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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Tuesday of Week 1 of Lent – First Reading
Commentary on Isaiah 55:10-11
This short reading comes from the last chapter of the second part of Isaiah, known as Second Isaiah (chaps 40-55). It is also known as the ‘Book of Consolation’ because it speaks with hope and encouragement of the approaching end of the Jewish exile in Babylon, in contrast to earlier prophecies which rather emphasised the punishments which Israel had merited by her infidelities.
We are reminded that God has his plans for the world and that they will not be frustrated. Those plans are not arbitrary. They are for the well-being of all creation. He is the loving Father to whom we pray with confidence, described in the Gospel reading about the Lord’s Prayer.
The prophet expresses these ideas in language that is truly poetic. The inevitability of God’s Word being realised is like that of the gentle rain that makes the earth fertile and fruitful, and so produces the seed that provides the bread on which we live:
…so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose
and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
Wednesday of Week 1 of Lent – First Reading
Commentary on Jonah 3:1-10
Jonah, probably not a historical figure, is nevertheless one of the most attractive characters in the Bible. Although he is listed among the Minor Prophets, his book is more a cautionary tale than prophecy in the strict sense. There is an underlying humour through the whole book of Jonah which one does not often find in the Old Testament. The book also indicates a softening of attitudes by the Jews towards Gentiles. They were not totally beyond God’s compassion and mercy.
Jonah is asked by God to go east to preach to the pagan people of Niniveh, the capital city of Assyriah, described as being so big that it took three days to walk across it. Archaeological excavations indicate that the later imperial city of Nineveh was about 13 km in circumference, or a larger area comprising a four-city complex (‘Greater Niniveh’) which would have been about 100 km in circumference. However, we are not dealing with a historical document and the idea is simply to say that it was a huge city with a lot of people—all unbelievers in the true God.
However, we see in chapter 1, instead of doing what God tells him, Jonah takes a ship and goes west—in the opposite direction. He cannot believe that God could show mercy to such wicked pagans. After a huge storm threatens to sink the ship and all on board, the crew become aware that Jonah, in disobeying a mission from his God, is the cause of all their trouble. So he is unceremoniously dumped overboard where he is promptly swallowed by a huge fish (traditionally, a whale). Even the whale does not particularly enjoy the presence of Jonah and, after three days, coughs him up on the shore (see chap 2).
In our reading today, Jonah finally accepts the message that God means business and he reluctantly proceeds to go and preach to the people of Niniveh, a city synonymous with paganism and idolatry. He threatens the city with destruction if the people do not change their ways:
Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!
The 40 days is reminiscent of the Flood, God’s punishment on a wicked world, which lasted 40 days, or of the 40 years that the Israelites spent wandering in the desert. The Hebrew expression for ‘overthrown’ is also an echo of the ‘overthrowing’ of the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by a special act of God.
To Jonah’s great surprise there is an immediate response to his call for penance:
And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus mentions this unexpected conversion and compares it with those Jews who refuse to believe in him.
From the greatest to the least, the citizens of Niniveh begin to fast and wear penitential sackcloth. Even the king:
…rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.
Even animals were not to be given food. Inclusion of the domestic animals was unusual, but expressed the urgency with which the Ninevites sought God’s mercy. Even then, forgiveness seemed too much to hope for:
Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.
The result was that God did indeed look kindly on their efforts to change their ways and relented. The threatened punishment for their wickedness was not inflicted. Clearly, repentant Gentiles were also the object of God’s love and forgiveness.
The thrust of this story seems to be that, contrary to traditional Jewish belief (of which Jonah himself was an example), “wicked” Gentiles could respond to God’s call and change their ways. This is an anticipation of what would happen in the early Church, where the first Jewish Christians gradually came to realise that the gospel call was extended to people everywhere.
For us, at this time of Lent, it is a reminder of our need to repent, both in the sense of being truly sorry for all the wrong we have done and the good we have failed to do, and to reflect on how our lives can be brought more in line with the call of the gospel. It is also a time to reflect on our attitudes to non-Catholics and non-Christians or ex-Christians. Jesus himself says that we will be surprised at the number and kinds of people who will enter into his Kingdom. Let us make sure that we will be among them. Lent is a time to make the right preparations.
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Thursday of Week 2 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on 1 Samuel 18:6-9; 19:1-7
Saul was deeply impressed by David’s great exploit in killing Goliath and took him into his palace. A deep friendship developed between David and Jonathan, Saul’s son. We are told a little earlier that:
When David had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. (1 Sam 18:1)
Jonathan, as a sign of his affection, gave David his own mantle, his military dress, his sword, his bow and his belt. David was now transformed from a shepherd into a soldier.
Our reading today opens by saying that, as David and Saul returned from David’s famous victory over Goliath, the women came out from all the cities, singing and dancing. They played and sang:
Saul has killed his thousands
and David his ten thousands.
In accordance with the normal convention of Hebrew poetry, this was the women’s way of saying: ‘Both Saul and David have slain thousands’ (10,000 was typically used as the parallel of 1,000—see Ps 91:7). It is a measure of Saul’s insecurity and jealousy that he heard their words literally and took offence. His resentment would also be triggered simply by having David’s name put alongside his own. From then on a seething jealousy and resentment against David grew in his heart.
Things reached a stage where Saul actually intended to kill David. He even tried to contrive that David would be killed in battle by the Philistines. If this happened, Saul’s evil intention would not be known, for he was aware of David’s popularity with the people. Of course, ironically, David himself will do exactly the same thing against the husband of a woman with whom he had an adulterous affair. Except that, in David’s case, the husband was killed and David’s sin was exposed (see 2 Sam 11:14-17 and 2 Sam 12:1-15).
In another ruse, Saul offered his own daughter as a bride to David. He hoped that, as Saul’s son-in-law, he would become a target for the Philistines. Unfortunately, this did not work, even though the daughter, Michal, who loved David, did become his wife.
In today’s reading we see Saul trying now to get his son Jonathan to bring about David’s death. He is abandoning the indirect attempts he has so far been contriving. He now adopts a more direct approach which will ultimately lead to David’s leaving the court and Saul’s service. However, Jonathan told David about his father’s intentions and later spoke to Saul on David’s behalf. After all, David had done so much to protect Saul and the people by his exploits. Why kill innocent blood?
Considering that David could have been seen as a threat to Jonathan’s own expectations of succeeding his father, his behaviour is both an indication of Jonathan’s integrity and his love and respect for David. Saul was won over and swore not to kill David, who was reinstated fully. However, Saul had made oaths in the past and not kept them. He won’t keep this one for very long either.
Jealousy can be a terrible thing. It is closely linked with one’s own insecurity and difficulty in accepting what one is. It is very difficult to see others surpassing the skills of which we were proud. It is difficult to see people turning their attention away from us to others. It is difficult for us to have the spirit of John the Baptist who, referring to Jesus, said:
He must increase, but I must decrease. (John 3:30)
The cure for jealousy is for us to accept fully our strengths and our weaknesses and not to measure our success as persons by what we can do or by what people think of us. All that matters is that God be given glory and that the work of the Kingdom be done.
If some are doing it better than us, we should be grateful. If some are not doing it better than us, but are getting all the credit—does it really matter?
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Saturday of Week 27 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Joel 4:12-21*
Today we have our second and final reading from the prophet Joel. It is an apocalyptic-style call to a people who are suffering, who see only a bleak future with threats on all sides. It is a message full of hope in the ultimate future.
It begins with a call to the nations. The nations may “rouse themselves” (literally “sanctify”) to make war on Yahweh and march on Zion, but there in the “valley of decision” they will meet their judgement and ultimate defeat. It is considered ‘holy’ because all war was regarded as a sacred undertaking. Earlier in the chapter, Yahweh had said he would gather all the nations together and take them to the Valley of Jehoshaphat where he would put them on trial. That is now about to happen. The call for the nations is to hammer their ploughshares into swords and their bill-hooks into spears. This is the exact reversal of what is to happen in paradise as described by Isaiah (2:4).
Let the nations rouse themselves
and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat,
for there I will sit to judge
all the neighboring nations.
The valley of Jehospaphat is called the “valley of decision” later in the passage. It seems to be a symbolic name for a valley near Jerusalem that is here depicted as the place of God’s ultimate judgement on the nations gathered against Jerusalem. It was there that King Jehoshaphat had witnessed one of the Lord’s historic victories over the nations.
Put in the sickle,
for the harvest is ripe.
Go in, tread,
for the winepress is full.
The vats overflow,
for their wickedness is great.
Because of their numerous crimes, the nations are ripe for punishment. The use of warlike weapons against them is likened to the use of reaping instruments on the fields and vines at harvest time.
As a result of the Lord’s great army (the plague of locusts) that had marched against Judah (see Joel 1:1-11), there have been no harvests. That harvest was now to be restored. In the final great day of the Lord, there will also be a harvest—the harvest of God’s judgement on the nations. Revelation (14:14-20) draws heavily on this picture of judgement.
Today’s reading continues:
Multitudes, multitudes,
in the valley of decision!
For the day of the Lord is near
in the valley of decision.
The word for “decision” also means an instrument with sharp wheels or stones used in threshing. Just as the threshing machine divides the wheat from the chaff, so will God’s decision be against those who have been unfaithful. The valley is now viewed as the place where that decree will be executed.
Next comes a brief description of the Day of Yahweh.
The sun and the moon are darkened,
and the stars withdraw their shining.
The Lord roars from Zion
and utters his voice from Jerusalem,
and the heavens and the earth shake.
The language is apocalyptic. “The Lord roars” like a lion and destroys the unbelieving nations. And as God at the head of his army had thundered against Jerusalem, so he will on that day thunder against Jerusalem’s enemies, and he will:
dwell in Zion, [his] holy mountain.
And Jerusalem shall be holy,
and strangers shall never again pass through it.
On “the day of the Lord” his people will know that he is Yahweh their God, residing on Zion, his holy mountain. Jerusalem will be his sanctuary and it will never again be over-run by the “stranger” (i.e. foreigner). The Lord from now on will be with his people forever. The final blessed state of the now unholy and vulnerable city will be God’s abiding presence in her. Then she will be holy and impregnable.
In the third and last part of the reading, God blesses his people in a dual way: he not only destroys their enemies, but he also gives them good things.
Times of plenty are coming:
In that day
the mountains shall drip sweet wine,
the hills shall flow with milk,
and all the streambeds of Judah
shall flow with water…
The Eden-like lushness pictured in this verse is in great contrast to the terrible drought which followed the plague of locusts.
…a fountain shall come forth
from the house of the Lord
and water the Wadi Shittim.
Flowing out from God’s presence, streams of blessing will refresh his people and make their place endlessly fruitful. The location of the “Wadi Shittim” is uncertain in this apocalyptic description of the new Jerusalem. The picture is of a desert now with an abundance of water.
On the other hand:
Egypt shall become a desolation
and Edom a desolate wilderness,
because of the violence done to the people of Judah,
in whose land they have shed innocent blood.
Egypt and Edom were old enemies of Israel and here represent all those nations hostile to God’s people.
All life-sustaining blessings are removed from these nations, thus setting in sharp focus the contrasting destiny of God’s people and the enemies of God’s Kingdom. This picture of desolation also recalls the earlier description of Judah’s condition after the locusts. Then:
…Judah shall be inhabited forever
and Jerusalem to all generations.
I will avenge their blood, and I will not clear the guilty,
for the Lord dwells in Zion.
Once God’s judgement and redemption are complete, his Kingdom will endure and flourish forever. And this book of judgement ends on a promising and encouraging note: “the Lord dwells in Zion” and therefore all will be right with those who trust in God and live with him.
We do not now hold that God preserves any particular place forever, not Jerusalem, not Rome. For us, Zion is not a physical place. God is present not in stones, but in the hearts of those who open themselves to him, who hear his word and keep it. The ‘New Jerusalem’ is not a place, but the composite of all those who are in loving relationship with God and with each other because of Him. As Jesus told the Samaritan woman:
But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. (John 4:23)
Indeed, an hour is coming, and is already here, when authentic worshippers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth. It is just such worshippers the Father seeks.
This brings us to the end of our selection of readings from the post-Exilic prophets which began in the 25th Week of Ordinary Time (three weeks ago). We have read passages from Ezra, Haggai, Zechariah, Nehemiah, Baruch, Jonah, Malachi and Joel.
What they have in common is that all come from the same period, following the return of the Hebrews from exile in Babylon. Two are historical books (Ezra and Nehemiah) and the rest are from prophets. And they have appeared more or less in chronological order. On Monday we will return to reading from the New Testament.
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*In some Bible translations, today’s passage is Joel 3:12-21.
Wednesday of Week 1 of Advent – First Reading
Commentary on Isaiah 25:6-10
Both readings today are about the abundance that comes from God. The theme of an eschatological banquet is common in early Jewish and early Christian literature. In Matthew’s Gospel, after healing the centurion’s servant, Jesus says:
I tell you, many will come from east and west and will take their places at the banquet with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven… (Matt 8:11-12)
And again, in Matthew (22:1-14) and in Luke (14:16-24), Jesus tells the parable of the banquet to which those invited made excuses not to come.
As in the Gospel parables, in our First Reading from Isaiah, there is a universal tone to the words:
The Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines,
of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.
It is not just for God’s people. People from all nations will pour in to join this immense banquet with the Lord. God calls every single person to experience his love and share his eternal presence.
It is not surprising that this image should be used as a vision of the future life. It was used by peoples who all too often experienced hunger and thirst brought on by drought, floods and poverty. A future life beyond death was easily conceived as an unending banquet at a table groaning with rich food and the finest drinks, things which in this life only the tiny minority of the rich could enjoy. Today’s Gospel about the feeding of the 4,000 in the desert confirms what the prophet is foretelling.
At the same time, the Lord will put an end to death, symbolised by the shroud that envelops the peoples and the sheet covering the nations. In fact, “Death has been swallowed up in victory”, a phrase quoted by Paul (1 Cor 15:54).
Later, in the Book of Revelation we read in the hymn to those who have sacrificed their lives for the gospel that:
God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. (Rev 7:17)
And again in Revelation:
He will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more. (Rev 21:4)
In the Third Eucharistic Prayer, when we pray for the dead, we also say:
There we hope to share in your glory when every tear will be wiped away.
Then, about Mount Zion on which the Temple of Jerusalem was built, the prophet says:
For the hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain.
With the coming of God (remember we are in Advent and Jesus is on the way), there comes comfort in all our sorrows—”Every tear will be wiped away”. This is what salvation means—the fulfilling of all our needs: spiritual, emotional, social and physical. What is promised in Isaiah will become a reality in Jesus.
In our world today we live with abundant food production that serves us even with our population growth. Yet, there is hunger, malnutrition and other unmet needs. We, God’s stewards, are failing in our task of distribution. It is certainly not the fault of God that our brothers and sisters go hungry—it is ours.
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Wednesday of Week 14 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 10:1-7
We begin today the second of the five discourses of Jesus which are a unique feature of Matthew’s Gospel. It consists of instructions to Jesus’ disciples on how they are to conduct their missionary work and the reactions they can expect in carrying it out.
It begins by the summoning of the inner circle of twelve disciples. Matthew presumes we already know about their formal selection, which he does not recount (the Gospels of Mark and Luke clearly distinguish the selection of the Apostles from their later missioning). These twelve disciples are now called Apostles.
The two words are distinct in meaning and we should not confuse them. A disciple (Latin discipulus, from discere, to learn) is a follower, someone who learns from a teacher and assimilates that teaching into his or her own life. An apostle (Greek, apostolos from apostello) is someone who is sent out on a mission, someone who is deputed to disseminate the teaching of the master to others. In the New Testament a distinction is made between the two. All the Gospels, for instance, speak of the Twelve Apostles and Luke mentions 72 disciples.
However, that does not mean the two roles are mutually exclusive. On the contrary, all of us who are called to be disciples are also expected to be apostles, actively sharing our faith with others. It is very easy for us to see ourselves, ‘ordinary’ Catholics, as disciples and to regard priests and religious as doing the apostolic work of the Church. That would be very wrong. Every one of us called to be a disciple is, by virtue of Baptism and Confirmation, also called to be an apostle.
Applied to the twelve men (yes, they were all men—and therein lies the source of many disputes!), the word ‘apostle’ does have a special sense. They would become, so to speak, the pillars or foundations on which the new Church would be built, with Peter as their leader. They would have the special role of handing on and interpreting the tradition they had received from Jesus, a role which in turn they handed on to those whom we now call the bishops, with the pope as leader and spokesperson.
Later on, Paul would be added to their number and Matthias would be chosen to replace the renegade Judas. In fact, it is interesting to see the mixed bunch of people that Jesus chose. We know next to nothing about most of them, but they were, for the most part, simple people—some of them definitely uneducated and perhaps even illiterate. Judas may well have been the most qualified among them. And yet we see the extraordinary results they produced, and the unstoppable movement they set in motion. The only explanation is that it was ultimately the work of God through the Holy Spirit.
The first instructions they are given are to confine their activities to their own people. They are not to go to pagans at this stage, or even to the Samaritans. As the heirs to the covenant and as God’s people, the Jews are to be the first to be invited to follow the Messiah and experience his saving power. And their proclamation is the same one that Jesus gave at the outset of his public preaching:
The Kingdom of Heaven [i.e. of God] has come near.
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Wednesday of Week 27 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 11:1-4
It is surely no coincidence that Jesus’ commendation of Mary for spending time listening to Jesus should be followed by a section on prayer.
Luke’s Gospel has been called the Gospel of Prayer. It is in his Gospel, more than any of the others, that we are told about Jesus praying, especially before the more important moments of his public life—such as at his baptism by John, the choosing of the Twelve, before Peter’s confession of his Messiahship and in the garden before his passion.
Today we see Jesus just praying somewhere, and we get the impression that it was something he did quite often. We mentioned earlier that it was perfectly natural for Jesus to pray to his Father—if we understand that by prayer we mean being in close contact with God.
Sometimes it will be to ask God for help in our lives or in making the right decision, sometimes it will be to thank and praise him, sometimes it will be to pray on behalf of someone else and sometimes it will be just to be in his company. We saw this yesterday with Mary of Bethany sitting quietly at the feet of Jesus listening to him. In fact, a lot of our prayer should be in silent listening. Some people talk so much in their prayer that God cannot get a word in! And then they complain he does not answer their prayers!
After seeing him pray on this occasion, Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them how to pray. In reply, he gives them what we know as The Lord’s Prayer. It is not quite the form we are familiar with—that comes from Matthew’s Gospel. In the Gospel of Luke, the prayer is simpler, but the basic structure is still the same.
Matthew’s text has seven petitions (we know how he likes the number ‘seven’), but Luke’s has only five. It is believed that Matthew follows an earlier form which may be closer to Luke’s.
When Jesus taught this to his disciples did he mean that praying meant reciting this formula at regular intervals? In fact, it is (in Matthew’s version) a formula we all know by heart and which we recite regularly during the Eucharist, when we say the Rosary and on many other occasions. But it seems more likely that Jesus intended to do more than just teach them a formula to be recited. It is probably much better to see his words as an answer to their request:
Lord, teach us [how] to pray, as John taught his disciples.
We will get much more out of the Lord’s Prayer if we take each petition separately and spend time praying around each one. When we do that seriously and conscientiously, we will see that it is a very challenging prayer.
Let us briefly look at the petitions as they are in Luke:
Father:
To begin with, let us agree that ‘gender’ is a feature that belongs to humans, and God is beyond gender. We can address God as either Father or Mother; the basic meaning is that God is the source of life and the Creator of every living thing. In addressing God as Father (or Mother) we are acknowledging that we are children, sons and daughters, of God. But if we are children of the one God, then we are brothers and sisters to each other. And there can be no exceptions to this, not even one.
Is this what I mean when I utter the word “Father”? Am I prepared to see every single person on the face of this earth, irrespective of race, gender, nationality, ethnicity, skin colour, class, occupation, age, religion or behaviour as my brother and sister? If not, I have to stop praying at this first word. We can begin to see now what teaching his disciples to pray meant to Jesus as well as to them and us.
May your name be revered as holy:
God’s name is already holy and nothing we can do can make it any more so. In this petition we are rather asking that the whole world recognise the holiness of God—that the whole world sing with the angels: “Holy, holy, holy…” God does not need this, but we do. And when we sing like this in all sincerity, then we are saying that we belong to him and recognise him as Lord. And it is, in fact, another way of expressing the following petition.
May your kingdom come:
We refer frequently in these reflections to the Kingdom. It is that world where God’s reign prevails in people’s hearts and minds and relationships. It is a world where people have submitted gladly to that reign and experience the truth and love and beauty of God in their lives and in the way they interact with the people around them. It produces a world of freedom, peace and justice for all.
Though, in praying this petition, we are not just asking God to bring it about while we sit back and wait. We are also committing ourselves to be partners with God in bringing it about. Our co-operation in this work is of vital importance. To be a Christian, to be a disciple of Jesus, is essentially to be involved in this task of making the Kingdom a reality. And it has to begin right now; it is not just to be left to a future existence. In Matthew’s version (Matt 6:5-15), we pray:
May your kingdom come.
May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Like many of these petitions, it is a prayer that God’s will be carried out through our involvement. Again, it is a really challenging prayer.
Give us each day our daily bread:
This is a prayer that we will be always provided with what we need for our daily living. There is a highly dangerous word buried in the petition. That word is “us”. To whom does “us” refer? My family? My friends? My work companions? My village, town, city, country, nationality, race or gender? Surely it refers to all God’s children without exception.
If that is the case, then we are praying that every single person be supplied with their daily needs. But that cannot happen unless we all get involved. The petition is not simply passing the buck to God. The feeding of our brothers and sisters is the responsibility of all.
Yet millions are hungry and millions suffer from malnutrition as well as being deprived of many of the other essentials of dignified living. Clearly, we are not doing all we can to see that all of “us” have “our” daily bread. So again this is a very dangerous prayer.
It is even more dangerous when we say it in the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the sacrament or sign of a community that takes care of all its members and of others in need. It is the sacrament of breaking bread with brothers and sisters. If we leave the Eucharistic table and do nothing about this, then our sign has been a sham.
And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us:
How easily we say this again and again! Yet it is a very frightening thing to do—to put God’s forgiving us conditional on our forgiving others. Forgiveness and reconciliation must be part and parcel of Christian living, and we all know that at times it can be very difficult. Yet, as we see in the book of Jonah (read during Cycle I at this time), our God is so ready to forgive. To be like him, to be ‘perfect’, is to have that same readiness to forgive. Our deepest urge should be not to condemn and punish, but to rehabilitate and restore to life.
And do not bring us to the time of trial:
We are surrounded by forces which can draw us away from God and all that is true, good and beautiful. We pray that we will not succumb permanently to anything of the sort. We need constantly God’s liberating hand to lift us up as he lifted the drowning Peter. This is the one petition where we depend totally on God’s help.
The Lord’s Prayer is beautiful. It is challenging. It needs to be taken slowly and meditatively so that we have time to enter deeply into each petition. Perhaps as we pray we can stop at just one petition which at this time is particularly meaningful to us and leave the others for another time. It is primarily not a formula to be recited, but themes for prayer. Any one petition is enough to last a long time.
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Wednesday of Week 28 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 11:42-46
Jesus today continues to attack the attitudes of Pharisees. These remarks are not to be thought of as applying to all Pharisees, many of whom were good people. Paul himself was once a Pharisee as was Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night, and Gamaliel, who, in the Acts of the Apostles (5:34), urged caution in persecuting the disciples of Jesus. Jesus is to be seen rather attacking a certain mentality which can all too easily be among us Christians and, if we are honest, sometimes in ourselves.
Here Jesus attacks the Pharisees for their scrupulous observance of even the tiniest of regulations, not because that is wrong, but because they by-pass the love of God, which is what really matters. He attacks them for their status-seeking. The Pharisees expect people to look up to them and give them special honours because of their supposed higher level of religious observance. They expect to be given front seats in the synagogue and for people to greet them obsequiously in the streets.
Usually graves were whitewashed so that people would not walk over them by mistake. The Pharisees are like unmarked graves which people unwittingly come in contact with and thus become tainted with ritual uncleanness. In other words, people coming in contact with them are not aware that under the veneer of piety inside, they are really containers of rottenness and corruption. Elsewhere, Jesus also describes the Pharisees as whitewashed graves where the outer cleanliness conceals inner corruption.
In the past (and perhaps in some places it is still the case), the clergy have often expected similar honours to be paid to them. Very often, people willingly did so because they genuinely respected their bishop or their priest. Sometimes, however, the honours were demanded or expected, rather than graciously and humbly received. But as the saying goes, “the clerical habit does not make the monk, nor the Roman collar the priest, nor the mitre the bishop”.
At this point, “one of the experts in the law” (a scribe) objected because, in speaking like that about the Pharisees, Jesus was attacking them too, as some of the scribes were also Pharisees. But they are equally deserving of criticism because their narrow-minded interpretations about insignificant details of the law make it difficult for ordinary people to keep the law, while they themselves do nothing to help. Moreover, they add rules and regulations to the Mosaic Law, do nothing to support people in keeping them and find ways for themselves to get around them.
The Church itself over the centuries has not been above criticism in this area either. And perhaps it is still true today. Bishops and priests have often laid heavy burdens on the faithful and not given much help in carrying them. Sometimes church leaders have been more anxious to preserve traditional practices than lead people to a deeper love of Christ and each other.
But the clergy have no monopoly on this. Parents too can be guilty when they follow double standards, making one rule for themselves and another for their children. Similarly teachers with students or employers with employees may exhibit the approach: “Do as I say; don’t do as I do.” Pharisaism is indeed alive and well in our society, but the first person I need to fix is me.
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Friday of Week 26 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 10:13-16
In today’s Gospel, we hear strong words from Jesus against towns where he had preached extensively—Chorazin, Bethsaida and especially Capernaum.
Chorazin is only mentioned twice in the Bible, here and in the parallel passage of Matthew (11:21). It was near the Sea of Galilee and probably between 3 and 4 km north of Capernaum. Bethsaida, the home of some of Jesus’ disciples, was on the northeast shore of the Sea of Galilee. It had been built by Philip the Tetrarch, who called it ‘Julias’ after Julia, a daughter of the emperor Caesar Augustus. Capernaum, situated on the north shore of the lake, appears frequently in the Gospel narratives and was the centre from which Jesus did much of his missionary work. His work and preaching would have been most familiar to the people there.
Jesus says that if the gentile cities of Tyre and Sidon had witnessed all that Jesus had said and done in those towns of Palestine, they would have repented long ago—just as the pagan people of Niniveh had repented at the preaching of Jonah.
Tyre and Sidon were towns on the Phoenician coast, north of Palestine (Lebanon today). Jesus was said to have visited the area just once and only very briefly, so the people there did not have an opportunity to witness Jesus’ miracles or hear his preaching, unlike the people in the towns mentioned above.
And Jesus goes further. Addressing his disciples he says:
Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.
In other words, to listen to the messengers of Jesus is equivalent to listening to him personally—to reject those messengers is to reject Jesus and to reject God.
And in our own times, perhaps we should emphasise that those ‘messengers’ are not just bishops, priests and religious. They include all those who sincerely proclaim the gospel by their words and their lives.
It might be no harm then for each of us today to hear those warnings of Jesus addressed to ourselves. How well have we really responded to the call of Jesus in the Gospel? How open are we to hear that message coming to us from different kinds of people in our community? How committed are we to accepting, living and sharing that Gospel with others?
Might it be true to say that there are people in other parts of our world, our country, our society who, if they were given what we have been given, who heard what we hear, would respond much more generously than we have done?
There is never any room for complacency in our Christian life. Because we have been given so much, so much more is expected of us. As Jesus says elsewhere, we may be very surprised to see others, who never had an opportunity directly to hear the gospel, go before us into God’s Kingdom.
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