and, in fact, to whole societies if it is really followed. So, part of our communicating the message is as much through our lifestyle (“See…it works!”) as through what we say.

Jesus says today:

So pay attention to how you listen…

It is not just listening, but a hearing which understands, accepts, assimilates and puts into practice. What is heard and assimilated has to be passed on. Otherwise it dies, because:

…for to those who have, more will be given, and from those who do not have, even what they seem to have will be taken away.

To be a Christian is not to reach a certain level and stay there. It essentially means constant growth and development—to stay still or to stagnate is to go backwards.

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