Monday of Week 13 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 8:18-22
There are times when Jesus goes out of his way to meet the crowds. On one occasion we are told he was filled with compassion because he saw them as sheep without a shepherd. But today, he gives orders to cross the lake apparently to avoid the crowds pressing in on him.
The crowds represent two kinds of people: those in real need of teaching and healing, and those who are simply driven by a kind of curiosity for the unusual. Jesus is not particularly interested in the second kind; they represent a false interest in Jesus. For them he is just a sensation, a wonder-worker—‘Jesus Christ Superstar’.
Similarly, when a scribe approaches Jesus and says, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go”, it seems like a generous offer, but Jesus reminds the man of just what that may entail:
Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.
To follow Jesus means, like him, to be ready to have nothing of one’s own. As Jesus said earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, we cannot at the same time serve two masters. To be with Jesus is to accept a situation where we may have nothing in the way of material possessions—our security will be elsewhere.
We do not know whether the scribe took up the challenge or not, and it does not really matter. Jesus’ words are recorded mainly for us to hear them. What do I think when I hear them? Have I made the choice between having Jesus and having things? Or do I think I can have both? Do I want to have both?
Another person, described as being already a disciple, asks for permission to go and bury his father first before following Jesus. It seems a fairly reasonable request and Jesus’ reply sounds rather harsh as both the Jewish and Hellenistic world regarded this as a filial obligation of the highest importance:
Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.
There are two ways we can understand this reply. In one case, the man is asking to postpone his following of Jesus until his father dies and he can bury him. But to follow Jesus is to enter a new family with a new set of obligations. It is not that the man should not honour his father, but in the meantime, there are other things of much greater importance that need to be done. In the new family, of which his father is just one member, there are more pressing obligations. It is another example of Jesus letting us know that our following of him has to be unconditional. We cannot say, “I will follow you if…” or “I will follow you when I am ready.” When he calls we have, like the first disciples, to be ready to drop our nets, our boats and even our family members.
A second way of understanding Jesus’ words is to see his call as a call to a way of life. Those who want to go their own self-seeking ways belong to the spiritually dead. Leave the burial of the dead to them. The rituals of society, including burial, have their place—even an important place. But for Jesus, the call to the Kingdom represents a commitment to a more important set of values.
We must put all these statements in their context. They make clear that following Jesus involves a radical commitment, but it does not mean that we act in ways that are inhumane or unreasonable. Soon after Peter and Andrew had abandoned their boats and their nets to follow Jesus, we find Jesus in their house tending to Peter’s mother-in-law who had fallen sick (Mark 1:29-31).
While there was a time in the past when some religious sisters were not allowed to attend a family funeral, that has now changed—and rightly so. At the same time, the call of Jesus still involves a total commitment.
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Friday of Week 13 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Genesis 23:1-4,19; 24:1-8,62-67
We come to the end of the story of Abraham. The reading consists of selected paragraphs from chapters 23 and 24. As the reading opens we learn that Abraham’s wife Sarah has died at Hebron, a place also known as Kiriath-arba (Hebron). She was 127 years old. Abraham is plunged into mourning with grief for his wife and the mother of his only son.
Leaving her bedside he went to the “Hittites” (“sons of Heth” in some translations), the pre-Israelite and non-Semitic inhabitants of Palestine. As he was an outsider and a settler in the land of Canaan, he asked for a burial plot where his wife could be laid. He still “lived in tents” (see Heb 11:9), the most temporary of dwellings, but he looked forward to the more permanent home promised to him. About this, the author of Hebrews says:
…he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. (Heb 11:10)
Ownership of burial land was a crucial step in establishing legal residence. In the culture, people had a strong desire to be buried ‘with their fathers’ in their native land. By purchasing a burial place in Canaan, Abraham indicated his unswerving commitment to the Lord’s promise—Canaan was his new homeland.
The New American Bible states:
“A resident alien would normally not have the right to own property. The importance of Abraham’s purchase of the field, which is worded in technical legal terms, lies in the fact that it gave his descendants their first, though small, land rights in the country that God had promised the patriarch they would one day inherit as their own. Abraham therefore insists on purchasing the field and not receiving it as a gift.”
The Hittite leader was happy to give Abraham a burial place as a gift, but Abraham insisted on buying it so that he had full rights over it. It gave him a legal standing in Canaan which he did not have before. He then buried his wife in the cave within “the field of Ephron in Machpela” which he had bought and which was opposite to Mamre, in Canaan.
Abraham himself was also well advanced in years and had been blessed by God in many ways. He knows that death cannot be far away. His main concern is for his son and his future descendants. The elaborate story of acquiring a wife for Isaac marks the last, decisive step toward fulfilment of the promise of progeny through Isaac.
First, Abraham calls his senior servant, the steward of all his vast possessions (perhaps the Eliezer we met previously), and makes him take an oath:
Put your hand under my thigh, and I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and earth, that you will not get a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I live…
The descendants of Abraham must come from his own people. Putting the hand under the thigh means placing them near the genital organs to signify the solemnity of the oath which follows. The symbolism of this act was apparently connected with the Hebrew concept of children issuing from their father’s ‘thigh’ or ‘loin’ (see New American Bible Revised Edition note for Exod 1:5). Perhaps the man who took such an oath was thought to bring the curse of sterility on himself if he did not fulfil his sworn promise. Jacob made Joseph swear in the same way (Gen 47:29). In both these instances, the oath was taken to carry out the last request of a man upon his deathbed.
The servant is to go to Abraham’s land, Mesopotamia, and to choose a wife for Isaac from among his kinsfolk. The steward has one problem. What if the future wife does not want to leave her country and go to Canaan? Is Isaac to go back and live there with her? Abraham rules out that suggestion altogether:
The Lord, the God of heaven, who took me from my father’s house and from the land of my birth and who spoke to me and swore to me, ‘To your offspring I will give this land’…
So Abraham is torn between loyalty to his own people, the ‘purity’ of his family line and his mandate to take possession of his adopted home.
Abraham promises his steward that God will send an angel ahead of him to choose a suitable wife for his son. However, if the woman chosen is not willing to come back to Canaan, the steward will be released from the oath he is now being asked to make. The steward then put his hand under Abraham’s thigh and made the oath.
We now move to the end of chapter 24 for the last part of the reading. In between, there is the long account of how the steward went to Mesopotamia and came across the beautiful Rebekah coming to a well to draw water (Jacob—later called ‘Israel’—will meet his future wife, Rachel, at a well also). Is there an echo of these scenes in John’s Gospel where Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at a well—symbolic of the Old Testament—and takes her as his ‘spiritual’ bride into the New Covenant? (see John 4).
Rebekah turns out to be a niece of Abraham, the daughter of his brother Nahor, and is a virgin. She fulfils all the requirements. The steward meets her family, showers them with gifts from his master and then takes Rebekah back to Canaan (see Gen 24:10-61).
We are then told that Isaac, who lived in the Negeb, had come into the wilderness to the well of Beer-lahai-roi (there are lots of wells!). This was the site of the annunciation of Ishmael’s birth to Hagar. Isaac’s emergence from there has a symbolic resonance—henceforth he will have his own posterity. As he walked in the evening light, Isaac saw a caravan of camels approaching. With it was Rebekah. She looked up and saw Isaac, her future husband, for the first time. Getting down from her camel she asked who was the man she saw walking towards them. Abraham’s servant replied:
It is my master.
Rebekah immediately veiled her face, perhaps indicating that she was unmarried. Up to now the steward’s master had been Abraham; from now on it is Isaac, the new patriarch of the family. The servant then told Isaac all that had happened in his search for a bride. Isaac, without more ado:
…took Rebekah, and she became his wife, and he loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.
Isaac is now head of the family, but we will not spend too much time with him. In fact, there will be just one more reading about him.
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Thursday of Week 13 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Genesis 22:1-19
Today we read of an extraordinary test that Abraham was asked to go through by God. It is to be understood as a test and not a temptation. God never tempts his people to wrong, but things are allowed to happen to confirm our faith or prove a commitment we have made.
We have seen how several times God promised Abraham that he would be the father of a great people. And now he is asked to offer his only legitimate son—the only link with that promised future—as a holocaust to God. It just did not make any sense at all.
But Abraham had committed himself by covenant to be obedient to the Lord and had consecrated his son Isaac to the Lord by circumcision. The Lord put his servant’s faith and loyalty to the supreme test, thereby instructing Abraham, Isaac and their descendants as to the kind of total consecration the Lord’s covenant requires. The test also foreshadowed the perfect consecration in sacrifice that another offspring of Abraham would undergo in order to wholly consecrate Abraham and his spiritual descendants (i.e. all of us) to God and to fulfil the covenant promises.
There is a parallel here with the story of Hagar and Ishmael which we read yesterday:
- A journey into the wilderness
- An encounter with an angel
- Divine consolation and reassurance
- A miracle at the site
- The naming of the site
Abraham is told to:
Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.
The location of Moriah is not known for certain, but it has been identified with the hill on which the Jerusalem temple was later built and later tradition accepted this identification. We see Abraham accepting God’s injunction without a word of protest. This is clearly intended to be another example of his tremendous faith and trust in God’s word.
Rising early in the morning, he saddled his donkey and took Isaac together with two of his young men. And, before setting out, he also cut some wood for the sacrifice. It was on the third day of travelling that Abraham saw the place of sacrifice in the distance. He told the young men to remain behind with the donkey, while Abraham and Isaac went to the mountain to worship. After that, ‘they’ would return (i.e. Abraham would return with the burnt remains of his son).
He then laid the wood for the sacrifice on the shoulders of his son, while he himself carried the fire (a torch for kindling the offering) and the knife, and then they proceeded to the place of sacrifice. As they walked, Isaac spoke to his father:
The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?
Abraham replied that God himself would provide the sacrificial lamb.
On reaching the place of sacrifice, Abraham built an altar and put the wood on it. He bound his son and laid him on the altar on top of the wood (Isaac seems strangely submissive to all of this!). The future Lamb of God would be sacrificed on wood also.
Just as Abraham raised his knife to kill his son, an angel from heaven called him by name. Speaking in the name of God he said:
Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.
Abraham then saw a ram caught in a nearby thicket by its horns. He took the ram and sacrificed it instead of his son. And Abraham called the place “The Lord will provide”, a reference to the answer Abraham gave to his son earlier on about providing a lamb for the sacrifice. It became a proverbial saying:
On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.
This saying was particularly meaningful if the ‘mount’ was to be identified with the hill of Zion on which the Temple was later built.
There then comes a solemn blessing from the Lord. Because Abraham was ready to sacrifice his only son, he is told by God:
…I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of their enemies, and by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves, because you have obeyed my voice.
The “gate of your enemies” is the first clear indication that Israel’s inheritance of Canaan will involve war with the local people and the capturing of cities. To capture the city gates was tantamount to taking the whole town or city. Abraham then returned to where he had left the young men and they went to Beer-sheba where Abraham lived.
There are some remarkable foreshadowings in this story of Jesus’ later experience:
- As Abraham offered up his only son, so God the Father too will offer up his only Son to be sacrificed.
- Isaac carrying the wood for the holocaust on his shoulders prefigures Jesus carrying his cross to Calvary.
- And when Isaac asks where is the sheep for the holocaust, Abraham answers:
God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering…
Jesus, too, would be the sheep of the sacrifice, he will be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
There is one big difference, however. In the end, God spared the life of Isaac once he knew of Abraham’s fidelity; but God, who loves the world so much, did not spare his own Son, who was both Priest and Victim.
Some commentators also see in the story the basis of the ritual prescription for the redemption, the ‘buying back’ of the first-born of Israel. The first fruits of flocks and herds and animals were usually offered in sacrifice. However, humans were not to be sacrificed, but bought back—’redeemed’.
Commentators also see in the last minute preventing of Abraham killing his son, strong opposition by the Israelites to the child-sacrifice which was common among neighbouring peoples. But above all, in this incident it is Abraham’s faith which reaches its climax.
Once again we, too, can reflect on the extent of our faith and trust in God. Are we ready to give God anything he asks for, knowing that whatever he asks is for our good? In my life now, what would I find it most difficult to give up if God asked me?
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Friday of Week 13 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 9:9-13
The cure of the paralytic is immediately followed by the call of Matthew, named Levi by Mark and Luke in their versions of the story. Matthew/Levi was an unlikely disciple; he was a tax collector. Tax collectors were among the most despised group of people in Jewish society of the time. Tax collectors never can be particularly popular, given their distasteful job, but in Jesus’ time they were collecting taxes for the hated and pagan colonial ruler. As such they were seen as collaborators and traitors to their own people and to their religion. The Romans had the custom of farming out the collecting of taxes to volunteer agents. These individuals paid up-front the amount that the Romans demanded, and then had to get the money back from the people. In doing so they often collected more than they had paid the Romans. This was their ‘commission’, but there was often an element of extortion and corruption in the whole practice.
Now Jesus invites one of these despised people to be his follower. It is an example of Jesus’ looking beyond the exterior and the stereotype to the potential of the real person inside. Immediately after this, Jesus is seen sitting “in the house” having dinner with his disciples when they are joined by a number of tax collectors and other public sinners. It is not clear whether the ‘the’ refers to the house where Jesus was staying or Matthew’s house. In either event, it was bound to attract the notice of Jesus’ critics.
And indeed some Pharisees, seeing this, are shocked. They ask the disciples (not Jesus):
Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?
For the Pharisees, if Jesus is a man of God and a teacher, how can he be seen in the company of people who are religiously unclean? To be in their company is to become contaminated and unclean also.
Overhearing them, Jesus replies:
Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.
Jesus turns the tables on the Pharisees by looking at the situation from a completely different perspective.
The problem is not of Jesus’ becoming contaminated by the sinful and the unclean, but rather their becoming healed by his presence and influence. The legally-minded (the ritualists) are only interested in themselves; those governed by love (the merciful) think primarily of the needs of their brothers and sisters. There is no need for Jesus to spend time with the virtuous, i.e. with the already converted; it is those in spiritual and moral deprivation with whom he needs to spend his time.
The lesson of today’s reading is extremely relevant for our own day. When looking for potential followers of Christ, where do we tend to look? How many times have we heard people wonder why God picked them as Christian leaders—as priests, religious or lay people? When we look at the Twelve Apostles, they were indeed a strange bunch: full of faults, fragile in their faith, but in the end they started something extraordinary.
Is it not true that a great deal of our pastoral energies in our churches are directed at those already converted? Is it also not true that those most in need of experiencing Christ’s love and healing may be found in places where we are hesitant to go? Perhaps we should have courage and look for people in such places; Christ will be with us when we go there.
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Monday of Week 13 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Genesis 18:16-33
For the next two days we read the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. As we begin the reading we see the three mysterious visitors of Abraham preparing to continue their journey to Sodom.
As an act of courtesy on the part of a host, Abraham accompanies them on the beginning of their journey. In parts of the Old Testament, especially in the Pentateuch, God is portrayed as having very human qualities, and this is particularly revealed in the dialogues he holds with various people (e.g. when Moses pleads on behalf of the recalcitrant Israelites).
There is a delightful touch in today’s reading. As Abraham is seeing off his mysterious visitors, one of whom is identified as God himself with two angels as companions, God wonders to himself whether he should reveal to Abraham his plan to destroy Sodom. He knows how good and compassionate a man Abraham is—almost more kind and compassionate than God himself! But Abraham is now an important person in God’s plans. He has become the head of a great nation, and all the other nations will be blessed in him. So in a way, he has a right to be privy to God’s intentions.
In fact, Abraham has been specially chosen to teach his sons and his posterity to follow closely the ways of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the promises made to Abraham will be realised. And the very justice about what the Lord is planning to do is going to be questioned.
Now, while the two angels continue on their journey, the third man—the Lord—tells Abraham he must go down to Sodom and Gomorrah to verify the reports reaching him of their terrible immorality. Again, God is presented in human terms as needing to verify by a personal visit whether what he hears about these cities is true. What was the terrible sinfulness of Sodom and Gomorrah? Israelite tradition was unanimous in ascribing the destruction of the two cities to their moral wickedness, but there were different understandings of what this wickedness consisted.
According to the Yahwist account we are following here, the evil was in a request to have homosexual acts with the three visitors of Lot (one of whom, of course, was the Lord), giving us the origination of the word ‘sodomy’. Others however, would see this not just as a serious violation of the traditions of hospitality, but as a sin of rape. Such acts were abhorrent to the Jews. In that time and culture, it was regarded as the utmost degradation for a man to be abused in this way. Roman soldiers would sometimes humiliate their prisoners of war in this manner.
The idea of permitting this outrage to recipients of a host’s hospitality was beyond conception to Lot. Only the most wicked could even think of such a thing. The degree of abhorrence is indicated by Lot’s offering the people his daughters instead. Though this compromise certainly horrifies us, in that culture and at that time, Lot judged it better to have his own daughters violated than allow his guests to be touched. To Lot, there was nothing more he could have done.
Elsewhere, in Isaiah, the perpetrators of social injustice are likened to the people of Sodom (Is 1:9). Ezekiel likens the immoral behaviour of his people to that of Samaria and Sodom and says his people’s record is even worse:
Your big sister is Samaria, who lived with her daughters to the north of you; your little sister, who lived to the south of you, is Sodom with her daughters. You not only followed their ways and acted according to their abominations; within a very little time you were more corrupt than they in all your ways. (Ezek 16:46-51).
Speaking of the idolatry and sexual immorality of Jerusalem, Jeremiah says:
…all of them have become like Sodom to me
and its inhabitants like Gomorrah. (Jer 23:14)
While two of the men (the angels) continue on their way to Sodom, the third, who is the Lord, stays behind with Abraham, who immediately begins to plead on behalf of Sodom. Surely a God of justice will not wipe out the innocent with the guilty? Supposing there are as many as 50 good people in the city, will God destroy it? Abraham dares to tell God how he should behave! He says:
Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked!
And then Abraham presents the punch line:
Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?
It would be unjust to condemn the innocent, however few in comparison with the many sinners. We have here the age-old problem of why the good should suffer along with and because of the wicked.
The sense of collective responsibility was so strong in ancient Israel that the question does not arise as to whether the just might may be spared separately and individually. God will, in fact, save Lot and his family, but the principle of individual responsibility does not appear until later (e.g. in Deuteronomy and the prophets). Abraham’s argument, then, is that since all will share the same fate he asks that even a minority of good people would be enough to win pardon for all.
Even so, Abraham’s request does not go below the number 10. Beyond that would be too much to ask for. But later we read in Jeremiah (5:1) that God would pardon Jerusalem if only one just person could be found; the same is implied in Ezekiel (22:30). Then, in Isaiah (chap 53), it is the suffering of the one Servant which will save the whole race, but this was not understood until it was seen fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ.
God ultimately agrees to spare the city, if he can find 50 good people in it. But having received this concession, Abraham presses on even further, although he knows he is being very impertinent in speaking to his God like this:
Let me take it upon myself to speak to my lord, I who am but dust and ashes. Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?
No, God says, the city would not be destroyed if 45 innocent people could be found. Abraham then continues his bargaining—40? 30? 20? Even only 10? Each time God concedes and at the end replies:
For the sake of ten I will not destroy it.
With that, the Lord leaves Abraham and continues on his journey to Sodom, while Abraham returns to his home. However, on the following day, he will go back to the place where he spoke with the Lord and where he could look down on Sodom and Gomorrah in the valley below.
Unfortunately, as we shall see, not even 10 good people could be found in the whole of Sodom. Perhaps this would be a good time for us to reflect on the level of our own compassion with people who come into our lives. We may sometimes find ourselves doing the very opposite of Abraham, that is, condemning a whole group because of a small number of misbehaving people. We do need more of Abraham’s attitude of seeing as much good as possible in the world around us.
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Tuesday of Week 13 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 8:23-27
In the previous verses to today’s reading, Jesus tells his disciples to get into a boat and cross to the other side of the Sea of Gallilee (also know as the Lake of Tiberias). As they crossed the lake, a storm suddenly blew up. It seems this is a common feature of the Sea of Galilee.
The word that Matthew uses for ‘storm’ should actually be translated ‘earthquake’. It was a word commonly used in apocalyptic literature for the shaking of the old world as God brings in his Kingdom. The Synoptic Gospels use the word in describing the events leading up to the final coming of Jesus. It indicates that there is more to this story than just a narrative.
While waves crashed into the boat, Jesus remained fast asleep. In great fear, the disciples woke up him:
Lord, save us! We are perishing!
Jesus was not very sympathetic:
Why are you afraid, you of little faith?
Then he stood up and rebuked the wind and sea. There immediately followed a complete calm.
The disciples were awestruck and, in a way, were more afraid than ever. A storm they could understand, but not what they saw Jesus doing.
What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?
In their book, only one person could have this kind of power—God himself. Their question contained its own answer. It was a further step in their realising just who Jesus their Master really was.
We can, however, read another meaning into this story. We can understand it as a kind of parable about the early Church, the Church for which Matthew is writing. It was a Church consisting of many, small scattered communities or churches. They were surrounded by large, pagan and often very hostile peoples. Each little church community must have felt like those disciples in the boat with Jesus surrounded by a large expanse of water. Sometimes that water got very angry and threatened to engulf their boat.
At the same time, Jesus their Lord seemed to be very far away; he seemed to be asleep, unaware and uncaring of their plight. The fact that in the Gospel today they address him as “Lord” would indicate that the story points more to their present situation as isolated communities in a very uncertain world. Then they would come to realise that Jesus really was with them and that he did care a lot. And peace would come back to them again. But the peace would be in their hearts; the sea around them might be just as stormy as ever.
This is something for us to learn. Most of the time we can do very little to change the world around us or change the people who bother us. Maybe we have no right to make them change. But we can change; we can learn to see things in a different way; we can learn to be proactive instead of reactive. Above all, we can learn to be aware that God is close to us at all times, that he does know, that he does care, and that, instead of taking problems and crises away, he helps us to go through them and keep our peace.
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Saturday of Week 13 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 9:14-17
Today’s reading follows on yesterday’s challenge of Jesus by some Pharisees. On that occasion they asked why Jesus was eating with sinners and outcasts. Now they go one step further and ask why he is eating at all. They put forward the example of John the Baptist and his disciples who used to fast regularly. Jews were only required to fast one day in the year, on the feast of the Atonement. However, like the Pharisees, it seems that John’s disciples used to observe fasts which were not prescribed by the Law in the hope that their extra devotion would bring about an early coming of the Kingdom.
Jesus answers their question in two ways. First he says that people do not fast when they are in the company of the bridegroom. That is a time for celebration. By implication, of course, Jesus is the groom. As long as he is around, it would be inappropriate for his disciples to fast. However, he says a time will come when the groom is no longer with them, and then there will be reasons to fast.
His second answer is more profound and takes the form of two examples. It does not make sense to repair an old piece of clothing with a patch of new cloth. The new cloth, being much tougher, will, under stress, only cause the older cloth to tear. In the second example, he says that it is not wise to put new wine into old wineskins. Wine was kept in containers made of leather. Because new wine was still fermenting and expanding, it needed to be put in new leather bags which were still elastic and could expand with the wine. The old bags would be already stretched, and new wine would only cause them to burst. Then both the wine would be lost and the bags ruined.
What did Jesus mean by these images? He was giving a clear message to his critics. Jesus’ ideas were like new wine or new cloth. They could not be fitted into old containers. People like the Pharisees were trying to fit Jesus’ teaching and his ideas into their ways of thinking, but that would not work.
Clearly, the old garment and the old wineskins represent the elements of Mosaic Law that were to be reinterpreted and “fulfilled” by Jesus’ new teachings. The new cloth and the new wine, then, are the spirit of the Kingdom as proclaimed by Jesus—the new order that Jesus was initiating—what we would now call a paradigm shift, a radically new understanding of how God was to be loved and served.
So John’s disciples wanted to know, for example, why Jesus was not fasting—because in their book, a Jew fasted, and a pious Jew fasted more often. But Jesus did not measure religion by external actions like fasting or keeping other requirements of the Law (such as washing hands before eating). For him, religion was a matter of the inner spirit, as we saw in his deeper interpretations of the Law during the Sermon on the Mount.
Over the centuries the Church has moved its position in many areas as it reaches a deeper understanding of the faith and how it is to be lived in a changing world. Such a movement took place with the Second Vatican Council. It involved much more than external changes (like having the Mass in the vernacular instead of Latin). It involved a whole new way of seeing our faith and our place as Christians in the world.
Even today, there are still people who try to live in the post-Vatican II Church with a pre-Vatican II mentality. It is like trying to squeeze new wine into old wineskins. It is a source of much friction and misunderstanding in many Christian communities. We all have an obligation both to enter fully into the mind of Christ as presented in the New Testament, and to enter into the mind of the Church in this post-Vatican II era.
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Thursday of Week 13 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 9:1-8
After the cure of the two demoniacs (see the Gospel passage from Wednesday of Week 13 of Ordinary Time), Jesus and his disciples now re-cross the lake and come into his own town. This refers not to Nazareth, but to Capernaum, which is the centre out of which he operates in Galilee. As usual with Matthew, he just gives the bare bones of a story which is told in a much more interesting way by Mark (2:1-12). Matthew concentrates on what Jesus says and does—he leaves out the details.
Some people brought a paralysed man lying on a mat to Jesus. Moved by their faith in him, Jesus says to the man,
Take heart, child; your sins are forgiven.
In Mark’s version the degree of the man’s faith is indicated by his being carried up on to the roof of the house by some friends and being let down through the roof at the feet of Jesus. Matthew says nothing about this.
The man was probably not expecting to hear Jesus mention his sins. As far as he was concerned, that was not the reason he had come to Jesus. Some scribes nearby were surprised too and even shocked. They were thinking:
This man is blaspheming.
Fully aware of what they were thinking, Jesus asked them:
For which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and walk’?
Obviously, it is much easier to say, “Your sins are forgiven.” How can you know if it has taken place? But Jesus goes on:
But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins—he then said to the paralytic—“Stand up, take your bed, and go to your home.”
And the man did just that: he rolled up his mat and walked out of the house to his home.
The people around were awestruck and praised God for giving such authority to human beings. They did not yet fully recognise the identity of Jesus, but they did realise that God was acting before their very eyes. The scribes for their part were reduced to silence. Matthew’s use of the word ‘men’ seems to point to the power of Jesus being passed on to his followers—his power to heal and to forgive.
To understand this story we need to be aware of the close links that the people of the time saw between sickness and sin. Sickness, especially a chronic sickness, was often seen as a punishment for sin, either the sin of the person himself or of a parent. We remember, in John’s Gospel, how the people asked Jesus if the man was born blind because of his own sin or the sin of his parents (John 9:2). Similarly, after Jesus had healed a man crippled for 38 years, he told him not to sin again, for fear something worse might befall him (John 5:14).
In telling the paralysed man that his sins were forgiven, Jesus was going to the root of his problem. We can probably say that sin in some form or other is at the root of all our problems. Jesus had been challenged for telling the man his sins were forgiven. To prove that he had the power to do this, he cured the man’s paralysis, which, in the minds of the onlookers, was the result of his sin. If there was no more paralysis, which was caused by sin, then the sin had been taken away too.
Nowadays, we do not see something like paralysis or a disability as a punishment from God—we do not believe that God works like that. On the other hand, it is likely that many health problems which we have can be linked with a disharmony in our lives arising from a conflict between what we are truly meant to be and what we tend to be. We refer to some sicknesses as ‘dis-eases’. They are the result of harmful stress when we are out of harmony with ourselves, with other people and with our environment. In that sense, we can see a clear link between sin and sickness.
Perhaps if we looked at our own lives we might see that some of our physical and mental ailments are due to a lack of harmony between God and others and our surroundings. Let’s think about that today.
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Wednesday of Week 13 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 8:28-34
Matthew’s version of this strange story is quite different from and much shorter than that told in Mark’s Gospel (Mark 5:1-20). It is usual for Matthew to pare down stories to just the essential details, while Mark tends to give a more dramatic presentation. In Matthew’s version, there are two possessed people instead of just one (as in Mark’s Gospel). This is similar to the version of the Bartimaeus story told by Mark (10:46-52) where Matthew (20:29-34) also has two blind men instead of one.
In the previous story about the calming of the storm, we saw that Jesus and his disciples were crossing the lake. They now come to their destination, a place known as the Gadarenes. It got its name from the town of Gadara on the south-east side of the lake.
Here Jesus was met by two people possessed by demons who completely controlled them. Unlike many of the ordinary people, the demons in these two men have an insight into Jesus’ identity although they may not recognise it fully:
What have you to do with us, Son of God?
Jesus usually refers to himself as Son of Man and never as Son of God.
The two men continue shouting:
Have you come here to torment us before the time?
There was a belief that demons would be free to roam the earth until the Judgment Day came. They did this by taking possession of people. This possession was often associated with disease, because disease was the consequence of sin and a sign of being in Satan’s power. That is why when Jesus expels a demon there is often a cure as well. By driving out these evil spirits, Jesus inaugurates the Messianic age which many of the people do not recognise, but which the demons do. Later Jesus will hand over this exorcising power, together with the ability to effect cures, to his disciples. We will see that in the discourse in chapter 10.
The demons then begged Jesus to let them go into a nearby herd of pigs. Jesus consented to this. As soon as they had entered the pigs, the whole herd rushed headlong over a cliff and into the water below. The swineherds rushed off to the nearest town to tell what had happened.
The townspeople immediately came out in search of Jesus and, not surprisingly, begged him to go somewhere else. It might seem rather high-handed of Jesus to destroy a whole herd of pigs in this way. We have to remember, however, that in Jewish eyes these pigs were abominably unclean. There was not a better place to put demons, and it was they who really brought about the destruction of the animals. But understandably, the owners of the pigs found it difficult to see things in the same way.
The purpose of the story, of course, is to focus on Jesus’ power to liberate people from evil influences which were destroying their lives. What these men were suffering could not be compared to the loss of the pigs’ lives and the pigs would have ended up in a cooking pot anyway! We, too, need to ask Jesus to liberate us from any evil influences or addictions which enslave us and prevent us from being the kind of persons he wants us to be.
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Wednesday of Week 13 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Genesis 21:5,8-20
At last God keeps his promise and Sarah, old though she is, bears her one and only son, the son through whom the promises to Abraham and his descendants will be kept. Abraham himself is exactly 100 years old.
The child Isaac grew and on the day that he was weaned Abraham threw a large feast. Weaning took place in the ancient Near East between the ages of two and three. However, when Sarah saw her son Isaac playing with his half-brother, Ishmael, the son of Hagar, the maidservant, she became very angry (while there is an impression in the story that Isaac and Ishmael are the same age, Ishmael would have been in his mid teens by this time). Sarah had not forgotten how Hagar had mocked her for sterility and not being able to give Abraham a son. She was also afraid that, if the brothers got too close, it would affect Isaac’s share of the inheritance. In fact, Isaac will get everything.
The word ‘playing’ here is another allusion to Isaac’s name, where the verb means ‘to laugh’ or ‘to play’. She tells Abraham to get rid of both Ishmael and Hagar. She does not want Ishmael to share any of the family inheritance with Isaac.
Abraham was very unhappy with this because he saw Ishmael as a real son whom he loved. But also according to law and the customs of the day the arbitrary expulsion of a servant girl’s son was forbidden and, especially as in this case, where the father is the head of the household. However, God tells Abraham to follow Sarah’s demands because Isaac and only Isaac is to be the father of future descendants.
At the same time, Ishmael, the son of the slave woman, will become a patriarch in his own right as a token of honour for Abraham, his father. God tells Abraham:
As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring.
On the following day, Abraham sent Hagar off with her son and a supply of bread and water—in view of Abraham’s wealth only minimal provisions. She left with her boy and wandered in the wilderness of Beer-sheba. When the water ran out, she put her son in the shade of some bushes and then went to sit down some distance off. She prays:
Do not let me look on the death of the child.
And she wept. It was the second time she had received this treatment. The boy too must have been crying because an angel spoke to Hagar from heaven:
Do not be afraid, for God has heard the voice of the boy….Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.
‘God has heard’ is a play on the meaning of Ishmael’s name. When Hagar opened her eyes, there nearby was a well. She filled her waterskin and gave the boy to drink. And now, says Genesis:
God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness and became an expert with the bow [i.e. an excellent huntsman].
In the next verse, not part of the reading, we are told that Hagar found an Egyptian wife for Ishmael. We remember that Hagar too had been brought from Egypt by Abraham. But this marriage only confirms Ishmael and his descendants as outsiders and leaving the field to Isaac.
We are seeing here, of course, the evolution of the Israelite people told through the eyes of the sacred authors. Certainly not everything in this story would meet with our approval today, neither the mockery of Sarah’s barrenness nor the sending away of Hagar. We are dealing with a much earlier society where many of the values which we take for granted had not yet developed in people’s consciousness.
But we also have to acknowledge that these values have not been appropriated by everyone in our own societies. We have only to think of the millions of people who have been driven from their homes and are without even the basic necessities of living. Most of these situations are the result of human (inhuman) behaviour.
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