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.

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Tuesday of Week 11 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 5:43-48

We come to the last of the six examples that Jesus gave in his Sermon on the Mount as illustrations of how he brings the teaching of the Law to a higher and more perfect plane. In today’s Gospel, Jesus says to his disciples:

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’

This saying is not found as such in the Hebrew Testament. Rather we find in the book of Leviticus that it says:

You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself… (Lev 19:18)

The wording here would seem to condone, however, acts of revenge against strangers and outsiders. And in practice, as indeed is the case in many communities throughout the world, the saying of Jesus reflects the way many people feel is a justified way of acting. And as we saw earlier on where Jesus spoke about anger, at least limited revenge was condoned in the phrase “an eye for an eye”.

Again, Jesus turns things on their head with a saying which many people would find quite unrealistic, if not downright stupid. He tells us actually to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. How can we be asked to do such a thing?

Yet, if we would only reflect a little, the advice of Jesus makes a great deal of sense and, in fact, is really the only way to go for our own happiness and peace. Otherwise, as Jesus says, his listeners were no different from “tax collectors”, a group who, because they worked for the occupying power, were held in special contempt—or pagans, that is, people who lived godless lives.

To understand what Jesus is saying we need to clarify two words, ‘love’ and ‘enemies’. Who are our enemies? They can be either the people that we are hostile towards, or the people who are hostile to us.

The practising Christian who takes on board the teaching of Jesus will want to have positive attitudes to people in general, and will not marginalise anyone on the basis of race, nationality, colour, class, gender or other personal characteristics. Such a person will not want to act in a way to create hostility in others unnecessarily.

However, simply because we try to look and act positively towards others is no guarantee that they will act in the same way towards us. Through no objective fault of our own, we may become the object of their dislike, resentment, hatred, jealousy, anger and even violence. These are our enemies, and we are to love them.

But what does ‘love’ mean here? The word that the Gospel uses is a verb from the Greek noun agape. Agape is a unilateral way of loving by which, irrespective of the actions or attitudes of another person, I desire their well-being. It is the love which God extends to every one of his creatures, irrespective of how they respond to him. In this it is quite different from the love which involves sharing, intimacy, affection and a strong element of mutual giving.

We are not being asked to love our enemies with the love of affection—to be ‘in love’ with them, or even to be fond of them. That would not make sense and they would not want it. But we are asked to reach out and desire their well-being. This can be done when we focus our attention and our concern more on them than on ourselves.

When we are the objects of other people’s hostility we tend to go on the defensive and to generate negative attitudes towards the other. Our inner security (or insecurity) is under attack. Instead, Jesus is asking us to respond to the real situation rather than to react to spontaneous feelings.

When someone hates me, attacks me or is angry with me for no reason that I can think of, instead of feeling sorry for myself, I can choose to ask, “What is wrong with that person? Why is that person acting in that way? What is bothering that person? Is there any way I can help to dissolve this person’s negative behaviour, which is probably a sign of some inner self-hating or insecurity on their part?”

And certainly when I begin to think in this way, it becomes perfectly natural to pray for that person, to pray for their inner healing, for a restoration of peace and inner security. To hate someone who hates me, to be violent with someone who is violent with me, simply means that there are twice as many problems as there were at the beginning. By responding in the way that Jesus suggests, we end up with no problem at all!

And Jesus gives us another motive for acting in this way—it is the way God himself acts. He causes the hot, merciless sun to shine on the good as well as the bad; the cool, refreshing rain falls equally on the bad as well as the good. What Jesus is saying is that God’s love, his agape, reaches out indiscriminately to every single person, irrespective of their behaviour. The passage ends with Jesus saying:

Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Perfection here refers to that unconditional agape love that God extends to every single person. If we are to grow into the likeness of God and give witness to his presence in the world, we need to act in exactly the same way. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world if people followed Jesus’ advice? Far from being impractical, it is the only way to go.

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