3 January – Gospel
Commentary on John 1:29-34
Yesterday we saw John the Baptist denying that he was the Messiah or any of the great prophets. Today he gives testimony to Jesus as the one he had been talking about.
The passage begins with “The next day…” We mentioned already that the opening section of John up to the wedding at Cana represents a week, echoing the seven days of creation in Genesis. We will see that phrase occurring three more times in the first chapter, and that brings us to the fourth day of the week. There is then a gap, but the wedding at Cana is introduced as taking place “on the third day”, that is, after the previous four, and hence is the seventh day.
As John saw Jesus approaching, he said to those around him:
Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!
Another feature of this first chapter is that the author introduces the various titles of Jesus which he uses later on.
Why the “Lamb”? The central feature of the Jewish Passover feast was the lamb, which was eaten during the Passover meal. It recalled the lamb which the families of the Israelites ate on the eve of their escape from Egypt, and whose blood was painted on the doorposts of their houses. When the angel of God came to destroy all the firstborn, it “passed over” the houses of the Israelites, which had been marked with the lamb’s blood. This became then a symbol of liberation, and one of the most important celebrations in the Jewish calendar.
For us, however, there is now a new symbol of liberation, a new Lamb. Jesus is both the ‘offer-er’ of the sacrifice and its victim, and his death and resurrection inaugurate a New Covenant between God and his people. It is perhaps significant that in all the Gospel accounts of the Last Supper, there is no mention of a lamb being eaten during the meal. This is because there was a new Lamb, who told his companions to take and eat, take and drink the bread and wine “handed over for you”. And it is through the blood of this Lamb that we find salvation and liberation.
The title Lamb of God also recalls the suffering servant led like a lamb to the slaughter, which we read about in Isaiah (53:7,10). In Revelation, too, we read of the victorious apocalyptic lamb who will destroy the evil in the world (5:5-7; 17:14).
The Baptist then indicates the superiority of Jesus over himself:
This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’
In the context of the Prologue we read earlier, this is an intimation of Jesus’ pre-existence as the Word with God (remember that, chronologically, John was slightly older than Jesus). John also explains why he was baptising; it was to make Jesus known to the people of Israel. His baptism did not have the power to forgive sin; this would be the prerogative of Jesus and his disciples. (In John’s Gospel, the Baptist also says that up to this, he had not known Jesus, which conflicts with the other Gospels where he is presented as a close relative.)
John then continues to talk about the baptism of Jesus, whereas the event itself is described in Matthew and Luke. He says that he personally saw the Spirit of God come down on Jesus like a dove, and it stayed with him, indicating the enduring relationship between the Father and the Spirit with the Son. The dove is a symbol of new life, recalling the dove which brought the olive branch back to Noah’s ark to indicate that the Flood was over. At the same time, the One who told John to baptise with water also said that the One on whom the Spirit came down would, in turn, baptise with the Holy Spirit. The Baptist concludes:
And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Chosen One.
“Chosen One” is also translated as ‘Son of God’, so here we have another title of Jesus.
Each one of us has also received the same Spirit in our baptism. It was that Spirit which inspired Jesus in all his Messianic work, climaxing in his death on the cross. May the same Spirit inspire us to follow in Jesus’ footsteps and join with him in his work to build the Kingdom.
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Monday of Week 5 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Genesis 1:1-19
Today we begin reading the Book of Genesis and the story of Creation. Although Genesis is at the beginning of the Bible, that does not mean that it was the first book to be written, still less that it represents an “eyewitness account”. In fact, experts distinguish a combination of accounts written at different times. The form we now have is a later, sophisticated work, written with a specific purpose in mind. It is not a scientific account and it does not clash with more recent scientific discoveries because it is written on a completely different level.
It is more about God, and our relationship with God, than about how the world actually came to be. The central message is that there is only one God, and that he is the source of all that is; he is totally good, and everything he creates is good. Genesis acts as an introduction to the five books of the Pentateuch, the Law of Israel, and shows how God brought order into a chaotic universe.
Our present selection of readings covers the first 11 chapters, which deal with what is called the ‘primeval history’ or pre-history, the Creation, the various ‘falls’, and ends with the incident of the Tower of Babel. The rest of Genesis is concerned with the origin of God’s people, with the first patriarch Abraham and his immediate descendants—Isaac, Jacob and Joseph and his brothers. We will cover the second part of Genesis in Weeks 12-14 of Cycle I. The last word of Genesis is “Egypt”, and leads immediately into the Book of the Exodus, describing a much later period where we find the Israelites living in Egypt.
Today’s reading begins with God bringing into existence (out of nothing) what we might call the infrastructure of our world. This section introduces the whole Pentateuch and, in a way, the whole Bible. It shows how God brought (created) an orderly universe out of primordial chaos (of nothingness). It forms a background for the call of Abram and the real beginning of the biblical story in chapter 12.
This first version of the creation story is attributed to the ‘Priestly Source’ (vs the ‘Yahwist Source’). As such, it is less detailed and more theological. Its primary focus is on God’s role. It aims at a complete logical classification of beings whose creation is deliberately fitted into the framework of a week that closes with the Sabbath day of rest. The text makes use of the primitive science of its day. It would be a mistake to look for points of agreement between the picture given here and the data of modern science (hence, the futility of the debate between the so-called ‘Creationists’ and ‘Evolutionists’).
The text uses a scenario found in some creation myth stories, but the emphasis here is very much on our world as the creative work of a single transcendent and all-good God, existing before the world he brought into being.
Recounting the origin of the cosmos and its glorious centrepiece, earth, it shows God masterfully orchestrating the events of creation. Each phase follows more or less the same basic pattern established on Day One: divine command, result, divine approval, enumeration of the day. The effect is anything but monotonous. Like a musical theme with variations, the story shows the world gradually becoming more mobile and complex, until, by the sixth day, it is ready for self-perpetuation through procreation (for detailed discussion, see The Harper-Collins Study Bible introductory section on Genesis).
“In the beginning” is not seen as a beginning from infinity as suggested by the opening of John’s Gospel:
In the beginning was the Word… (John 1:1)
It is not a creation from nothing; it is the beginning of recorded history rather than the origin of being which the philosophers seek to understand. The earth was a formless void and darkness covered the abyss (deep). There was a total lack of order and no light. God was absent. But with God there came order, an astounding and undeniable feature of a universe whose existence is often attributed to pure chance.
A “wind from God” hovered over the chaotic watery wastes of the deep. This is not the creative wind of the Spirit. Creation is said to have been brought into being either by the “word” or the “act” of God. But some translators do see the Spirit of God present in the phrase.
The deep (or the abyss) is the primordial ocean according to the ancient Semitic understanding of the universe. After God’s creative activity, part of this vast body forms the salt-water seas (Gen 1:9 and following); part of it is the fresh water under the earth (Ps 33:7; Ezek 31:4), which wells forth on the earth as springs and fountains (Gen 7:11; 8:2; Prov 3:20). Part of it, “waters above the heavens” (Ps 148:4), is held up by the dome of the sky (Gen 1:6 and following) from which rain descends on the earth (Gen 7:11; 2 Kings 7:2,19; Ps 104:13).
The rest of today’s reading deals with the first four days of creation. First, there is light, but the sources of the light are not yet mentioned. Light is created, but not darkness, which is a purely negative concept. The creation of light is mentioned first, since the succession of days and nights is to be the frame in which the work of creation takes place. God saw the light as good, and God separated light from darkness. It was “good” in the sense of being both acceptable and also intrinsically good:
God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.
There was evening and morning, the first day
In ancient Israel, a day was considered to begin at sunset. According to the highly artificial structure of the creation story, God’s activity is divided into six days to teach the sacredness of Sabbath rest on the seventh day in the Israelite religion. We should remember, too, how in the Gospel the Sabbath begins on the evening of Friday. That was why Jesus had to be buried before sundown on Good Friday, when the Sabbath would begin (see Mark 15:42).
On each of the succeeding days the same formula will be followed:
God said: Let there be…
– What was commanded comes into being.
– God sees that his work is good.
– The number of the day is given.
God then made a dome or vault in the midst of the waters, separating waters from waters. The vault, that is, the sky or the heavens, now divided the waters above the dome from the waters below it. This is the universe as the ancients understood it in their visual observations, from a vantage point they believed to be the centre: a flat earth and a curved and solid heavenly dome surrounded above and below by primordial waters. The water below produced springs from which rivers and lakes originated; the water above explained the rain, which came through apertures (“windows”) in the vault (the understanding of cloud-forming evaporation was still centuries away!).
Evening and morning made the second day
The waters under heaven now are brought together and reveal dry land, thus producing “Earth” and “Seas”:
And God saw that it was good.
Next vegetation and plants appear bearing all kinds of fruits and seeds. (What is remarkable is that the succession of creations harmonises with a contemporary understanding of evolution: vegetation, swarming creatures, fish, birds, animals [mammals] and human beings.) Again:
…God saw that it was good.
Evening and morning, it is the third day
Lights are now created in the vault or dome to divide the day from the night. Light has already been created, but now its dissemination is divided among the heavenly bodies. These will also mark seasons, days and years, and give light to the earth. There is one great light to rule the day and a lesser one to rule the night, as well as the stars—to separate light from darkness. The names ‘sun’ and ‘moon’ are deliberately omitted because these were often treated as gods by neighbouring peoples. For God’s people, they are no more than heavenly lamps dividing day and night and marking the seasons and times for festivals.
God saw it was good. Evening and morning it is the fourth day
Through all this there is the underlying refrain:
And God saw that it was good.
The message is clear: there is only one God and he is totally good and everything he does is good—very good. Why then is there so much evil and suffering in the world? The answer to that question will come later.
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Tuesday of Week 2 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Mark 2:23-28
Today we have a third confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees on the place of the Law in people’s lives. His disciples are accused of violating the Sabbath by picking ears of corn (“heads of grain”) as they walked through a field. Stealing was not involved, as ‘gleaning’, especially by the hungry poor, was tolerated. But the Law forbade reaping on the Sabbath. One could hardly call what the disciples were doing ‘reaping’, but with the casuistic mind of the Pharisees and teachers of the Law, the bias was on the side of safety. The perfect observer of the Law would not do anything that could even be regarded in the slightest as a violation.
Jesus solves the issue by appealing to the Hebrew Testament, which, of course, the Pharisees recognised as the word of God. He reminded them how King David and his followers, because they were hungry, went into the house of God and took the loaves of offering, even though only the priests were allowed to eat them. Jesus then enunciates two principles. The first was:
The Sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the Sabbath…
The second was that:
…the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.
The first principle is a very important one, namely, that all laws are for people and not vice versa. They are not ends in themselves, and moral perfection is not in their literal observance. The hunger of David and his men transcended a religious regulation (that only the priests could eat the bread of offering). For the Jews of Jesus’ time, virtue was in perfect observance of the Law. For Jesus, observance of the Law was only perfect when it was for the good of others and oneself.
The second principle was that Jesus, as the Son of God, was not bound by human laws, however lofty their motive. We would do well to remember those principles in the living out of our Christian faith. It is possible to lead rule-centred Christian lives rather than love- and people-centred lives.
There is only one law in our faith:
Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. (John 13:34)
Even God will not violate that law because God is love. Any law which, in a particular situation, does not serve this overriding law can be set aside, and should be set aside. Positive laws are necessary for smooth functioning in society, but they are never absolute.
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Tuesday of Week 19 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Deuteronomy 31:1-8
We come to the last part of Deuteronomy which tells of the last days of Moses. Today’s reading deals with handing on the baton of leadership to Joshua.
Moses knows that his end is near. He tells the people that he is already 120 years old (probably not to be taken too literally) and no longer capable of being their leader. This is not a reference to any physical disability. The reason is that God has forbidden him (and Aaron) to lead the people into the Promised Land:
…the Lord has told me, ‘You shall not cross over this Jordan.’ (Num 20:12)
We read about this in last Thursday’s First Reading (Num 20:1-13).
The people need not fear because Yahweh will be with them as they conquer the land:
The Lord your God himself will cross over before you. He will destroy these nations before you, and you shall dispossess them.
And he gives his encouragement to Joshua who will take his place as their leader:
Joshua also will cross over before you, as the Lord promised.
Yahweh will treat the resident peoples as he treated Sihon and Og the Amorite kings and their country—he wiped them out. He will put the resident peoples at the Israelites’ mercy and will deal with them exactly as laid down by the commandments he gave.
Moses passes on Yahweh’s message to the people:
Be strong and bold; have no fear or dread of them, because it is the Lord your God who goes with you; he will not fail you or forsake you.
The Lord’s exhortation is often given through his servants to the people of Israel. So also to Joshua, to Solomon and to Hezekiah’s military officers. By trusting in the Lord and obeying him, his followers will be victorious in spite of great obstacles.
Then Moses summoned Joshua in the presence of all the people and told him also to “be strong and bold”. He would have the privilege of leading the people into the land which Yahweh long ago had sworn to his ancestors he would give to his people. And he has no need to worry because Yahweh will show the way, will be together with his people and not let them down. Moses tells them:
Do not fear or be dismayed.
Reading this account, it is difficult sometimes not to feel that we have here, to some extent, a rationalisation of their entering someone else’s territory and taking it by force from its legitimate inhabitants, pagans though they may have been. The same questions arise in the establishment of the State of Israel in the last century and even more so in the establishment of Israel’s settlements beyond its internationally recognised borders.
The history of the Church also is not without examples of ‘God’s will’ being used to justify behaviour that later seems altogether unacceptable.
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Monday of Week 29 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Romans 4:20-25
Paul continues to give the example of Abraham’s faith as a model for all of us. One might wonder why he devotes so much space to Abraham, but we must remember that he was seen as the father of God’s people (including us), and that he was looked up to as a model of good behaviour, which won God’s favour:
No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.
Through his faith Abraham gave glory to God because all that happens in his life is clearly the work of God and not of a human person. Faith truly is all-powerful; it shares in the power of God himself.
When the father of the epileptic boy came to Jesus to heal his son, Jesus told him:
All things can be done for the one who believes. (Mark 9:23)
Paul, too, could boast of his weaknesses because, as he said:
I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
(Phil 4:13)
And so, from today’s reading, this was the faith that:
…was reckoned to him as righteousness.
This kind of faith is the sign of real ‘uprightness’, real goodness. It is not the self-generated ‘goodness’ which is no real goodness at all. As Jesus told his disciples at the Last Supper:
…apart from me, you can do nothing. (John 15:5)
It was this surrendering of himself, against all apparent reason, into God’s hands which was Abraham’s “justice”, that is, his being made right with God. This is not a moral rightness, but a total harmony of relationships, a union of heart and mind. And the word ‘reckoned’ in Scripture applies not only to him; it is there for our sake too—our faith, too, will be ‘reckoned’.
What is true of Abraham is true for every single person. Our genuine goodness will be measured by the level of our faith and trust in the God who gives us strength. And, as Abraham was made right with God because he believed in a God who brought life from the dead, so we will be justified because:
It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.
This is the source of our “justification”, our being ‘made right’ with God—namely, that we totally give ourselves to Jesus Christ, as Lord and Saviour, who died and was raised to life so that we might share that life with him. In our case we go to God in faith through our intimate following of Jesus, joining him in suffering, death and resurrection.
God may seem at times to be calling us to the impossible. But our faith helps us to see that God works in everything and through everything. Apart from Abraham, there are many other examples in the lives of Christians, especially some of the great saints. Let us follow in their footsteps.
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Tuesday of Week 34 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Revelation 14:14-19
Today’s passage, whose meaning at first sight seems puzzling, is a vision of gathering together the righteous and the good, followed by judgement on the wicked. The actual destruction of the wicked pagans will be treated more fully later on (Rev 19:11-21), but it is not part of our liturgical readings. Our reading today is inspired by a short passage from the prophet Joel (3:13) based on the grain and grape harvests:
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.
As we shall see, the grain represents the good and the wine the bad.
In his vision, John sees:
…a white cloud, and seated on the cloud was one like the Son of Man, with a golden crown on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand!
The “Son of Man” refers to Christ, and the cloud indicates a divine presence—God’s throne. The “golden crown” represents a golden wreath of victory, his victory over death and sin.
The “sharp sickle” refers to that used by the Israelites for cutting grain (usually a flint or iron blade attached to a curved handle of wood or bone). The sickle is the tool for harvesting and Christ as Judge comes to reap his harvest, gathering in, first of all, the elect—those who have been faithful to his Word.
Says a second angel:
Use your sickle and reap, for the hour to reap has come, because the harvest of the earth is fully ripe.
In other words, it is the time for the final judgement and the gathering in of the righteous. So, the “Son of Man” wields his sickle over the earth and brings in his harvest.
In the second part of the reading, we see another angel, also with a sharp sickle, coming out from the “temple in heaven”—the place where God has his dwelling. That angel “has authority over fire”. In Jewish tradition, various angels were responsible for particular aspects of the world, including wind, water and the bottomless pit. Here, fire is closely associated with the idea of judgement. Fire both destroys the bad and purifies the good.
The angel of fire “came out from the altar” where the prayers of the persecuted and martyred are carried up to God. Now judgement comes on those who made them suffer.
The angel then calls out to the One, saying:
Use your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for its grapes are ripe. So the angel swung his sickle over the earth and gathered the vintage of the earth, and he threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.
The context suggests (in contrast to the harvesting sickle mentioned earlier) the smaller grape-knife with which the farmer cut the clusters of grapes from the vine. According to the NIV Study Bible, the traditional wine press was:
“…a rock-hewn trough about eight feet square with a channel leading to a lower and smaller trough. Grapes were thrown into the upper vat and trampled with bare feet. The juice was collected in the lower vat. At times mechanical pressure was added.”
The treading of the grapes was a common symbol in the Old Testament for the carrying out of God’s judgement. In Isaiah, there is a vivid image of God treading the wine press of judgement:
I have trodden the winepress alone,
and from the peoples no one was with me;
I trod them in my anger
and trampled them in my wrath;
their juice spattered on my garments,
and I stained all my robes. (Isa 63:3)
And so, today’s reading speaks of the “winepress of the wrath of God”.
Our reading concludes at this point, but there is one more verse in the full text of the chapter:
And the winepress was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the winepress, as high as a horse’s bridle, for a distance of about one thousand six hundred stadia.
(Rev 14:20)
The pagans are to be destroyed well outside of Jerusalem because bloodshed would defile the city. Jesus too was executed and shed his blood outside of Jerusalem (Heb 13:12-13). His execution in this manner showed that Jesus and the New Covenant had been rejected and, in his dying, he identified himself with the sinner whom he came to reconcile with God.
The theme of the final judgement is one that goes right through our readings as we approach the end of the liturgical year. It is a time for reflection on where we stand before God and before each other.
These reminders are not meant to frighten us, but to help us to prepare and, above all, to be ready at all times. For our judgement is as close as the day of our death, which can come up on us like a “thief in the night”. Every day we read of people whose lives have come to a totally unexpected end. But if we are always ready, there is nothing to fear.
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9 January – Reading
Commentary on 1 John 4:11-18
The reading continues to remind us of the primacy of God’s love. It begins with a very significant statement:
Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.
One would expect the writer to have said that, if God loves us so much, we should love God back—but no. The real test of whether we are returning God’s love is our passing on that love to our brothers and sisters. God does not need our love and, in fact, strictly speaking we cannot give to God something he already has in infinite abundance. That is why we respond by passing it on.
Part of the reason for that is because “no one has ever seen God”. This statement is directed against the people called Pneumatikoi (from the Greek, meaning ‘the spirit people’), who held that a human being could make direct contact with God simply by intuition. No, God cannot be seen. That means that it is difficult to measure our real love for him. On the other hand, it is very easy for us to think that we love him. (Remember the comic strip character Charlie Brown’s famous remark: “I love mankind; it’s people I can’t stand.”)
But John says that if we can genuinely love the people around us—who are very visible indeed, sometimes uncomfortably so—then God is really present in us through that love and it gradually transforms us.
God is also present in us through our faith in and commitment to Jesus as the Son of God. The reading tells us:
God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God.
Because God is love, those who deeply love:
…abide in God, and God abides in them.
Here again, we have the double theme of this letter: To obey God is to believe in Jesus as his Son and to love those around us.
Finally, love and fear do not co-exist. When we are filled with the love of God, a love which flows out from us towards others, there is nothing we need fear. That is, we have no need to be afraid of God or his judgement (although there may be things happening in our life which may generate fear). Fear comes from the threat of punishment, but for the one who is close to God in love, such fear has no meaning. If I do experience a fear of God, then it is an indication that my love is defective. (This fear is not to be confused with ‘fear of the Lord’, one of the gifts of the Spirit. ‘Fear’ in that sense is rather a sense of awe at God’s infinity, but not the kind of fear when we come face to face with a life-threatening danger.) If there is no love in us, then we simply do not know God who, by definition, “is love”.
Repeating what has already been said, our Christian life is about being loving persons, not primarily about orthodoxy or theological expertise, or conformity to rules, or making sacrifices, or carrying out “religious” duties. St Paul put it this way:
…if I…do not have love, I am nothing. (Cor 13:2)
In verses just prior to today’s reading, John says:
Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.
(1 John 4:8)
If I am not a loving person, all the rest is a waste. If I am a truly loving person, everything else is taken care of.
And what is the source of that love? It is not ourselves. Again, John says:
In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us…
(1 John 4:10)
Our loving acts are only an expression of his love working in us and through us. Our love is always a response to his, and never the other way round. The evidence is in God’s sending:
…his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
(1 John 4:10)
Jesus hanging on the cross is the most dramatic sign of God’s love for us, a love that is totally gratuitous (so we call it ‘grace’) and never earned by any action of ours.
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Tuesday of Week 4 of Lent – Gospel
Commentary on John 5:1-16
Today we see Jesus back in Jerusalem for an unnamed festival. He goes to the pool near the Sheep Gate. John says it had five porticoes, and indeed, the ruins of such a pool have been excavated in recent times. Around the pool are large numbers of people—blind, lame and paralysed. These are the ailments that we Christians often suffer from:
During this Lenten season, let us hear Jesus asking us the question he puts to the man:
Do you want to be made well?
Unable to walk for 38 years, the man has been trying to get into the water when it is “disturbed”, but someone else always gets in before him. It seems that a spring in the pool bubbled up from time to time, and it was believed to have curative qualities. Some older versions of the New Testament at this point included the line:
For [from time to time] an angel of the Lord used to come down into the pool; and the water was stirred up, so the first one to get in [after the stirring of the water] was healed of whatever disease afflicted him.
While some may have seen this earlier version of the text, its genuineness has more recently been called into doubt, and it is now omitted.
Jesus wastes no time. He says:
Stand up, take your mat and walk.
The man is immediately cured and walks away. Again we have in the words of Jesus the intimation of resurrection to new life of which Jesus is the Source:
I am the Resurrection and the Life. (John 11:25)
It is at this point that the legalists step in. After leaving, the man is challenged for carrying his sleeping mat on a Sabbath day. How petty one can get! Here is a man who has been unable to walk for 38 years, and who is now taken to task for carrying his sleeping mat on a Sabbath. Of course, the wonder is that he can do it at all!
It is like those people who get upset because the vestments the celebrant at Mass is wearing are not the right colour for the day, or because they think someone is dressed inappropriately for church. Or people who worry that they have not been fasting for a full hour before receiving Communion—as if there can be any comparison between sharing the Body of the Lord in the Eucharist, and observing a minor man-made regulation.
It is so easy to lose our sense of proportion. For some, a rubrically correct, but deadly boring Mass is more important than one where there is a real spirit of celebration and community, and a coming together in Christ, even if the rules are not being followed to the letter.
In the Gospel story, the man answers that the one who cured him told him to carry his mat, but he did not know who that person was, as Jesus had disappeared into the crowds. Later, Jesus and the man meet in the Temple. The man is told to complete his experience of healing by abandoning a life of sin, bringing body and spirit into full harmony and wholeness. This is not to say that Jesus is implying that the man had been unable to walk because of his sin. Jesus did not teach that. But what he is saying is that physical wholeness needs to be matched by spiritual wholeness, the wholeness of the complete person.
This is the third of Jesus’ seven signs—again bringing life and wholeness. Let us ask him to do the same for us.
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Friday of Week 2 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Mark 3:13-19
Jesus goes up a mountain. It has no name because the symbolism is more important than the location. Mountains in the Scriptures are holy places associated with the presence of God. Jesus goes up mountains at more solemn moments in his public life—here, during the Sermon on the Mount, at the Transfiguration, and after feeding the 5,000.
Jesus’ purpose on this occasion is to pick the inner circle of his followers:
[He] called to him those whom he wanted, and they came to him.
Later he will say:
You did not choose me, but I chose you. (John 15:16)
A call includes both the invitation and the response. The same is true for each one of us. The call is always there—can we say the same about our response?
There were twelve in this inner circle of disciples. In the New Covenant, they would be the ‘patriarchs’, the foundational pillars of the new community, embracing the new Israel.
They are called ‘apostles’. This is a word to be clearly distinguished from ‘disciples’. The ‘disciple’ (coming from the Latin verb discere, meaning ‘to learn’) is essentially a follower who imbibes the teaching of the teacher and tries to make it part of his or her life. However, ‘apostle’ (from the Greek verb apostello, meaning ‘to go out on a mission’—like an ambassador) is essentially one who has a mandate from the teacher to pass on to others.
In the Pauline letters, where the term appears most often in the Christian (New) Testament, ‘apostle’ means primarily one who has been a witness of the Risen Lord and has been commissioned to proclaim the resurrection. Paul himself, because of his experience at Damascus, is regarded as one of Jesus’ Apostles.
The Twelve were to be Jesus’ companions. They were to preach, that is, proclaim his message of the Kingdom, and work with him to make it a reality. They were to cast out demons and liberate people from all situations which enslaved them to any form of evil.
The list is headed—as are all lists of the Apostles—by Simon Peter. For Mark, the name Peter was given on this occasion. In Matthew, it is given later, following Peter’s confession of Jesus’ identity. In the Gospel of Mark, the list included one man who would betray (“handed him over”) his Master and Lord.
And today there are still those, called by Jesus, who betray him. What about me?
Surely not I, Lord? (Matt 20:22)
There go I but for the grace of God.
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