Thursday of Week 9 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Mark 12:28-34
Not all the Pharisees and Scribes were hostile to Jesus—we have Nicodemus as one very good example. And here today we have a scribe who approaches Jesus with no apparently hostile motive. He had seen how well Jesus had dealt with the challenges put to him by various groups. He now comes to ask a question which was much debated among scholars.
There were more than 600 commandments in the Jewish Law, and it was often asked which of these had priority over the others. Unusual for him, Jesus immediately answers the man’s question. Was this because, unlike on other occasions, it was asked with politeness and respect and was a genuine request for an opinion?
In answering the question Jesus does not give just one commandment but two:
Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.
and
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Both answers are taken from the Law of Moses (Deut 6:4-5 and Lev 19:18 respectively) and so satisfy his questioner’s request. However, as we read through the New Testament and especially the words of Jesus in the Gospel, we know that Jesus gives his own twist to these two commandments.
First, in answering a question about which is the most important commandment, he gives two commandments which, in his view, are quite inseparable; one cannot be kept without the other. We cannot say we love God and then refuse to love our neighbour. He will make two other refinements. He will extend the meaning of ‘neighbour’ to include every single person and not just the people of one’s own race, religion or family (see Luke 10:30-37). And he will set as the standard of love, not just the love we are able to show, but the depth of love which he will show by dying for us (John 15:13).
The scribe is very pleased with the answer that Jesus gives and expresses full agreement, and:
When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
That is to say, the scribe is very close to having the spirit of the gospel and to the following of Jesus. He still has to make the crucial step of committing himself to follow Jesus and become actively involved in the work of the Kingdom.
Whether Nicodemus or this scribe took that step or not we do not know. However, we can make our choice to start today or renew our commitment to keep this double commandment and to reflect on how well we put them together.
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Thursday of Week 28 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 11:47-54
There are more strong words from Jesus against the Pharisaic mentality. Today the charge is of hypocrisy:
Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your ancestors killed.
The people build monuments to remember the prophets of old, but those same prophets were killed by their ancestors. On the one hand, they are building the monuments as an act of atonement, while they themselves have exactly the same attitudes as their ancestors. They do not listen to their own teaching.
Jesus utters words which he identifies as “the Wisdom of God”:
I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute…
It is not a quotation from the Old Testament or any other book known to us. It could refer to God speaking through Jesus (the Word, the Wisdom of God) or presenting, in quotation form, God’s decision to send prophets and apostles, even though they would be rejected.
Jesus is basically saying that the mission of the Church (his Apostles) is linked with the mission of the Old Testament prophets, who, like Jesus’ disciples, suffered and, in some cases, died at the hands of their contemporaries. Jesus, of course, himself will be one of them, the last and greatest Prophet.
Jesus says the scholars of the Law carry with them guilt for the killing of every good person and every prophet since the murder of Abel down to that of Zechariah. The murder of Abel by his brother Cain is recorded in Genesis (4:8), the opening book of the Old Testament, and that of Zechariah, son of Jehoiada in 2 Chronicles (24:20-22). This latter book is regarded as the closing of the Hebrew Testament by the Jews. It is like our describing the whole Bible in terms of ‘from Genesis to Revelation’. Jesus was referring to the history of martyrdom right through the whole of the Old Testament.
There is one final attack against the scribes and their way of thinking and acting. They interpret the Law in such a way that they make it inaccessible to the ordinary person. And, what is worse, they do not observe it themselves:
For you have taken away the key of knowledge; you did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering.
They kept both themselves and the people in ignorance of the true way to salvation and wholeness. As it is put in Matthew’s Gospel:
But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. (Matt 23:13)
One wonders how many of our Church leaders, teachers and theological and moral ‘experts’ have not done exactly the same thing over the years and down to the present day? How many Catholic parents and teachers have made the Christian message basically inaccessible to the young, and then we wonder why they have no interest in religion?
Not surprisingly, all these attacks only increased the hostility of the Pharisees and the religious leaders against Jesus. They were able to get him to speak on a multitude of religious questions hoping that he would convict himself out of his own mouth. As far as they were concerned, they were more than successful.
What they did not realise was that Jesus was operating from a completely different vision of what life is really about. His new wine could not fit into their old wineskins. The questions for each one to ask are: Do I share the vision of Jesus? What does ‘Christianity’ mean to me?
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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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Tuesday of Week 5 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Genesis 1:20—2:4
God completes the work of creation we were considering in yesterday’s reading.
Evening and morning, the fifth day
On the fifth day God creates swarms of living creatures from the waters (rivers and seas, and salt and fresh water are not distinguished) and the birds of the air. These include:
…the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm and every winged bird of every kind [i.e. everything that flies, including insects].
The Hebrew word for ‘create’, bara, is a verb whose only subject can be God. There are three objects of creation mentioned: the universe as a whole, sea monsters controlling the waters, and human beings, who control the land. And:
God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”
And, as before:
…God saw that it was good.
Evening and morning, the sixth day
On the sixth day it is the turn for land-based creatures—all kinds of domestic animals (cattle, sheep), creeping things (reptiles, snakes, insects and small animals), and wild animals. It was God who brought all these into being. And he saw that they were good.
Also on the sixth day he creates human beings, saying:
Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.
The “us” in this passage certainly does not denote many gods, but God taken together with the retinue of the divine court. The plural can also express the majesty and fullness of God’s being, and the common name for God in Hebrew is elohim, a plural form (recall also that, in the past, the pope and some royalty used the term ‘we’ in speaking of themselves).
While some translations of the Bible use the word “man” in lieu of “humans”, the original translation of the word used is a collective noun for the whole human race, male and female, and so we read later in the sentence, “let them have dominion”. The New Revised Standard Version Bible updated edition (NSRVue, the translation cited in these commentaries) is more accurate in using the term “human” (note, the separate creation of man and then woman is found in the second creation account).
In our image
The human image, in some paradoxical way, resembles a God who has no visual image—perhaps in his speech, his intelligence and moral sense. We should note the opposite, namely, that the Bible does not hesitate to depict divine manifestations in human form. God is even presented with human feelings—sadness, disappointment, anger, vengeance and so forth.
This close relationship with God distinguishes human beings from the animals. It also involves a distant sharing in God’s nature: intellect, will, dominion and authority. We are like God in our access to truth and wisdom, if on an infinitely lower level. We are like God in ability to love. All this paves the way for an even higher image: our sharing in the divine nature through the gift of grace (God’s love experienced and active in our lives). Being in God’s image, humankind is given dominion over all other living things, including wild animals—in the sea, on land and in the air.
Now we have the first piece of poetry in the Bible—forty-percent of which is poetry:
So God created humans in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
Male and female God created them
Both male and female are created equally in the image of God, who is beyond gender and inclusive of both. Compare this also to the later narrative of woman’s creation (see this Thursday’s reading).
They, too, are told to increase and multiply, to fill the earth and be responsible for it and for all the animals, birds and living things within it. And to both humans and all the fish, animals and birds are given the fruits and seeds of every tree and plant. It is a description of a golden—and vegetarian—age, when human beings and animals were at peace with each other, all having only plants for their food. That will change with the coming of Noah (Gen 9:3).
The work of creation of both heavens and earth is now finished, completed in the six days when work was allowed:
God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.
God rested on the seventh day
With his work completed, God rested on the seventh day. And in this way God blessed the seventh day and made it ‘holy’, because on that day he had rested from his work of creation. In future, his people would work on six days but would, in imitation of Yahweh, ‘keep holy the Sabbath day’. It would be a day of prayer and worship and of rest from all kinds of work.
The Sabbath (Hebrew, shabbat) is of divine institution, for on that day God himself rested. The word shabbat is avoided here since, according to the Priestly author, the Sabbath was not imposed until the giving of the law on Sinai, when it then became the sign of the covenant (Exod 31:12-17). However, even at the creation God set an example which was to be followed.
The last sentence of the passage brings to a close one of the creation stories in Genesis, but it can also be read as the beginning of the next section:
These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.
Reflecting on today’s reading, we cannot be unaware that our responsibility to be stewards of God’s creation has frequently led to serious abuse of our environment at all levels and is a major concern today. We have mistaken stewardship for domination and control rather than good management.
The whole of creation is put into our hands to supply our needs. But we realise more and more that we ourselves are part of that creation, and that there is an essential symbiosis, a mutual interdependence. From mighty galaxies to sub-atomic particles there is a seamless robe of being into which we must fit, in a way that benefits all.
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Monday of Week 2 of Lent – First Reading
Commentary on Daniel 9:4-10
The theme of the readings today is repentance; it is a prayer for God’s mercy and compassion. It is extraordinary that for over 1,000 years this prayer from the Book of Daniel has been read in today’s Lenten Mass. It is an excellent penance prayer—a national act of contrition describing God’s perfection and man’s imperfection. It is a prayer of sorrow and repentance for the many ways in which we have failed to listen to God and his messengers. It is a prayer which contains humility, worship, confession and petition:
…we have sinned and done wrong, acted wickedly and rebelled, [turned] aside from your commandments and ordinances. We have not listened to your servants the prophets…
And:
Righteousness is on your side, O Lord, but open shame, as at this day, falls on us…
So much of the time, these are not the words we hear from people’s lips—or our own. As soon as something goes wrong, we immediately start looking around for someone to blame.
Our media spend a great deal of time and space pointing fingers at others as the source of our troubles. We call it “scapegoating”. It is something we all indulge in to a greater or lesser extent. Just let us listen to a few people gossiping together over a pint or a cup of coffee.
Today’s reading calls on us to point the finger at ourselves and to be fully aware of how we have failed, have sinned, have rebelled—and have much to be sorry for. A good way to measure our sensitivity in this area might be to look at our confessions. When we do go, what do we confess to? Do we just throw out a few platitudinal admissions (e.g. ‘telling lies’, ‘distractions at prayers’, ‘losing our temper’), or do we go deep into the areas where we truly fail in our relationship with God, with others and with ourselves?
Perhaps we do not go to Confession at all because “we can’t think of anything to say”. At the same time, most of us would be very slow to reveal to others our inner thoughts and feelings because, to tell the truth, we are quite ashamed of them. Paradoxically, it is often the Saint, the one who is closest to God, who is most aware of his or her sinfulness and need for healing.
Lent is a time for conversion, renewal and change. It is a time for openness—especially with oneself. That cannot even begin to take place until we are aware of, and acknowledge in ourselves, the areas where that change has to take place.
And, having recognised our faults and the harm they have done to others and to ourselves in our relationship with God, we beg his mercy and compassion. And we know for certain that God’s mercy and compassion are guaranteed, once we open ourselves to him.
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Monday of Week 2 of Lent – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 6:36-38
Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
This is the last sentence in Luke’s version of Jesus’ teaching on the need to love our enemies. We saw the Matthaean version last Saturday. There the passage ends with:
Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
(Matt 5:48)
It is clear that in showing compassion for all, even those who wish us evil, we are to aim at imitating our heavenly Father.
God’s compassion is all-embracing. His love reaches out to all without any discrimination between saint and sinner. Like the rain and sun which fall equally on all, so God’s compassion and mercy are extended to all. We, too, are being called to follow the example of our God and of Jesus his Son. We remember the words of Jesus as he was being nailed to the cross:
Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. (Luke 23:34)
Here is the compassion of God being expressed in an extreme situation. These same words will be repeated by Stephen when he is being stoned to death.
In today’s Gospel, we are told to follow that compassion by not sitting in judgement on others. That in no way means that we are to be blind to the genuine faults of others. But we are not in a position to take the higher moral ground so that we can sit in judgement on the supposed wrongdoer.
If we are honest, we know we judge others a lot—often with very little evidence and even less compassion. Our media, too, are full of judgment. Our conversations, our gossip is full of judgment. We lack compassion for the weaknesses of our brothers and sisters.
At the same time, we do very little to help them correct their ways; in fact, they seldom hear the criticisms we make. It is most often done behind their backs. If they unexpectedly appear, we quickly change the subject. We seem to take pleasure in the backbiting. We might even be disappointed if they reformed! Yet Jesus tells us:
…do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
Before receiving the Eucharist we pray,
Forgive us our sins as we forgive the sins of others.
This is a dangerous prayer to make, yet it trips so easily off our tongues, the same tongues that can be so critical and judgemental.
The Gospel calls for great generosity in our relationship with others. Not just material generosity, but generosity in love, in understanding, in tolerance and acceptance, in compassion and forgiveness. The more generous we are with others the more we will receive in return. And so we pray:
Lord, teach me to be generous,
to give and not to count the cost,
to fight and not to heed the wounds,
to toil and not to seek for rest,
to labour and to seek no reward
save that of knowing that I do your holy will.
Amen.
Tuesday of Week 2 of Lent – Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 23:1-12
Today’s Gospel looks like an attack on the scribes and Pharisees, but we should really see it as directed towards members of the Christian community, especially its leaders. Jesus levels two criticisms against the Pharisees:
—they don’t practise what they preach, and
—they do what they do to attract the admiration of others.
In fact, the words of Jesus are a warning to all people in authority. Jesus was attacking the scribes and Pharisees, but his words can be applied to many positions in our own society. Executives, managers, doctors, lawyers, bishops, priests, civil servants and parents can all be included here. In so far as they have genuine authority, they should be listened to—the doctor about things medical, the lawyer about things legal, the priest about things spiritual and the parents about family matters.
The Pharisees tried to impress by wearing wider phylacteries and longer tassels. The phylacteries were small boxes containing verses of Scripture which were worn on the left forearm and the forehead. The tassels, worn on the corners of one’s garment, were prescribed by Mosaic law as a reminder to keep the commandments. By making each of these items larger, one drew attention to one’s superior piety and observance. It is not difficult to see parallels in our time.
Unfortunately, it would be wrong to follow the behaviour of such people, especially when they become arrogant and domineering, use their authority to draw attention to themselves and assert their supposedly superior status, or impose burdens on those ‘below’ them, which they themselves do nothing to alleviate.
Authority is not for power, but for empowering and enabling. Real authority is a form of service, not a way of control or domination or a claim to special privileges. So Jesus has no time for people who insist on being addressed by their formal titles. Matthew’s attack on the scribes and Pharisees points to similar weaknesses on the part of church leaders in his time. It is something that again we may be all too familiar with in our own time:
“Hi, John!”…”Mr Jacobs to you, if you don’t mind.”
“Hi, Father Steve!”…”Monsignor McDermott to you.”
As Jesus says, ultimately we are all brothers and sisters. And elsewhere, he tells us that the greatest among us is the one who best serves the needs of those around him, rather than the one who has the most impressive titles, or the biggest desk, or eats in the executive dining room, or has his/her picture on the cover of a magazine. Unfortunately, we contribute a lot to this nonsense because some of us dream of being there ourselves someday.
All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.
The perfect model is Jesus himself, who:
…though he existed in the form of God…emptied himself, taking the form of a slave…became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. Therefore God exalted him even more highly and gave him the name that is above every other name… (Phil 2:6-9)
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Wednesday of Week 29 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Romans 6:12-18
Today we move into chapter 6 of Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Even spreading this letter over four weeks, there are many wonderful passages which have to be omitted. The only solution is to go through the whole letter ourselves in our own time.
Having again spoken of the contrast between Adam and Christ and said some words about baptism, Paul goes on to say that goodness, not sin, must be in charge of our lives. Just before this, he had told the Romans:
The death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Rom 6:10-11)
And so, Paul continues in today’s reading:
Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies, so that you obey their desires. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness…
Though baptism destroys sin in us, as long as we are still in this world and our body has not yet “put on immortality” (1 Cor 15:54), sin can still find a way to reassert itself in a ‘mortal’ body, where sensuality still has a hold. Instead, we are to surrender ourselves totally to God, as people who have been brought to life from the death of sin. We are to offer all our human capacities—spiritual, intellectual, emotional, social—to God so that they will become instruments leading us to goodness of life:
For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
Paul conceived of sin as a power that enslaves, and so personified it. ‘Not under law’ means no longer under the regime of the Mosaic Law, whose external observance was the basis for the Jewish way of life.
He is certainly not saying that the Christian has been freed from all moral authority. Law, by itself, provides no enablement to resist the power of sin. On the contrary, violation of the Law only increases the awareness of sin. Grace, on the other hand, enables and liberates. Its only law is the law of love (agape-love).
Apparently some people were countering that, if we are no longer bound by the Law, but by ‘grace’, then people could do what they liked. “By no means!” thunders Paul. That seemed to be Luther’s position with his famous dictum of Pecca fortiter (Sin vigorously). Luther seemed to say that once we have committed ourselves in faith to Jesus as Lord, our sinfulness, which will inexorably continue, will be ‘over-looked’ or ‘covered over’ by Christ’s grace. We saw that Luther’s interpretation of Paul was partly influenced by his own apparent impotence in overcoming his lower appetites. He needed a way to be with Christ even in his sinfulness.
However, even this is not quite the same as saying that, once we are under grace, we can throw morality to the winds, that we can do what we absolutely like with impunity. No Christian could hold that position. We part company with Luther when he says that we are powerless to become better people, good people.
Paul totally rejects the idea that, with grace, we can forget about moral behaviour. To have committed oneself to Christ totally must result in an inner transformation which steers us in the direction of goodness and love. To be in Christ is to be free, not freedom to sin, but freedom not to sin. True freedom is the ability to choose the good. Sin, as a choice of evil, can never be an expression of true freedom; it is an abuse of freedom.
The Jerusalem Bible comments on the freedom that comes from Christ:
“Christ has freed human beings from evil so as to restore them to God. Paul develops the biblical ideas of ‘redemption’ and of liberation from death, and in order to bring out their implication makes frequent use of a metaphor that his contemporaries would find impressive: the slave redeemed and set free who can be a slave no longer, but must serve his new master freely and faithfully. Christ has paid for our redemption with his life; and he has made us permanently free. The Christian must be careful not to let himself be caught again by those who once owned him, i.e. by sin; the Law, with its ritual observance; the principles of the world; and corruption. He is a free man, son of a free mother, i.e. the spiritual Jerusalem. This liberty is not licence to sin. It means serving a new master, God, the Lord Jesus Christ, to whom the Christian now belongs, for whom he lives and dies; this obedient service is prompted by faith and leads to righteousness and holiness. This is the sort of freedom a son has, one who has been made free by ‘the law of the Spirit’. And, he must be prepared to surrender his own freedom to serve his neighbour in charity and respect if someone else’s scruples require it. Slavery as a social institution may be tolerated in a society that is, after all, transient. It has no real significance in the new order established by Christ: the Christian slave has been enfranchised by the Lord Christ, and the slave and his master are equally servants of Christ.” (edited and textual references omitted)
Paul then goes on to distinguish two kinds of slavery:
Do you not know that, if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?
To become a slave is to be put under the will and control of another person. To be the slave of sin can only result in death, but to be truly obedient to righteousness leads to life.
The word ‘obedience’ contains the root of the verb ‘to hear’. To turn a deaf ear to goodness and submit to evil leads to sin and death. To listen to the voice of goodness and submit to it is the way to life.
We have a striking example in Jesus who, in obedience to his Father, offered up his whole body in life and in death for our liberation. In his Letter to the Philippians, Paul says that Jesus:
…emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. (Phil 2:7-8)
We, because of and through Christ, have exchanged one form of slavery for another:
But thanks be to God that you who were slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted and that you, having been set free from sin, have become enslaved to righteousness.
To “become obedient” implies willing submission and not an obedience that is forced, imposed or legalistic. Christians have changed masters. From being slaves to sin, they have become slaves to ‘righteousness’, to that inner goodness that results from opening oneself to the love of God that comes through ‘grace’.
On the other hand, being ‘under the law’ meant looking for personal salvation by obeying external rules and regulations. As we see in the case of many Pharisees, it led to arrogance and a very dangerous kind of inner corruption. Such a corruption can infect us Christians too, if we are not careful. When we surrender to a life of sin, we are headed for death. When we surrender ourselves to God it leads to justice, to goodness. Paradoxically, to become the slave of “justice”, or righteousness, is to become free.
Freedom, as we said, is the ability to identify totally with the good. To use one’s freedom to sin is a contradiction. True freedom enables us to choose the good and loving act at all times and in every situation.
Although some may not see it that way, there is no one who enjoys more real freedom than the one who is totally committed to the Way of Jesus. Because it is the Way, it is the Vision of life, to which we are called by the deepest needs of our being.
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Saturday of Week 33 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on 1 Maccabees 6:1-13
We read today of the end of the reign of King Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who caused such sufferings to the Jews, as we have seen. Disasters now overtake him, resulting in his sickness and death. For the author of First Maccabees the reason is clear—his desecration of God’s holy city of Jerusalem.
In terms of strict chronology, this episode of the king’s death should really be recorded before the Dedication of the Temple which we saw in yesterday’s reading. The reading begins by telling us that Antiochus was making his way through the Upper Provinces of his empire, that is, inland to the east. Reports had reached him of a city called Elymais which was extremely wealthy with silver and gold. There was a temple there full of golden armour which had been left there by Alexander the Great, who was the son of Philip of Macedon, the first king of all the Greeks. This was the temple of Nanaea-Artemis.
In fact, there is no town of this name known. ‘Elymais’ is the Greek form of Elam, which refers to the country around Susa, the old capital of Persia, close to where the River Tigris runs into the Persian Gulf. The term more strictly refers to the mountainous region north of Susa.
Antiochus attacked the city, but was unable to take it because, as we are told, the inhabitants had forewarning of the attack. In Second Maccabees we read:
When the leader reached Persia with a force that seemed irresistible, they were cut to pieces in the temple of Nanea [a Persian counterpart of the Greeks’ Artemis] by a deception employed by the priests of the goddess Nanea.
(2 Macc 1:13)
First Maccabees does not mention this and may not know of it. The author says that the king was routed in battle and had to retreat to Babylon which lay some distance to the northwest on the River Euphrates.
On top of this, more bad news reached the king. His armies which had invaded Judaea had been routed, and one of his top generals, Lysias, in particular, who had advanced with massive strength, had been forced to flee before the Jews. The Jews, in turn, were now more powerful than ever thanks to the large amounts of weapons they had captured in their victories.
They had also pulled down the “abomination”—the altar to Zeus which Antiochus had erected in the Jerusalem Temple—and rebuilt the old walls which surrounded the sanctuary and fortified Beth-Zur, one of the king’s cities.
All of this was too much for Antiochus, who was shocked and profoundly shaken by the turn of events. These defeats—and perhaps the overthrow of the statue of all the all-powerful gods, Zeus and Baal (in whom he believed), filled him with grief and undermined his health. He took to his bed, fell sick with grief because things had turned out so badly for him. After spending some days confined to his bed, with recurrent attacks of melancholy and depression, he realised that his end was near. It was time for him to make his peace with his gods.
On his deathbed, he summons all his “Friends”, that is, his close associates and ministers, and makes a deathbed speech. He cannot sleep and he is overcome with anxiety about his fate. He wonders how he could have come to such a state of distress, considering how generous and well-loved he was in his heyday. He remembers only the favours he showered on those who were close to him, but seems to have been completely unaware of the depth of suffering that he had caused in the peoples he had conquered and over-run. How many other authoritarian tyrants have felt the same—that all they did was for the good of their people? Dictators come to believe their own propaganda.
However, Antiochus does remember now how wrongly he acted in Jerusalem, when he plundered the Temple of all its sacred vessels and ordered the extermination of the people of Judah “without good reason”. He is now convinced that this is the reason why so many misfortunes have overtaken him and why he is dying miserable, “perishing of bitter disappointment in a strange land”. It is the just punishment for all he did against God’s people. There is an element of true repentance in his words and for this he lays himself open to God’s mercy.
Technically speaking, he was not dying in a “strange land” because Persia still was part of his Seleucid Empire. This book says the king’s death was punishment for the pillaging of the Temple in Jerusalem, but Second Maccabees says it was for plundering the temple of Artemis. Second Maccabees also says, as we saw from the quotation above, that the king died in this temple, having walked into the trap set for him and his ‘Friends’ by the priests of the temple.
Actually, Antiochus must have died before all of this, but the author has to adapt his story to fit the time frame he has chosen. As we saw in speaking of the Dedication feast yesterday, it is likely that it was because the king was already dead that Judas Maccabeus was able to seize the Temple in Jerusalem. As far as we are concerned, it is not an important point because it does not alter the basic meaning of the story and what it might say to us.
How do we think our lives will be evaluated by those who have known us in life? Do we believe ourselves to be more kindly and compassionate than we actually are? What actions of ours in the past do we now see were very wrong and unjust? What amends can we make, for it is never too late to turn ourselves round. We cannot undo what has been done, but we can act to make a radical change in our lives and relationships from today on.
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Monday of Week 33 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 18:35-43
Here we have Luke’s version of the story of the blind man, called by Mark, Bar-Timaeus—the son of Timaeus.
In Mark, the story is strategically placed at the end of a long teaching section where Jesus’ disciples are slowly deepening their understanding of Jesus and his mission. The story, full of symbols, sums up all that has gone before. It is like a mini-gospel (see the commentary for Thursday of Week 8 in Ordinary Time).
In Luke, the story has also a very significant positioning. It falls between two other stories, both about rich people. One was a highly religious man who was not able to accept Jesus’ condition that he share his wealth with the poor before becoming a disciple. The other is about a man who supposedly was anything but religious and yet, after meeting Jesus, gives away a large proportion of his wealth to the poor. Which of these was really blind?
In addition, the first story of a rich man is followed by the third prediction of Jesus’ suffering, death and resurrection, after which, says Luke, the disciples did not understand what Jesus was talking about:
But they understood nothing about all these things; in fact, what he said was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said. (Luke 18:34)
His Apostles—they too are blind.
As the story opens, we are told that Jesus was approaching Jericho. Jericho was already a very ancient city, located about 8 km west of the River Jordan and about 25 km north-east of Jerusalem. In Jesus’ time, the Jericho of the Old Testament was largely abandoned, but a new city, south of the old one, had been built by Herod the Great. It was the last main stop for Jesus before arriving in Jerusalem.
In Mark’s version, Jesus is leaving Jericho, but here Luke has Jesus approaching the city. Mark has Jesus leaving Jericho on the way to Jerusalem and his passion, and the blind man becomes his follower. Luke has Jesus going into and through Jericho on the way to Jerusalem because he wants to bring in Zacchaeus (a rich man whose eyes are opened by Jesus), a story not mentioned by either Mark or Matthew.
Luke’s story begins with a blind man sitting beside the road begging (in Matthew’s account, there are actually two blind men; see Matt 20:29-34). As we have mentioned before, the ‘road’ is the Way to Jerusalem on which all of Jesus’ disciples must walk together with him. When the beggar hears that Jesus is passing by he begins to call out in a loud voice:
Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!
By addressing Jesus as ‘Son of David’, he implies Jesus’ role as Messiah-King.
The people tell him to keep quiet. A useless beggar like him has no right disturbing the Master. But the man ignores them and keeps crying out (in this he reminds us of the persistent widow we read about the other day). Then, Jesus stops. If the man had not kept calling out, Jesus might not have heard him and might have passed forever out of his life. How often does that happen to us?
Jesus orders the man to be brought to him. Again, it is always through other people that we come to know Jesus—and sometimes it will be through me, and only through me, that others will come to know him. I may be the only link that a person has with Jesus—something to think about. On the other hand, I may be the one person who blocks someone approaching Jesus and his Way. We saw earlier what happens to those who are a ‘scandal’, a stumbling block to Jesus.
Jesus asks:
What do you want me to do for you?
It is a question that he keeps asking me. How do I answer? Have my answers changed over the years? Today let me reflect on what I really want from him. And ask him for it.
Now listen to this man’s response to Jesus’ question:
Lord, let me see again.
Of course, one might think, it was a natural response from a person who was blind. But in a wider sense, so is each one of us. We all need to see. It is our poor sight that prevents us from knowing Jesus and seeing where he wants us to go. We could hardly make a better request.
Jesus immediately responds:
Receive your sight; your faith has saved you.
If only we too had the faith that would help us to see clearly!
And what did the man do when he could see? He became a follower of Jesus and gave glory to God. No longer blind, no longer a beggar, no longer by the road, but on the road with Jesus. On the road—and Jesus is the Road, the Way—to Jerusalem and all that it means. That is the natural response for those who can really see.
Just before this (not part of our readings), the rich man who wanted “eternal life” was not able to “see” and so could not accept Jesus’ invitation. In contrast, tomorrow we will meet someone who did have his eyes opened and responded generously.
The story also applies to Jesus’ disciples who gradually will have their eyes opened too, and then they will understand why Jesus had to suffer and die on his way to glory. They will understand that it was the uttermost proof of God’s love for each one of us.
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