Wednesday of Week 1 of Advent – Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 15:29-37
In today’s Gospel, full of trust and confidence, people bring the disabled, the blind, those unable to speak and those unable to hear. Jesus healed them all and the crowds were amazed. There then comes a scene which is a kind of parable of what Jesus stands for: the compassion of God and his desire that the needs of all be supplied. The people have been with him for three days and are hungry. They must be fed. There’s not much to feed them with—seven loaves of bread and a few fish. It is enough for Jesus. And again and again people who have dedicated themselves to caring for the hungry and homeless have found what they needed turning up on their doorstep.
At the end, seven (a perfect number) baskets are still left uneaten. All this symbolises the care God takes of his people. And yet, is it happening in many parts of the world today? There is a crucial element in today’s Gospel we cannot overlook. It was not Jesus, but his disciples who distributed the food. In our world there is an abundance. Food production outpaces population growth. If there is hunger, malnutrition and other unmet needs, it is because we, God’s stewards, are failing in our task of distribution. If there is hunger and suffering and death, it is not the work of God—it is our failure to work.
Christmas is a time of giving. We could ask ourselves: To whom are we giving? With whom are we sharing what we have or can afford to buy? Perhaps we could widen the circle this Christmas with gifts that mean life or death for the receivers. Beneficiaries who will never know who their benefactors are, and who will not be able to give anything back. Did Jesus not say something about giving so quietly that the left hand will not know what the right hand is doing?
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Thursday of Week 34 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Revelation 18:1-2,21-23;19:1-3,9
Our reading is in two parts today. In the first part, an angel announces the fall of Babylon, and this is followed by songs of victory in heaven. The reading consists of relatively short extracts from chapter 18 and half of chapter 19. John has a vision of an angelic messenger, who had great authority and whose brightness lit up the whole earth. He is, of course, an emissary from God and speaks with God’s voice. He announces the coming fall of ‘Babylon’, i.e. Rome, the centre of the empire and the source of so much persecution for the Christians.
The image of the coming destruction of the city must echo in many ways the state of Jerusalem after it was destroyed by the Romans within the living memory of the author and his readers:
…a dwelling place of demons,
a haunt of every foul spirit,
a haunt of every foul bird,
a haunt of every foul and hateful beast.
The remains of the devastated city were scavenged by all of these.
In a symbolic act:
…a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea.
This was a very large millstone, sometimes called a “donkey millstone” because it was so heavy it required a donkey to turn it. This is what was going to happen to Rome. It is going to be destroyed because of its idolatry and for the sufferings it brought on the Christians. In the Gospel, Jesus had said that the only deserving treatment for someone who blocked a disciple coming to Christ was to have a millstone put around his neck and that he be thrown into the sea:
Woe to the world because of things that cause sin! Such things are bound to come, but woe to the one through whom they come! (Matt 18:7)
As he throws the millstone, the angel recites a hymn. The violence shown in the throwing of the boulder is a symbol of the violence by which the power of Rome will be overthrown and the city obliterated. The hymn which follows describes a city which has become a ghost town: no music, no craftsmen’s skills or the grinding of corn (ironically described as “the sound of the millstone”), no more any light or the happy voices of those newly wed. This is big change from the days when its citizens were:
…magnates of the earth,
and all nations were deceived by [their] sorcery.
Rome, of course, did not quite experience the utter destruction that was the fate of Jerusalem. However, the empire did collapse when ‘barbarians’ from the north came in and took over. It seemed like the end of the world at the time, but life went on—and the Christians, far from being wiped out—converted the invaders.
The vision of John moves into the second part (chap 19) to a huge heavenly assembly singing in joy and triumph:
Hallelujah!
Salvation and glory and power to our God…
This is the song of those who have come successfully through persecution and oppression.
The acclamation, ‘Alleluia’, which means “Praise the Lord!”, is used four times in this passage, but is found in no other part of the New Testament. It is a hymn of thanksgiving that:
…he has judged the great whore
who corrupted the earth with her prostitution,
and he has avenged on her the blood of his servants.
This is another reference to Rome’s idolatrous and corrupt regime. God’s servants, who suffered so much, have been avenged. It is, of course, not a description of what is actually happening, but is a prayer of hope for the future, a prayer that was indeed answered, and a boost for the morale of suffering Christians.
The passage ends with the fourth of the seven beatitudes scattered through the book:
Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.*
We too believe that evil will never have the last word. Truth and goodness and justice will eventually prevail. Let us pray that we may so live our lives that we, too, will receive that invitation to join the wedding feast of the Lamb. All our lives are geared to making sure we do get that invitation. Nothing else matters!
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*A list of these ‘beatitudes’ was given in the commentary for Monday of Week 33.
Tuesday of Week 27 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 10:38-42
Today we find Jesus in the home of the sisters, Mary and Martha. We also know that they have a brother named Lazarus. We meet the sisters again (showing the same characteristics as in this story) in John’s account of the raising from death of their brother (John 11:1-44). They lived in Bethany, a village about 3-4 km from Jerusalem and it seems that Jesus was a familiar visitor to the house and a friend, for at the time of Lazarus’ illness, Jesus is told:
Lord, he whom you love is ill. (John 11:3)
The story of Martha and Mary is, in a way, a contrast to the previous story about the Good Samaritan. It restores a balance in our following of Christ. The story about being a neighbour could lead us to think that only if we are doing things are we loving God.
Martha was a ‘doer’ to the point of being a fusspot. Martha, we are told:
…was distracted by her many tasks…
Serving others is something that Jesus himself did constantly, and he urged his followers to do the same. But it should not be a burden or distraction. And, after Martha had complained about her sister, Jesus told her:
…you are worried and distracted by many things…
A true servant does not experience anxiety and worry because that signifies a lack of peace.
Because Mary seemed to be doing nothing, Martha saw her as idling and even selfish. Martha must have been somewhat surprised when Jesus said that:
Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.
What was that better part? Wasn’t Mary just sitting at the feet of Jesus and doing nothing? No! We are told that she:
…listened to what he was saying.
Listening to his message is something Jesus tells his disciples and the crowd they need to be doing all the time. And we have mentioned before that listening involves understanding, accepting and assimilating that message so that it becomes part of our very selves.
If we do not spend time listening to him, how can we know that our activity is properly directed? It is easy for us Christians to be very busy, but are we busy about the right things?
To answer that question we have to stop to listen, to discern and to pray. And, ultimately, the highest form of activity in our lives is contemplation—being in conscious contact with God and his Word. If I find myself saying that I do not have time to give some time to prayer or contemplation each day, then there is a serious imbalance in my priorities and in my understanding of what it means to love and serve my God.
This story blends nicely with the parable of the Good Samaritan which went before it. Taken together they express what should be the essence of Christian living—action for others that is guided by what we learn in contemplation. This was the pattern of Jesus’ own life—he spent long hours bringing healing to people’s lives (being a neighbour), but also retired to quiet places to be alone in communion with his Father. The same pattern must be ours too. We call it being ‘contemplatives in action’.
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Monday of Week 2 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Hebrews 5:1-10
Today we have a lovely reading on how Jesus fulfils the role of our High Priest. In it we come to realise that the true humanity of Jesus makes him a more, rather than a less, effective high priest to the Christian community. This was something with which the Hebrew Christians, for whom the Letter was written, were having difficulty.
Paul explains that every high priest is a bridge builder between God and his people.
Every high priest chosen from among mortals is put in charge of things pertaining to God on their behalf, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.
The writer is thinking mainly of the role of the high priest on the Day of Atonement. This ritual was celebrated:
…to make atonement for the Israelites once in the year [i.e. annually] for all their sins. (Lev 16:34)
It was on this occasion, too, that the ‘scapegoat’ was sent out into the wilderness, carrying with it all the sins of the people for the past year.
The priesthood, which is connected more with Aaron than Moses, will be treated more fully later in the Letter. In saying that no priest takes the role upon himself, the author may be referring to the fact that in Jesus’ time, the office of the high priest was in the hands of a family who had bought control of it.
The priest:
…is able to deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is subject to weakness.
“Deal gently” is a translation of the Greek word metriopathein. This is the only time it appears in the Bible, and it was a term used by the Stoics to express a perfect balance between too much and too little feeling. Here it corresponds more to our word ’empathy’, the ability to enter into the feelings of others.
The priest, as a human being, is familiar with the sins and weaknesses of others because he experiences them in himself. And he has to include his own sinfulness in the offerings. The priest is no ‘super-man’. He is a priest, not because of his superiority over others, but simply because he has been chosen among many to fulfil his intercessory role. This is something over the years which we have tended to ignore, with disastrous consequences in more recent times. As the reading says, it is precisely his sharing in the weaknesses of his fellow human beings which qualifies someone for the role of priest.
That is why the Levitical priest:
…must offer sacrifice for his own sins as well as for those of the people.
In our Eucharist too, the celebrant joins with everyone else in confessing his sinfulness during the Introductory Rite.
Being a priest is not an honour that one can confer on oneself; it is truly a calling from God:
…one does not presume to take this honor but takes it only when called by God, just as Aaron was.
Even Christ did not take the honour to himself; it was conferred on him by his Father. And Psalm 2 is quoted in support of this:
You are my Son;
today I have begotten you… (Ps 2:7)
And from Psalm 110:
You are a priest forever
according to the order of Melchizedek. (Ps 110:4)
The author of Hebrews is the only New Testament writer to quote this verse of Psalm 110 to show that Jesus has been called by God to his role as priest. The implication here is that Christ is both a priest in the order of Melchizedek and that of Aaron, the source of the Levitical priesthood.
The reading now expresses in a most eloquent way how Jesus, our High Priest, really shared in the pain and sufferings of his brothers and sisters. It shows Jesus’ ability to sympathise with sinners because of his own experience of the trials and the weakness of human nature, especially the fear of death. In his present exalted state, weakness is now foreign to him, but he understands what we suffer because of his previous earthly experience.
Some people tend to think that Jesus, as the Son of God and having a divine nature, did not suffer greatly in his passion. On the contrary, the scene in the garden, when he sweat blood (Luke 22:44), indicates the degree of terror that he had with the prospect of what was coming. He begged, through prayers and silent tears, to be spared the pain of a terrible death by crucifixion. And yet, he offered himself so utterly to his Father, he submitted himself so completely, that his prayer was heard.
But this did not mean that he was spared from suffering and death. On the contrary, he learnt through his suffering the real meaning of total listening and submission to and union with his father:
Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered…
Jesus was not saved from dying because that was the ultimate purpose of his coming among us, but he will later be rescued from death.
And so, in a complete meeting of wills with his Father, he was “made perfect”. He becomes for all those who unite themselves completely with him, the source of salvation and of wholeness. He becomes our Priest forever, a:
…high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.
He does that by his total submission to the will of his Father and he points the way for us to follow.
This passage is so full of meaning for all of us. Pain and suffering of some kind will be part of everyone’s life. Like Jesus, we will often pray that that pain be taken away, but sometimes we learn that it is precisely in the pain that God is to be found. He is there not to take the pain away, nor to help us get round it, but to go through it. It is a paradox of life and one which we need to reflect on, namely, that a life entirely devoid of the challenge of pain is somehow an incomplete life. It is in dealing with our own pain and the pain of others that we grow in strength and maturity—and in love and compassion. And, strange to say, it is there too that we can find deep happiness.
And when we are deeply puzzled by acts of unspeakable violence or devastating natural disasters, and ask why so many innocent people suffer, we need to gaze at a crucifix and ask the same question: “Why did God not spare his own Son?”
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Tuesday of Week 13 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Genesis 19:15-29
In today’s reading we move to the destruction of the two cities of Sodom and Gomorrah as a punishment for their terrible immorality. Omitted is the scene when the two men, who are now being called ‘angels’ (Greek, angelos, meaning ‘messenger’) and who represent God’s own presence, are offered hospitality in Lot’s house. It is while they are there that that all the men of Sodom, both young and old, come demanding to “know” (in a sexual sense) the visitors. Rather than abuse his solemn obligations of hospitality, Lot offers his two virgin daughters instead. To our way of thinking today, it was an abhorrent and horrifying offer, but it shows that, at that time and in that culture, the demands of hospitality even outweighed other very personal considerations. Sadly, a more terrible example of this is in the Book of Judges (19:22-28).
In the end, the men of Sodom are dazzled by a blinding light so that they cannot find their way into the house. The men/angels warn Lot of the coming catastrophe and urge the family to flee at once. But when he makes the announcement to his family, Lot’s sons-in-law refuse to take him seriously. Their scepticism will seal their doom (perhaps this is also a device to exclude non-relatives of Abraham being saved?).
At dawn the following morning, the angels again urge Lot to leave with his household unless he wants to share the fate of the two cities. But Lot is still hesitant. Is he reluctant to leave behind all his wealth and prosperity? But the men take Lot by the hand together with his wife and two daughters and forcibly bring them to a place outside Sodom. This is seen as an act of God’s mercy, and it might be noticed that only the direct relatives of Abraham are so rescued—the in-laws are left to their own devices.
Once outside the city, Lot is told to flee the Plain where the cities are and take to the hills. Again, Lot is reluctant to do what he is told:
Oh, no, my lords; your servant has found favor with you, and you have shown me great kindness in saving my life, but I cannot flee to the hills, for fear the disaster will overtake me and I die.
He is also afraid of being attacked and robbed in uninhabited places. He suggests being allowed to take refuge in another smaller city which is not far away and where he would be safer.
We are told “He replied” (presumably the Lord) and grants this concession and promises that this city will not be destroyed. But again, he urges Lot to get there as quickly as possible “for I can do nothing until you arrive there”. This city, we are told, was called Zoar, a word related to the Hebrew misear, meaning ‘a trifling thing’. The town lay to the southeast of the Dead Sea. Later, during the Roman period, an earthquake occurred and the town was flooded; it was rebuilt higher up the shore and inhabited until the Middle Ages.
By now the sun is already up. And at that moment fire and sulphur rained down from heaven on Sodom and Gomorrah. The two cities were destroyed and all the Plain with them, including all the inhabitants and all plant life.
According to historians, it is usually understood that the cause was volcanic, and there was a huge earthquake. This would naturally be accompanied by a disastrous fire, especially in a region containing bitumen and its accompanying gases. The text enables us to locate the catastrophe in the southern part of the Dead Sea. The subsidence of the southern half of the Dead Sea bed is known to be recent as geologists reckon, and the whole district is still geologically unstable. The doomed towns were, besides Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zebolim. Of course, it was understood by the sacred authors as punishment for the terrible immorality of Sodom and Gomorrah, and bears resemblance to the story of the Flood, where just one family, loyal to Yahweh, survived.
As Lot and his family fled, his wife, who disobeyed the order not to look back, was turned into a pillar of salt. Now only three people have survived—Lot and his two daughters (who had a double escape). The southern end of the Dead Sea features colossal salt pillars and perhaps one of them suggested the appearance of a woman and hence the legend.
Meanwhile, Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had spoken with the Lord and:
…he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the plain and saw the smoke of the land going up like the smoke of a furnace.
From the heights east of Hebron, Abraham could easily see the region at the southern end of the Dead Sea, where the Cities of the Plain were probably located. The passage from Genesis concludes:
So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had settled.
The reading ends with the suggestion that Lot’s being saved was less for his own sake than for the sake of his uncle, Abraham. Earlier, when they were dividing the land between them, it had been suggested that Lot had made a less wise and more selfish choice in picking that area. He has now lost it all.
As we saw in the First Reading commentary for Monday of Week 13 in Ordinary Time, there is much discussion now about the nature of the real sin of the people of Sodom. Traditionally it has been seen as a condemnation of homosexual acts (Lev 20:13). Such acts were considered an abomination by the Jews and were regarded as typical of the surrounding gentile peoples (Lev 20:23).
Others however would see the sin of Sodom as the violation of the respect due to visitors, a sin against hospitality. Hospitality towards strangers has almost a sacred character among the people of the Middle East. This is seen in Lot’s anguished thought to even offer his daughters to address the lust of the townspeople, rather than dishonour his visitors.
The Church today (see The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2357-2359) distinguishes between homosexual acts (teaching that these are objectively sinful) and homosexual inclination (attraction to members of the same sex that is not subject to one’s own free will). The Church now recognizes that a minority of men and women are so constituted that they are sexually attracted primarily to people of their own gender. We are called to treat all people with compassion and to support and encourage all persons to live out Jesus’ call to holiness. We do this by obeying the Commandments, following the teaching of the Church as it evolves over time, and acting in accord with our informed conscience.
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Saturday of Week 13 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Genesis 27:1-5,15-29
We jump a couple of chapters in our story today. There is relatively little about Isaac in the Genesis story; he is seen mainly in relationship to his father Abraham and his two sons, Esau and Jacob. Today’s passage begins with Isaac already in his old age and blind. As we will see, he is blind in more ways than one. Before he dies he wants to give his final, solemn blessing to his heir—and whoever gets that blessing will be the heir.
He calls his elder son, Esau, into his presence. Isaac tells his son that he is now old and does not know when he is going to die. He gives instructions to Esau to get his hunting gear together and bring back some game. Then he is to take it and prepare the kind of savoury dish which Esau knows his father likes. Then Isaac will give Esau, his son and heir, a blessing before he dies. The language suggests a special blessing which was legally binding and, as a solemn deathbed blessing, especially efficacious.
Rebekah, the mother, happens to overhear this conversation. She is not happy because she wants the blessing to go to Jacob, her favourite son. She makes a plan to deceive her husband and reveals it to Jacob. It is not included in our reading, but Jacob had a serious problem with his mother’s plan. He was a smooth-skinned man, but Esau was very hairy. If Isaac touched Jacob he would immediately know that it was not Esau he was blessing. Rebekah says she will take care of that problem.
After Esau had gone out into the countryside to hunt some game, Rebekah dressed Jacob in Esau’s best clothes, which were in the house. She also covered Jacob’s arms and the smooth back of his neck with the “fur of the kids” which had been killed to make the savoury dish. She then gave the savoury dish which she had prepared, and some bread for Jacob to bring in to his father. In the presence of his father, Jacob announces, “Here I am.” “Who are you, my son?” asks Isaac. Isaac replies that he is Esau, his father’s first-born. Dressed in Esau’s best clothes, Jacob tells his father to get up and enjoy the dish he has prepared and then to give his son his final blessing.
When Isaac expresses surprise that the hunting has taken such a short time, Jacob smoothly replies that it was God who put the animals in his path. To bring God into the lie might seem blasphemous to us, but the mentality of the time would see no wrong in it, as every event was ascribed to God, ignoring ‘secondary’ (i.e. human) causes.
Perhaps still a little sceptical, Isaac asks his son to come near so that he can feel him and make sure whether it is Esau or not. After touching him, Isaac comments that the voice is the voice of Jacob, but the arms are the arms of Esau. And then Isaac gives his blessing to Jacob, a blessing that was intended for Esau. Even then, the father still seems to have his doubts. He asks once more: “Are you really my son Esau?”, to which Jacob brazenly answers, “I am”.
Isaac then asks for the dish to be brought so that he could eat and give his blessing. The favourite dish is brought as well as some wine. The dish had been prepared by Rebekah who would know exactly the tastes of her husband. The father then asks his son to come closer and to give him a kiss. As Jacob does so, the father recognises the smell of the clothes, the clothes of Esau, and he deception is complete. We might note that in his attempt to obtain the covenant blessing, Jacob, the father of Israel, betrays with a kiss. Later, it will be Jesus, the great Son of Israel, who will ultimately obtain the blessing for the new Israel, who will be betrayed with a kiss (Matt 26:48-49; Luke 22:48).
There then follows the beautiful blessing of Isaac given to Jacob, but intended for Esau. In saying “Be lord over your brothers”, Isaac unwittingly blesses Jacob and his descendants, thus fulfilling God’s promise made earlier to Rebekah. In chapter 25, Rebekah becomes pregnant with twins who jostle with each other within her womb. When she asks the Lord what is happening, he tells her:
Two nations are in your womb,
and two peoples born of you shall be divided;
the one shall be stronger than the other;
the elder shall serve the younger. (Gen 25:21-23)
This is not an altogether edifying story. One evaluation from the New American Bible goes like this:
“What Jacob did in deceiving his father and thereby cheating Esau out of Isaac’s deathbed blessing is condemned as blameworthy, not only by Hosea (12:3) and Jeremiah (9:3*), but also, indirectly, by the Yahwist narrator of the present story, who makes the reader sympathise with Esau as the innocent victim of a cruel plot, and shows that Jacob and his mother, the instigator of the plot, paid for it by a lifelong separation from each other. The story was told because it was part of the mystery of God’s ways in salvation history—his use of weak, sinful people to achieve his own ultimate purpose.
*Put no trust in any brother. Every brother imitates Jacob, the supplanter, every neighbor is guilty of slander. (Jer 9:3—citation from New American Bible Revised Edition)
And the Jerusalem Bible comments:
“The morality is immature, but the lie reported here mysteriously serves God’s purpose; the free divine choice preferred Jacob to Esau.”
We need to remember, too, in an earlier scene not read during the liturgy at this time, that Esau, simply because he was very hungry, had exchanged his birthright with his brother Jacob in exchange for a bowl of red soup (see Gen 25:29-34). The author of Genesis makes the laconic comment:
So Esau treated his right as firstborn with disdain.
(Gen 25:34)
Esau is seen therefore as having forfeited his birthright in a very trivial and irresponsible way. Jacob, then, was technically entitled to what his brother had yielded to him, and he did that in the way we have seen.
Even so, we probably still cannot give our full approval for Jacob’s behaving in this way, but it is an example where a less than good action produces, in the long-term, desirable results. We can all probably think of similar examples from our own lives. We may have felt unjustly deprived of something which we thought was due to us, but as a result something far better came into our lives. As people like to say, “God can write straight with crooked lines.”
Jacob and his mother definitely deceived Isaac and were dishonest with him, but subsequent events clearly proved that Jacob was going to be a much better patriarch than Esau. We have no right to act unjustly or falsely, yet we do need to realise that good things can come from the immoral or mistaken actions or decisions of others.
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Saturday of Week 16 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Exodus 24:3-8
The giving of the Decalogue at Mount Sinai is followed in the Book of Exodus by the Book of the Covenant, a list of ordinances and laws concerning subjects like the treatment of slaves, murder and injury, theft of animals, matters demanding compensation, duties towards enemies, the sabbath and great feasts. Today’s reading gives us the solemn ratification of a covenant between God and his people based on the teaching that God has given to Moses.
After Moses had told the people of all the words and ordinances he had received from the Lord, the people answered with one voice:
All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do.
Moses then committed all the words of the Lord to writing.
Early the next day, he set up an altar with twelve pillars at the foot of the mountain, each pillar representing a tribe of Israel. God was symbolically represented by the altar and the people by the twelve pillars surrounding it. He then sent young men to offer holocausts and sacrifices of young bulls as peace offerings to the Lord. By burning them completely, they indicated that they were being given back to God in their entirety.
Moses then took half of the blood of these animals and put it in large bowls. The rest of the blood he splashed on the altar. He read the Book of the Covenant to all the people and again they replied:
All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.
Finally, Moses took the blood in the bowls and sprinkled it on the people, saying:
Here is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.
In this way God and his people were united in one purpose. Their intentions were good, but as we shall see, they did not always live up to their solemn promises.
Here Moses acts as mediator between God and the people, a priestly role. He unifies them symbolically by sprinkling the blood of a single victim first on the altar, which represents Yahweh, and then on the people. In this way the pact is ratified by blood.
We can see here foreshadowings of our own covenant sacrifice with God which we do through, with and in Jesus Christ. The “blood of the new covenant” is that of Jesus himself. The altar is the cross and the priest and victim are both Jesus. In the same way, the New Covenant is ratified by the blood of Christ:
…this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. (Matt 26:28)
Jesus pours out not the blood of animals, but his own blood on the altar of the cross.
Like the Israelites of old, we many times fail to live up to the promises we make in our covenant with Christ. Indeed, we begin every Eucharist with the confession of our sins and failings. As we celebrate this Eucharist today let us renew our covenant promises and beg Jesus to help us do so.
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Saturday of Week 26 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Baruch 4:5-12,27-29
In this passage, Jerusalem is personified as a widow, both lamenting and consoling her children in captivity. It is a message of encouragement and hope.
Take courage, my people, who perpetuate Israel’s name!
Israel was originally the name given to Jacob, but later was applied to the people who were his descendants. All the Israelites were traditionally descended from Jacob’s twelve sons, each one of them becoming the patriarch of a tribe bearing their name. Israel had been sold to foreign nations not with the idea of their extermination, but as the result of their provoking their God. They had angered their Creator:
…by sacrificing to demons and not to God.
The whole history of Israel, especially after settling in Canaan, was a long record of idolatry, following the religious practices of their pagan neighbours and indulging in all kinds of immoral behaviour. They entirely forgot the God who had reared them and brought sorrow on Jerusalem who had nurtured them.
When Jerusalem saw God’s anger falling on her children and saw them being taken away into captivity in Babylon, she went into mourning:
God has brought great sorrow upon me, for I have seen the exile of my sons and daughters, which the Everlasting brought upon them.
It was God’s punishment for their countless infidelities. Jerusalem had nurtured them so carefully and now:
I sent them away with weeping and sorrow.
But it was the result of their own choices. Experiencing the terrible loneliness of a widow deserted by her own children (a terrible thing to happen in those times), she begs her neighbours not to gloat over her:
Let no one rejoice over me, a widow and bereaved of many; I was left desolate because of the sins of my children, because they turned away from the law of God.
In the last part of the reading, Jerusalem urges her children to call again on God’s name:
Take courage, my children, and cry to God, for you will be remembered by the one who brought this upon you.
It was by their own choice that they had strayed far from God; let them now turn back and search for him with all their might. The same God who brought such disasters on them because of their sin, will—if they turn back:
…bring you everlasting joy with your salvation.
We always pay the price for our sinfulness when, like the Prodigal Son, we wander off in our futile search for happiness in pleasure. The suffering that comes from sin, which is always a violation of our nature, is not God’s direct will. It is the natural outcome of words and acts which are evil, bringing hurt to ourselves and others. But the Father is always waiting, always ready to reconcile. We have only to turn back and the warmest of welcomes is waiting for us.
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Thursday of Week 28 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Romans 3:21-29
In this beautiful passage we come to the very heart of Paul’s letter. Here, as in the letter to the Galatians, Paul discusses how a person is made “righteous” or is “justified” in God’s eyes: he explains that salvation comes solely through faith in Christ.
In order to understand what Paul is saying, we need to remember the context in which he spoke. In some of the Christian communities, there were Jewish Christians who were agitating for the return of the Mosaic Law as the basis for a life in and with God. They were urging that every Christian, including Gentiles, be circumcised. Paul, himself a circumcised Jew and formerly a Pharisee, is totally opposed to this movement, as it compromises his claim that salvation is through Christ alone.
He begins by conceding that the “righteousness of God” was formerly made known through the Law and the Prophets, in other words, through the whole Jewish tradition of the Old Testament. ‘Righteousness’ or ‘justice’ refers to God’s inherent goodness and infinite love extended to every single human being. In the Old Testament understanding, we are ‘just’ (righteous) when we are totally in harmony with God’s justice as revealed in the Law. But now he says, with the coming of Jesus Christ, God’s “righteousness” is to be seen in a completely new light and as no longer dependent on the Law. Now “righteousness” is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe in him as Lord and Saviour sent by the Father.
Formerly, the Jews regarded themselves as being on a different level before God because of the adherence to the Law, but now:
…there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
“Glory” has many meanings, but basically it refers to the importance of God. So to fall short of God’s glory means that we do not adequately recognise the importance of God. Although God is present to human beings and is communicating himself to them more and more, this process can reach its climax only when the importance of God is fully revealed in Jesus. He proclaims his Father’s importance in all he does and suffers, and so gives the Father the fullness of glory:
…I always do what is pleasing to him. (John 8:29)
Then comes Paul’s key sentence:
…all [Jews and Gentiles alike] who believe…are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus…
So much theological blood has been spilt over this one sentence! For our purposes we will try to keep it simple. The key words are ‘justified’ and ‘grace’ and ‘redemption’.
For ‘justified’, other translations use ‘made righteous’. In either case, we are speaking of being put in a state of total harmony with God, the opposite of the alienation that comes from sin.
And this happens “by his grace as a gift”. The Greek word translated as ‘grace’ is charis. The word means something which is given freely and is unearned or unmerited, and this is the meaning which predominates in the New Testament. Paul uses the word to describe the way God saves us through Jesus—it is a work of spontaneous love to which none of us has any claim. It is interesting that John uses the word agape in the same sense. Agape is the love that pours out from God on to all his creation, and it is the love that we are called on to pass on to others:
In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
(1 John 4:10)
This is exactly the same as what Paul is saying to the Romans.
It was, then, an act of ‘grace’—an act of love emanating totally and only from God—for Jesus to come on earth, to suffer and die, for his Father to give him up as a gift to us:
…as a sacrifice of atonement…
The only condition on our part is our surrendering to him in total faith and trust. Salvation, then, is total gift: nothing good that we can do independently of God—even our dutiful performing of the works of the Law—can ‘earn’ it. God is never, ever in our debt. We see this in the scene of the two men praying in the Temple. The tax collector is bowed humbly at the back begging God’s forgiveness for his many sins; the Pharisee is standing up in front, telling God how good he has been in his keeping of the Law, with the implication that God is obliged to reward him accordingly. And it is the tax collector who goes away ‘justified’ (see Luke 18:9-14).
So Paul says:
…through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness… [i.e. his total union with the Father]
On the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), the ‘throne of mercy’ was sprinkled with the blood of a sacrificed goat. But now the blood of Christ has done what the ancient ritual could only symbolise—purified us from sin.
We are told that God:
in his divine forbearance had passed over the sins previously committed…
This implies that total forgiveness and reconciliation were to follow, and that the complete destruction of man’s sin was accomplished through the saving death of Christ.
And the same applies “at the present time” to show how God is just and makes just everyone who has faith in Jesus as Lord and Saviour.
Then Paul says:
…what becomes of boasting? It is excluded.
He is clearly addressing those Jews in the community who are going back to strict observance of the Law as the way to God. The word Paul uses here expresses the attitude of one who boasts of their own achievements, relies on them, and claims to accomplish their supernatural destiny by their own strength. This attitude is ruled out, since one does not receive God’s acquittal by superior strength—one receives it as a gift. The act of faith excludes self-sufficiency because in it, human beings explicitly attest their radical insufficiency.
But he says:
Through what kind of law? That of works [i.e. actions]? No, rather through the law of faith.
Faith in Christ is what counts, not adherence to a set of man-made rules. And he repeats what he has already said:
For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works [behaviors or actions] prescribed by the law.
And that ‘person’ is any person:
Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of gentiles also? Yes, of gentiles also…
There were those who believed that only the Jews were God’s Chosen People and that salvation for the Gentiles was out of the question (remember the story of Jonah we had recently).
Summing up, then, it is the “law’ of faith”, that total giving and surrendering of the self to God in Christ, that saves and not the ‘law’ of works’. Salvation is not based on self-initiated acts, but on entering into an intimate relationship with a God who reaches out in love (agape) to me and calls me to share his life. That reaching out in spontaneous love is called here ‘grace’. My good works are not the down payment by which I ‘buy’ salvation; rather they are the sign of God’s love working in and through me.
There have been various interpretations over the centuries in regard to the relationship between God and ourselves:
- One is the idea that we “get to heaven” simply by the good works we do, by “keeping the Commandments”. In this view, God owes us salvation, as an employer owes the workers their wages. In reality, this misses out on the centrality of God’s overflowing grace, and is called Pelagianism. There is a hint of this in most of us!
- Another gives the impression that good works are irrelevant—all one needs to be saved is to “call on the name of Jesus”. But a balanced view is summarised in the Letter of James (2:14-26) which says: “Faith without good works is dead”. God does not love me because I am good; I am good because God makes me good from my creation, and so I am to be a carrier of goodness to others—this is to build the Kingdom of God. By my closeness in faith to Jesus I try to live by the gospel of love. I live in the light of God’s ongoing forgiveness.
- But the ideal of “Justification by faith alone” tends to see no goodness at all in our behaviour. In this view we are irrevocably sinful and only the blood of Christ “covering over our sins” makes access to God possible. In essence, this was Luther’s solution to his own very scrupulous conscience: overwhelmed and riddled with guilt he felt that God could never forgive his sins, but hoped that Jesus the Redeemer would turn a blind eye to them. He would say that we are saved in spite of the sinfulness which remains in us, whereas the Catholic position is that we are already created in grace, and its lifelong effect is to bring our interior transformation.
- Luther’s position on ‘interiority’ led to a Christian life which makes little accommodation for what we would call an “interior” life. Classical Protestantism speaks little of spirituality; it dropped what we call the “religious life” of the monk, friar, nun. It did not include schools of prayer and contemplation, or the making of retreats. It did not recognise saints. Despite all of this, however, the lives of many Protestants are deeply penetrated by the Spirit of Christ, and they often put to shame many of us Catholics by the love and care they show for the poor and the needy.
- Some forms of extreme Protestantism focus on ‘private salvation’ and seem to lack concern for bringing God’s Kingdom on earth through the struggle for justice, freedom and peace. The focus seems rather on personal salvation. For them, the only task is that of calling on Christ in faith. With this thinking, there will also be the exclusion of what Karl Rahner called the “anonymous Christian” or the “Kingdom person”, that is, someone who, though not aware of the Christian message, leads a life which reflects the deepest attitudes of truth, love, justice, community sharing, respect for the dignity and equality of every individual. But these are the values for which Jesus lived and died.
- It is gratifying to know that in recent times Catholics and Lutherans (as well as other Protestant groups) have come together in dialogue and, freed from the polemics of an earlier time, have learnt that there is really not so much disagreement as before over the understanding of Paul’s words. Many churches, too, have been taking back features of the Roman church whose absence were a loss to their Christian life.
On our part, we Catholics are getting a richer concept of faith which, in the past, was often identified with the intellectual acceptance of the Church’s doctrines and an obsession with orthodoxy as the test of a “good” Catholic. We are becoming more aware that faith as trust and surrender to a loving Christ is of primary importance. The Latin word credo literally means ‘I give my heart to’. In praying the Creed we ‘give our hearts to God.’
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Monday of Week 30 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Romans 8:12-17
Paul continues his comparison between being “in the flesh” and being “in Christ”. He focuses today especially on baptised Christians, to whom his letter is mainly addressed.
Paul begins by repeating what he has already said about the difference between living in the “flesh” and living in the Spirit. Now that we are in Christ, there is no obligation to be ruled by our lower human nature, our sensual selves. To live that way leads to self-destruction. On the other hand, if, by the power of the Spirit of God working in us, we can overcome the habits which originate from the body, then we will truly live. By the power of the Spirit, we can nullify the pull of our lower nature and experience life in its fullness—physical, moral, social and spiritual.
Because, he says:
…all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.
Actually, the Holy Spirit is much more than one who inwardly guides; he is the very principle of a truly divine life. As Paul said of himself:
…it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.
(Gal 2:20)
He emphasises elsewhere that the whole community is the Body of the Risen Christ, in whom Christ is really present.
In a general sense, of course, God is the Father of every single person, to whom he extends his love and providential care. That is what we mean when we pray ‘Our’ Father—and that ‘our’ cannot exclude a single person. But when we identify ourselves with Christ as Lord through faith and accept his gospel message as our Way, then we become children in a special sense. Then we are children not merely by accident of birth, but by faith, thus setting up a special positive relationship.
And, as children, we:
…do not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but…a spirit of adoption.
This enables us to cry out “Abba, Father!” These words seem partly addressed to those Jewish Christians who want to bring back the Law as their way of life. To live under a law in this way is a kind of slavery and it engenders fear, an ongoing anxiety that the law is not being perfectly observed.
On the contrary, through faith, we have been adopted into the family of Christ, who is our Brother, with God as our Father. Adoption was common among the Greeks and Romans, who granted the adopted son all the privileges of a natural son, including inheritance rights. We Christians are adopted children by grace; Christ himself, however, is God’s Son by nature.
It was in the garden on the Mount of Olives that Jesus called out:
Abba, Father, for you all things are possible… (Mark 14:36)
‘Abba’ is a universal term found all over the world for a child to address his or her father with intimacy, love and affection. In English, we might say, ‘Papa’ or ‘Daddy’. The Chinese term sounds almost exactly the same as Abba—”Ah Ba”. Now we, too, can address our God in the same words and with the same feelings. For the traditional Jew or Muslim this would be unthinkable, where the name of God is held in such respect that it can hardly be mentioned. Even Matthew, in many parts of his Gospel, goes out of his way to avoid directly using the name of God.
Furthermore, Paul says:
…it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God…
When it is clear from all our behaviour that we are filled with the Spirit of God and Christ, when our spirit and the Spirit of Christ merge as one in us, then we know that we are truly his adopted children.
From this, Paul draws another conclusion:
…and if children, then heirs: heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if we in fact suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
As adopted children of God, we share also in the inheritance that comes to Jesus. We are heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. The glory that is Jesus’ will also be ours, provided we share in his suffering.
It is presumed that we accept from God all the experiences, some of which may be very painful, that may come in living our faith openly, in publicly identifying with Christ and his Way and in giving witness to the Kingdom. We are not only heirs; we need to act like heirs, with our co-heir, Jesus, as our model.
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