Saturday of Week 15 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Exodus 12:37-42

Yesterday’s reading about the celebration of the Passover is followed by instructions on the feast of Unleavened Bread and other instructions on the observance of the Passover. After this, the book then goes back to the narrative and, considering its climactic role, gives a rather brief account of the Tenth and most terrible Plague, the killing of all the first-born Egyptian children and animals. However, Pharaoh has now had enough and ordered Moses and Aaron to leave with all their people, their herds and their possessions.

Today’s passage describes the beginning of the long journey out of Egypt to the Promised Land by way of Mount Sinai. The journey began in the city of Rameses in the very north of Egypt, where the Hebrews had been employed virtually as slaves in the Pharaoh’s great construction works. They set off for Succoth which lay to the southeast about half way between Rameses and the Sea of Reeds.

Their numbers were estimated to be 600,000 men, “not counting their families.” There was also a crowd of “people of various sorts” with them. These were probably the result of mixed marriages between the Hebrews and the native Egyptians. They also brought with them numerous flocks of sheep and goats and herds of cattle.

However, they had left in such a rush that the flour they had with them had no time to be leavened, so they made bread with the unleavened flour. This is another tradition of the origin of the use of unleavened bread as part of the Passover celebration. They left in such a rush that they did not even have time to prepare any proper food for their journey.

It was the end of a long sojourn in Egypt—estimated by the Bible as 430 years—from the time Joseph had first invited his family to settle there. The day they left was said to be the exact anniversary date of their arrival. It was seen as the greatest event in the history of Israel.

They had also started on their journey by night, so future celebrations of the event were forever more to be observed by a vigil. The passage ends with:

That was for the Lord a night of vigil, to bring them out of the land of Egypt. That same night is a vigil to be kept for the Lord by all the Israelites throughout their generations.

And as we have seen, it will be the foreshadowing of a much greater Passover, a more significant vigil to come—the Christian Easter Vigil.

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Saturday of Week 15 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 12:14-21

Jesus is becoming a figure of controversy.  We saw yesterday how he was accused by Pharisees of condoning the breaking of the Sabbath on the part of his disciples.  Far from apologising, Jesus defended his followers and implied that he himself was greater than the Law.  Immediately afterwards he went to a synagogue and, in spite of a challenge about healing on the Sabbath, went ahead and cured a man with a “withered hand” (Matt 12:9-13). At the end of this story, Matthew says:

But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him. (Matt 12:14)

He was seen as a severe threat to their authority—and this is where our reading begins today.

Jesus was fully aware of their plotting and so he disappeared from sight for a while.  We should be clear that Jesus did not go out of his way to confront and attack people.  Still less was his behaviour deliberately designed to create trouble for himself. There are people like that; they go out of their way to make trouble for others and for themselves.  Jesus never behaved in such a way.  He did not want to attack or be attacked by people.  He did not deliberately engineer his own sufferings and death, quite the contrary.  So now, as things get hot for him, he withdraws for a while.

At this point, Matthew (remember, he is writing for a Jewish readership) shows how Jesus’ behaviour corresponds to a prophecy in the Old Testament—something he does a number of times in his Gospel. He quotes the passage from the prophet Isaiah (42:1-4), and it shows Jesus as full of the Spirit of God campaigning for justice for peoples everywhere. 

He is the servant whom God has chosen, “in whom my soul delights”.  He is no demagogue shouting from a soapbox:

He will not cry out or lift up his voice
or make it heard in the street…

He moves around quietly and, at the same time, is tolerant and understanding of the weak. His behaviour is described as gentle and kind, so that:

…a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench…

We, too, are called to live and proclaim the gospel without compromise, but to do so without any taint of arrogance or bullying. At the same time, we need to show patience and understanding for those who are not yet ready to answer Jesus’ call.

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