Wednesday of Week 11 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on 2 Corinthians 9:6-11

Paul continues his exhortation to the Corinthians to be generous. He begins with a kind of proverb: skimpy sowing means skimpy reaping:

…the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.

He further adds that each one should make their donation according to what has been agreed, but to do it without a long face or under a sense of compulsion:

…God loves a cheerful giver.

As Thomas à Kempis’ Imitation of Christ says, “It is the love of the giver more than the gift of the lover that counts.” And Paul further adds that the Source of everything we have will reward us generously for our generosity because he is, in fact, the original source of all that we give:

God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.

So that the more we receive, the more we are able to share with others.

The behaviour to which he exhorts them is based on God’s own way of acting. Paul quotes Psalm 112 describing that God is capable of overwhelming generosity, so people need not fear of being short. God will provide in abundance, both supplying their natural needs and increasing their inner goodness. Paul challenges them to a God-like generosity and reminds them of the fundamental motive for encouragement—God himself cannot be outdone:

He scatters abroad; he gives to the poor;
his righteousness endures forever.

And Paul says:

He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.

In other words,

You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us…

This is the paradox: the more we give of what we have and are to others, the more enriched we become. When everyone gives, everyone gets.

Read more

Thursday of Week 11 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 6:7-15

Into yesterday’s passage on how we are to worship God through prayer, alms and fasting, Matthew places a related piece of teaching on how we ought to pray. This clearly seems to be an insertion, and today we deal with it separately.

Jesus tells his disciples not to pray like many of the Gentiles. They go in for long prayers, hoping that eventually God will hear them. That is quite unnecessary, Jesus says, because our Father already knows our needs before we ask. If that is the case, why then should we bother praying at all? We do not pray to tell God what he already knows—we pray so that we will realise more deeply our own needs and our total dependence on him.

Jesus then goes on and tells his disciples how they should pray. He teaches them, in effect, what we now call the Lord’s Prayer, or the ‘Our Father’. We have become accustomed to reciting this prayer very often—at every Mass, as well as whenever we say the Rosary and at many other times.

The prayer in this form (Luke has a shorter version) contains seven petitions. Seven is a favourite number for Matthew. In listing the genealogy of Jesus he divides it into three lists of seven (chapter 1 of his Gospel); there were probably seven Beatitudes in the original text (chap 5); there are seven parables of the Kingdom (chap 13); forgiveness is to be offered not seven times, but 77 times (chap 18); and there are seven ‘Woes’ when denouncing the Pharisees (chap 23). Finally, the Gospel itself is divided into seven main sections (Infancy, five discourses, Passion).

The text of the Lord’s Prayer should not be seen as just a formula for vocal recitation. It is, rather, a series of statements and petitions in which we affirm our relationship with God, with the people around us and with the world in general. It is a statement of faith and it is, as we shall see, a highly challenging and, therefore, even rather dangerous prayer.

Let us take a brief look at the petitions one by one.

Our Father
The challenge and the danger begin right in the first two words. We address God as Father, the source of life and of everything that we have; we have nothing purely of our own. But God is not just ‘Father’; he is ‘our‘ Father. And that ‘our’ includes every single person who lives or has ever lived on this earth; not a single person can be excluded.

In addressing God as ‘our Father’ we are acknowledging that every human person (every one of us) is a child of God, and therefore, that we all belong to one huge family where we are all, in a very real way, brothers and sisters to each other. There is no room here for rejection, or hatred, or prejudice or contempt of any kind based on race, nationality, colour of skin, gender, sexual orientation, social class, religion or anything else. If I am not prepared to accept every single person as a brother or sister, I will have problems even beginning to say this prayer.

May your name be revered as holy
Other forms are ‘Hallowed be thy name’ or ‘Holy be your name’. Of course, God’s name is holy no matter what we say or think. We make this prayer more for our sake rather than for his. Here we are praying that God’s name be held in the deepest respect by people everywhere. That is sadly not the case. Some people despise his name and others do not even know it. We pray that the whole world will know God’s name, which is to say, to know and recognise God as their God and Lord, their Creator and Conserver and the final end of their lives on this earth. It is, in fact, another form of the next petition.

Your Kingdom come
We have already spoken about the nature of the Kingdom. It might be more accurate to say, ‘Your kingship come’. In other words, we pray that every person in our world may put themselves consciously and willingly under the kingship and lordship and the love of God. We do this, above all, by our working together to make this world the kind of place that God wants it to be—a place of truth and love, of justice and peace, of sharing and caring. In one sense, of course, God is Lord irrespective of our relationship to him. But it is clearly his will that people, on their part, should accept that loving lordship as the centre of their lives. And that is the work of the Church and of every single Christian, indeed of every person anywhere—to help people recognise the kingship and lordship of God and to accept it as the key to their present and future happiness.

Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven
This, in a way, is simply another way of saying what we have already asked for in the previous two petitions—it is the will of God that people everywhere recognise the holiness of his name and submit themselves gladly to his kingship and lordship in our world. We do that most effectively by identifying totally with the mission and work of Jesus to bring life, healing and wholeness to our world. To do the will of God is not simply to throw aside what we want and accept God’s will even when it is totally contrary to our own. We are only fully doing God’s will when we can see clearly that what he wants is always what is the very best for us. And we are only fully doing his will when we fully want what he wants, when our will and his will are in perfect harmony. Then we do what he wants and we do what we want. We are praying here to reach that level of oneness.

Give us today our daily bread
While it does not look like it, this also is a highly dangerous prayer for us to make. First of all, we are only asking for what we need now. Later in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus will tell us not to be anxious about the future. We are asking for what we need today; tomorrow is another day. We take care of one day at a time.

But there is one little word here that is highly dangerous. It is the word ‘us’. Who is that ‘us’? Just me and my immediate family? Or my parish? Or my neighbourhood or my town or my country? Surely it is the same as that ‘our’ in the first petition—it includes every single person. I am praying, therefore, that every single person have bread to eat today. We know, of course, that there are millions of people (some of them in wealthy countries) who do not have enough to eat, or who suffer from malnutrition and poorly balanced diets. In praying that all of ‘us’ have our daily bread, are we expecting God to drop manna from the skies or are we not reminding ourselves that the feeding of brothers and sisters is our responsibility? If people are hungry or badly fed, it is not God’s doing. Human beings are directly responsible for this in most cases (outside of natural disasters).

This petition prayer can also include the Bread of the Eucharist. But in sharing that Bread together we are saying sacramentally that we are a sharing people and we will share our goods and blessings with others, especially those in need. Otherwise our Eucharist becomes a kind of sacrilege.

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors
Again, is this not another dangerous prayer to make? We are asking that God’s forgiveness to us be conditional on our readiness to forgive those we perceive to have hurt us in some way. That is a daring thing to do. And forgiveness does not simply mean uttering a few words. Forgiveness in the Scripture always includes an attempt at reconciliation between offender and offended. But even if reconciliation is not achieved, we can still forgive.

We can go even further and say that the fully Christian person is never offended—or even more, cannot be offended. The true Christian has a rock solid sense of their own security and their own inner worth which no other person can take away. When such a person is the recipient of some attack, be it verbal or physical, their first response is to reach out to the attacker with concern and sympathy. It is the attacker who has the problem, not the one attacked. Most of us have a long way to go to reach that level of inner peace. If what you say about me is true, I accept it; if it is false, then it is false. Why should I take offence?

And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one (or from evil)
In the end, we acknowledge our weaknesses and our total dependence on God’s help. We pray that we will not find ourselves in a situation where we fall seriously. We ask to be protected from the powers of evil with which we are surrounded.

Some texts conclude with:

For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen

This prayer is used by many Christian denominations and has now been included in the Catholic Eucharist after the Lord’s Prayer, but separated by a prayer for peace. It is believed that this conclusion, not found in most Bible manuscripts, was introduced for liturgical reasons.

Finally, in addition to simply reciting this prayer in the rapid way we normally do, we could sometimes take it very slowly, one petition at a time and let its meaning sink in. Or we could just take one petition which is particularly meaningful to us at any time and just stay with it until it really becomes part of us.

Read more

Friday of Week 11 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on 2 Corinthians 11:18,21-30

Paul continues to defend his credentials against those ‘super apostles’ he felt were misleading the Christians of Corinth. Apparently they were boasting of their qualifications, so Paul feels he must do the same and he is confident their record is no match for his own.

He begins by pointing to his own impeccable Jewish credentials. It looks as if that was just what the ‘super apostles’ were trying to do at Paul’s expense. On several occasions in his letters, Paul appealed to his Jewish past.

But he can certainly match their credentials—and even more. Like them he is a Hebrew, an Israelite, and a son of Abraham. Elsewhere he tells that he was even a Pharisee. In other places, Paul distinguishes authentic from inauthentic heirs of Abraham. Here he allows his opponents to claim descent from Abraham, but only to emphasise the claim that immediately follows. He even allows them to call themselves ministers and servants of Christ, because he has further credentials which they cannot come near matching.

He goes on to describe what his ministry of Christ has involved. The long list of trials and hardships are what he has been prepared to undergo in the service of his humiliated and crucified Lord. There is no way his opponents can match this level of service and dedication.

For the sake of Christ and for the preaching of the Gospel he has been through far more than any of them—far greater labours, far more imprisonments, far worse beatings and numerous brushes with death. There follows a long list of hardships, sufferings and dangers—all the result of his unstinting efforts to get the message of Christ through to people. Apart from what Paul enumerates here, there is no other record of these hardships in the New Testament.

He mentions the following:

• Five times receiving 39 lashes (the legal limit) from the Jews
• Three times beaten with rods
• Stoned once
• Three times shipwrecked
• A night and a day waiting to be rescued at sea
• Frequent journeys with dangers from rivers, from robbers, from his own people, from Gentiles
• Dangers in cities and in the wilderness
• Dangers at sea
• Dangers among brothers who proved treacherous
• Toil and hardship
• Sleepless nights
• Hunger and thirst
• Frequent fastings, which may have been voluntary or involuntary
• Experiencing cold and exposure

On top of all that, there were his concerns about the well-being of the churches. He has always totally identified with their problems:

Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I am not indignant?

Finally however, if he really must boast, he will boast of his weakness. We will see more about that weakness in our final reading tomorrow.

He knows his rivals cannot match this record of dedication and self-sacrifice and his total commitment to the needs of his people. He can match them on every other level, but they can come nowhere near him in what he has been prepared to suffer for the sake of the gospel. He offers this as proof of the genuineness of his apostleship over what he sees as preachers of novelty.

Paul’s list is highly impressive and very few of us have been called or will be called to make anything like the same sacrifices for the living and sharing of our Christian life. But perhaps we could do more than we have done so far and be more ready to undergo some inconveniences for the sake of Christ and those who are hungering for his Word.

We can ask ourselves the threefold question:

What have I done for Christ?
What am I doing for Christ?
What will I do for Christ?

Read more

Thursday of Week 11 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on 2 Corinthians 11:1-11

In our last three readings from 2 Corinthians, we’ve entered a final section of the Letter where Paul vigorously defends his credentials against people who have been criticising him. There is a unity in these chapters which suggest they may originally have been part of a separate letter. They consist of an apologia by Paul, defending his way of acting and his ministry. The language is highly emotional and very strongly expressed in parts. In the central part, there is a very emphatic statement on his credentials to be an apostle.

As he did in the early part of the letter (which we saw last week), Paul continues defending his record with the Corinthians, though in much stronger terms. Today’s reading is relatively mild. He begins by appealing to the Corinthians to put up with his foolishness, which, he feels does not disqualify him from being an evangeliser. Just before this he had said:

…it is not those who commend themselves that are approved but those whom the Lord commends.
(2 Cor 10:18)

Clearly, Paul feels that he has this mandate, unlike those others he is criticising who do not have such a mandate and yet whom the Corinthians seem to tolerate. He feels like a jealous parent or matchmaker:

I feel a divine jealousy for you, for I promised you in marriage to one husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.

The “divine jealousy” reminds us of the prophets who describe God as being jealous when his people dally with other gods who would try to take his covenant people away from him. The relationship between God and his people is likened to a marriage, where Israel is Yahweh’s bride.

Similarly, Paul, like a father, has betrothed the Corinthian community to Christ as his bride. But they are now dallying with teachers who are not true ‘matchmakers’ and who will not lead them to their true Spouse, Christ.

But just as Eve was deceived by the cunning of the serpent, Paul is afraid the Corinthians are being seduced away from a sincere and pure commitment to Christ and are becoming unfaithful to their marriage with Christ. For if someone comes and preaches “another Jesus” than the one Paul and his companions gave them, or if they receive a “different spirit” from the one they originally received, or a “different gospel” from the one they first accepted, the Corinthians seem to be quite ready to go along with it. Those ‘other preachers’ are seen as doing the seductive work of Satan, and the Corinthians are flirting with teachings that are not part of the tradition which Paul gave to them.

But Paul feels that he is in no way inferior to what he calls “super-apostles”. They seem to be people who have come from outside and are regarded by Paul as intruders. They also seem to have won support from at least some of the community and this may be because, compared to Paul, they were much more persuasive as speakers and orators. It is possible that they had appealed to the authority of the church leaders in Jerusalem and even had letters of recommendation from them. The Church in Jerusalem was very Jewish and it may not have understood the very different conditions prevailing in the pluralist situation in Corinth, where Jews and Gentiles formed one community.

These “super-apostles” seem, in fact, to be the same kind of people who were causing so much trouble among the Christians of Galatia, where there were movements to restore observance of the Jewish Law not only among Jewish Christians, but even among Gentiles as well. The fact that, in tomorrow’s reading, Paul strongly affirms his own credentials as a Jew indicates that these “super-apostles” belonged to this group.

However, Paul is not attacking the Jerusalem leaders, whose authority and credentials he acknowledges. He is rather attacking the ‘super-apostle’ intruders. The intruders are ‘super-apostles’, not in the sense of the the true Apostles in Jerusalem, but in their own estimation. They consider themselves superior to Paul as apostles and ministers of Christ. Paul rejects their claim to be apostles in any superlative sense (Greek, hyperlian), judging them bluntly as “false apostles”, ministers of Satan masquerading as apostles of Christ. On the contrary, as we will see in tomorrow’s reading, Paul himself will claim to be a super-minister of Christ on the basis of his record.

When it comes to proclaiming the gospel, Paul admits that he may not be as good a speaker as they are, but he yields nothing to them in knowledge (perhaps this is the weakness, the distressing ‘sting of the flesh’ he mentions later on). And he has made this clear to the Corinthians “in every way”. In other words, in all their contacts with him, he has been passing on to them the Word of God which has been revealed to him. Even in his life experiences, the death and life of Jesus are being revealed. His opponents can make no such claim.

Paul now moves to another reason for complaints against him—his custom of preaching without any remuneration. He says:

Did I commit a sin by humbling myself so that you might be exalted, because I proclaimed God’s good news to you free of charge?

Did that make him look like a freelancing amateur? One feels there is an element of sarcasm here and perhaps a jibe at his opponents who may have expected ‘fees’ for their work.

He preached without remuneration because his expenses were covered by other churches he had already evangelised. He says he even “robbed” other churches by accepting help from them in order to give his services free to the Corinthians. And, when he was among them and in material need, he asked nothing from the Corinthians. Members of Christian communities in Macedonia came down all the way to Corinth to take care of Paul’s needs. He refrained then, and he will continue to refrain from burdening them now. He says:

As the truth of Christ is in me, this boast of mine will not be silenced in the regions of Achaia.

Achaia is the province in the south of Greece in which Corinth was situated.

And why will he do that? Because he does not love them? “God knows I do!”, he says. Surely his desire not to burden them in any way is proof enough of that. He rejects any lack of affection as his motive (possibly imputed to him by his opponents) and states his real motive, which is to emphasise the disparity between himself and the others.

Paul’s experience has been repeated many times in the history of the Church (and of other churches). People are often only too eager to hear some novel message, some new way of explaining the gospel, especially if it is accompanied by a lot of razzmatazz. The same goes for some devotional movements in the Catholic Church today which attract large numbers of people, but which are not true to the core message of Christ—the establishment of the Kingdom.

Read more

Monday of Week 11 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on 2 Corinthians 6:1-10

Paul continues the defence of his ministry against critics among the Christians of Corinth and speaks both eloquently and movingly about his experiences in working for the gospel. In the Greek, our reading is a single long sentence, incorporating a quotation from Isaiah. The single main verb is “we entreat” (i.e. “we appeal” or “we beg”). Paul is both exercising his ministry of reconciliation and tells how this ministry is carried out. He is saying that his message of reconciliation is being confirmed by the apostolic experience which he describes here.

He begins by calling on all to work together, and urges them to ensure that the grace and love of God, which Paul has opened up for them, not be received in vain. One way of doing this is to become reconciled once again with him.

He quotes from the prophet Isaiah:

At an acceptable time I have listened to you,
and on a day of salvation I have helped you. (Is 49:8)

Right now, he tells them, is an acceptable time; the day of their salvation is right here. God is bestowing favour and salvation at this very moment as he addresses his letter to them.

The “day of salvation” is a concept that can be found in many parts of Scripture. It is described by the Jerusalem Bible in this way:

There is an intermediary period between the time of Christ’s first coming and his return. This period is the ‘day of salvation’, a time allowed for conversion; it is granted to the ‘remnant’ and to the pagans. Though the duration is uncertain, this time of pilgrimage may be regarded as being short and full of trials and sufferings which are a prelude to the glory to come. The end is at hand, the day approaches, and it is necessary to be on the watch and to use the time well that remains for one’s own salvation and that of others, leaving the final vindication to God. (edited)

By using this time well, Paul is telling the Corinthians they can guarantee their being united forever with their Lord. At the same time he denies that anything he has done or said can be seen as a stumbling block to their faith. He consistently acts in such a way that no fault can be found with his ministry and that of his companions.

…as servants [Greek, diakonoi] of God we have commended ourselves in every way…

And that is confirmed by the list of experiences which follows in the passage.

Among the proofs of their sincerity is the great amount of suffering and trials they willingly undergo for the sake of preaching the Gospel. Nine items are listed:

…afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger…

There is a paradox here in his pointing to experiences that would not normally be regarded as matters of pride and achievement, but appear very differently when seen through the eyes of faith.

In spite of being so badly treated, he and his companions have proved their credentials as servants of God:

…in purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute.

The passage concludes with a series of paradoxes—a series of experiences which could not co-exist except in someone whose life was totally devoted to Christ and his Gospel:

We are treated as impostors and yet are true, as unknown and yet are well known, as dying and look—we are alive, as punished and yet not killed, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing and yet possessing everything.

Paul perceives his life and work as a reflection of Jesus’ own. The last two examples are an illustration of an apparent contradiction that is characteristic of the true apostle. It is something that can be seen in the lives of the saints, people like St Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa).

What we see here is the special Christian experience of finding joy, happiness and peace in the midst of hardship, pain, rejection and persecution. This is the peace that Christ gives and which no human agency can take away. And at the same time, it is the common experience that the living out of the Gospel of love and peace can engender such hatred and violence from those who feel threatened by the vision of Christ.

If we compare ourselves with Paul, most of us will find that we give up too easily in the face of criticism, that we expect that our efforts to be good Christians should be met with admiration and respect. Paul was so convinced of Christ’s love for him that nothing that could happen to him could change that conviction. He found Christ present in every experience and his sufferings were for him only a privileged time to share in the sufferings of his Lord.

Read more

Saturday of Week 11 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 6:24-34

Today we continue with Jesus’ teaching on our attitude to material and visible things. We have to make a choice between the vision of life that Jesus offers or a preoccupation with money and possessions. They are not compatible. They involve conflicting goals in life and different visions of what is most important in life. The truly materialistic person may have a veneer of Christian practice, but cannot be a really committed Christian and vice versa.

Jesus preaches what St Ignatius Loyola calls ‘indifference’ to material things. Obviously some material things—like food and clothing and shelter—are necessary to daily living. At different times other things will be necessary too.

The attitude of ‘indifference’ is not that one does not care; on the contrary, one cares very much. But one cares to have things and to use things only in so far as they are needed to love and serve God and others for his sake. Jesus urges us to liberate ourselves from worry and anxiety about our body and material things such as food and clothing.

To be concerned about food because right now I am very hungry and do not have any is very different from worrying whether I will have food next month; to be anxious about what is happening when I am in intensive care is very different from wondering how long my health will hold up in the coming years; to be fretting because I have no money to pay my rent with the landlord knocking at the door is very different from wondering whether I will ever be rich.

Worry and anxiety about the future are a waste of time and energy yet we indulge in them so much. We are invited to:

Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

Likewise, the flowers in the field—they do nothing except be themselves and God takes care of them. And how beautiful they are! When their time comes they pass away.

We are often so busy regretting the past or worrying about the future that we never get to enjoy life. Enjoyment and happiness are only in the present—nowhere else. If we keep looking forward or looking back we will never find happiness. And yet it is right here in our grasp at every moment of every day. As Jesuit Fr Tony de Mello has written:

“You have everything you need right now to be happy.”

How our lives would be transformed if only we could really believe that! Because happiness can only be in the now. Yesterday’s happiness is gone; tomorrow’s does not exist. If I am not happy now, I never will be.

So to follow the advice of Jesus today:

…do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

God is in the here and now and nowhere else. He is always available.

Read more

Wednesday of Week 11 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 6:1-6,16-18

We move today to a different theme, namely, the way in which we are to pay our worship to God. Jesus’ teaching is based on the three basic acts of religion expected of a devout Jew—almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. In each case, Jesus warns his disciples not to indulge in any form of ostentation so as to attract the admiration of others.

He presents exaggerated images of how we should not do things in the way of ostentatious hypocrites. He speaks about people who blow trumpets in the streets to draw the attention of everyone when they give alms to the poor. He speaks about hypocrites who say their prayers in the most conspicuous places so that people will marvel at how holy they are. He speaks about people putting on gloomy and drawn looks so that everyone will know that they are fasting. In fact, Jews were only expected to fast on one day in the year—on the Day of Atonement, but the practice of regular fasting had become more common in Jesus’ time.

All this, Jesus says, is not worship of God, but a kind of self-advertisement. Such people, he says, get their reward, namely, the admiration of the onlooker, but it is not the reward that comes from acts of genuine worship.

When his disciples pray or fast or give alms they should do it in such a way that their actions will be directed entirely to God and not to themselves. We do remember earlier in the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus said people should be able to see the good works of his disciples, but then the purpose was not that they would be praised, but that people would be led to glorify God.

It should also be pointed out that Jesus’ recommendation that we pray in private where only God can see us shouldn’t be interpreted as meaning that it is not necessary for us to take part in forms of community prayer—which Jesus himself would have done whenever he attended the synagogue or went to the Temple. It would be a gross misreading of this text to argue, as people sometimes are heard to do, that it is not necessary to attend Sunday Mass because “I can pray equally well in the privacy of my home”. To speak in such a way is to misunderstand completely the essentially communal nature of the Eucharistic celebration.

Read more

Monday of Week 11 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 5:38-42

We continue Jesus’ interpretations of some commands of the Mosaic Law as he pushes that law to a higher level of understanding. The saying from the Old Testament, “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” is not, as it may seem to be saying, an encouragement to take revenge. It is part of what is known as the lex talionis (the principle of reciprocal justice), by which punishment for an assault was to be restricted to not more than the suffering experienced. The passage in Exodus says:

If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. (Ex 21:23-25)

Jesus calls for a very different kind of response. He tells us to offer the “evildoer” no resistance. He makes the famous recommendation to turn the other cheek. As well:

…if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, give your coat as well, and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to the one who asks of you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.

It is unsurprising that even in Christian circles not a great deal of time is given to this text. Is it to be taken literally? Are we really to allow people to walk over us and offer no resistance at all?

I think the answer is both yes and no. For many in our modern world, turning the other cheek seems the ultimate in ‘wimpishness’ and cowardice. Turning the other cheek is certainly not the way of countless ‘heroes’ in our movies and on our TV screens.

But Jesus did. During his trial before the Sanhedrin:

…they spat in his face and struck him, and some slapped him, saying, “Prophesy to us, you Messiah! Who is it that struck you?” (Matt 26:67-68)

And Jesus’ response was silence. This was turning the other cheek. Was this weakness or was it strength? Which is easier to do under great provocation: to practise self-restraint and keep one’s dignity or to lash out in retaliation? By lashing out, one comes down to the same level as one’s attackers (of course, this is quite different from self-defence.)

In another account of Jesus’ trial, after having given an answer to a question:

…one of the police standing nearby struck Jesus on the face, saying, “Is that how you answer the high priest?”
(John 18:22-23)

Jesus replied:

If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong. But if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?

Here Jesus does respond to the attack but on a totally different level. The physical and unreasonable attack on an unarmed person is actively responded to on the basis of reason and non-violence. Jesus is not a victim here; rather, he is in control. And this is true of the whole experience of the Passion. His executioners behave in the most barbaric way, but Jesus never loses his calm and dignity right up through the very end. And that is why we worship him as our Lord and Master. He asks us to follow in his footsteps.

Revenge, in all its various forms, is the easier way, the more instinctive way, but it is not the better way. The way of ‘intentional’ non-violence (i.e. not passive) is, in the long run, far more productive, far more in keeping with human ideals and human dignity. We have more than enough evidence in our world of the bankruptcy of a never-ending cycle of violence and counter-violence. We see it all over. Yet violence does not pay and revenge is not sweet.

Turning the other cheek is not at all a sign of weakness. It requires great inner strength, self-respect and even respect for the dignity of one’s attacker. Jesus is calling us a long way forward and upward from “an eye for an eye”.

Read more

Saturday of Week 11 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on 2 Corinthians 12:1-10

We come to the final reading from this letter as Paul continues to defend his credentials as an Apostle of Christ to the Corinthians. Paul says:

It is necessary to boast…

He says this though “nothing is to be gained by it”. It doesn’t do any good in itself, but he sees it as the only effective way to counter the claims of his opponents.

He has spoken about the terrible sufferings and hardships he has been through, and now he speaks of tremendous mystical experiences which brought him to unutterable heights of intimacy with God. Like most mystical experiences, he tells us that they cannot be adequately explained in human words.

Paul next speaks of someone who, fourteen years previously, had been “caught up to the third heaven”. It was such an intense experience that he is not sure whether it took place inside or outside his body. “Caught up” suggests an ecstatic experience. This same person was caught up into “paradise” and heard things which it is impossible to put into words or perhaps to divulge. This is the experience that many mystics—Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Ignatius Loyola, for instance—have described.

The reference to a ‘third heaven’ reflects the cosmologies of the ancient world which pictured a multi-tiered universe. Jewish literature in the immediate pre-Christian era had much speculation about the number of ‘heavens’. The usual number is seven, but the Testament of Levi speaks of three and spoke of God in level three. This seems to be the model Paul envisages. In any case, Paul seems to indicate a spiritual journey to a non-earthly environment in which God revealed to him certain secrets.

Now, however, he does not want to boast about that person; instead he prefers to speak about his weaknesses. These experiences were not a personal accomplishment because they were so clearly the work of God in him. By referring here to himself in the third person he is emphasising the distance between that experience and his ordinary life. And his use of passive verbs also points to his passivity and receptivity in the experience. He boasts of them as a blessing from God rather than a personal achievement or something he earned. At the same time, they do indicate a special closeness to God which his opponents would not be able to claim.

So he prefers to boast of his weaknesses, weaknesses which were so obvious to those who knew him and these were entirely his own. He could boast about the “exceptional character of the revelations” because they are the truth, but he will not because people might have a higher opinion of him than he really deserves. Instead he will speak about his weaknesses. No one will question these because they are all too obvious!

So, in case he might have been tempted to feel superior because of these mystical experiences, he says “a thorn was given me in the flesh”, describing it as:

…a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated.

This negative experience helps to give him a sense of balance. There is much discussion about the nature of this ‘thorn in the flesh’.

The term ‘thorn in the flesh’, like the English ‘thorn in the side’, usually refers to persons, so it is very possible that Paul is speaking either of one person who has been particularly critical of him or of the group of ‘super apostles’ who have ridiculed him for his poor speaking ability and generally poor presentation. The main reason for his distress is that he saw it making his work of proclaiming Christ less effective.

Whatever it was, like his Master before him in the garden, he begged his Lord three times to liberate him from this cross—an indication of how it hurt him. As in the case of his Lord, his prayer was answered not quite in the way he intended—with a firm ‘No’. Yet it was, as in the case of Jesus, an answer and a clear indication of God’s will. He was told:

My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.

In other words, God’s power is given most fully and manifested most completely by Paul remaining with his weakness.

Great man that he is, Paul fully accepts this. He realises that all he accomplishes will not be attributed to him, because of his transparent faults, but to their original Source—the Lord he loves and serves so faithfully.

Far from regretting or concealing these faults, he now even boasts of them. He had seen them as an obstacle to his apostolic work, but now, after his prayer, he understands that they only make the power of Christ working through him more obvious. He writes:

So I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.

These weaknesses include the apostolic hardships he must continue to endure, including strong personal hostility as listed at this point. He says:

Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ…

Paradoxically, it is through these weaknesses and shortcomings that the power of Christ is most visible in his evangelising work.

And he concludes:

…for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.

There is much for us to pray and reflect on here. How sensitive we are to our faults and weaknesses and what efforts we make to hide them from others! How often we blame God for the pains and aches of life!

Paul was only concerned about one thing, namely, that the Gospel of Christ be proclaimed. If that could only be done by his weaknesses becoming known to the world, so be it. We need to have the same spirit.

Read more

Tuesday of Week 11 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on 2 Corinthians 8:1-9

Paul now moves on to a very different topic, namely, the question of collecting funds to help poorer communities, especially that of Jerusalem.

We are told in Acts that the church at Antioch in Syria sent Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem with material relief (Acts 11:27-30). Later, Paul organised a relief project for Jerusalem among the churches he had evangelised and founded. Chapters 8 and 9 of 2 Corinthians contain what seem to be two letters about this. In them, Paul not only urges the churches to give help, but also lays out the deeper meaning of this exercise. It is both an act of charity and an expression of unity between the churches.

The first 24 verses of chapter 8 (of which we only read the first 9 today), form a letter of recommendation for Titus and two companions, who are not named. The letter is written from Macedonia (Thessalonica and Philippi, churches to which Paul addressed letters, were in Macedonia, a province lying north of Greece). The letter begins, as we see in today’s reading, with some ideas on sharing and equality in the Christian community. Paul’s ideas on relieving people in need had been planted when Paul was with the community in Philippi, but now he is expanding them to include help from several churches together to the mother church at Jerusalem.

In writing to the Corinthians, he presents them with the example of the Macedonians as a model of what ought to be happening in Corinth. In encouraging the Corinthians to be generous, he puts before them the extreme generosity of the churches in Macedonia.

We want you to know, brothers and sisters, about the grace of God that has been granted to the churches of Macedonia…

The central theme of his message is expressed by the Greek noun charis, which is usually translated as ‘grace’, but also by terms like ‘favour’, ‘gracious act’, ‘gracious favour’ and such.

‘Grace’ can be described as ‘the experience of being loved by God’ or ‘God’s love tangibly experienced’. It may come as a direct gift from God, or through another person or through some blessing which comes into my life. A closely related term is eu charis tia, normally translated as ‘thanksgiving’, that is, thanksgiving for the ‘graces’ received from God in so many ways but especially in the saving work of Jesus:

…for during a severe ordeal of affliction their abundant joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part.

Three key words appear in this sentence:

• “Ordeal” or ‘test’ (dokime): suggests being tried and found genuine.
• “Abundant”: a word containing the idea of overflowing and excelling.
• “Generosity”: the word haplotes has nuances which include both simplicity and sincerity. Here it designates singleness of purpose that manifests itself in generous giving.

The Macedonians have asked Paul insistently that they wanted to offer what they could spare, and even more than they could afford, in order to express their solidarity with their Christian brothers and sisters who were worse off than themselves. Paul emphasises the spontaneity of the Macedonians and the nature of their action. In this they were showing a true Christian spirit, where the community’s resources are shared with those in need (the Corinthians do not seem to be quite so spontaneous and seem to need some pushing).

The idea that there should be rich churches and poor churches was unacceptable and contrary to the spirit of the Gospel:

…they gave themselves first to the Lord and, by the will of God, to us…

On the deepest level, their attitude is one of self-giving and solidarity with their brothers and sisters. Through his colleague Titus, who is in Corinth, Paul hopes that the Christians there will match the generosity of the Macedonians and even more:

…we might urge Titus that, as he had already made a beginning, so he should also complete this generous undertaking among you.

Apparently Paul had sent Titus to help with organising the collection.

The Corinthians are rich in many things, Paul tells them, perhaps with a taint of flattery, but he wants to emphasise that their wealth will not be complete until they are also rich in giving:

Now as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in utmost eagerness, and in our love for you—so we want you to excel also in this generous undertaking.

He is not ordering them to give but, by giving the example of the Macedonians, is offering them a challenge and a test of the genuineness of their faith and love.

In the concluding verse of today’s reading, Paul offers the Corinthians the example of Jesus in a beautiful turn of phrase which we could do well to pray over today:

For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.

There are scholars who think this is a reference to Jesus’ pre-existence with God (his ‘richness’) and to his incarnation and death (his ‘poverty’), and they point to the similarity between this verse and the passage in the Letter to the Philippians:

…though he existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
assuming human likeness… (Phil 2:6-8)

Others interpret the wealth and poverty as succeeding phases of Jesus’ life on earth—his sense of intimacy with God and then the desolation and the feeling of abandonment by God in his death:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Mark 15:34)

In either case, we think of the words of Isaiah:

…by his bruises we are healed. (Is 53:5)

In our own time we may again reflect on the life of someone like St Teresa of Calcutta, who enriched many of us through her poverty and her freedom from any personal possessions.

Read more