Thursday of Week 16 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Exodus 19:1-2,9-11,16-20

We begin today the story of the great encounter with Yahweh at Mount Sinai—a mountain whose exact location is in doubt. Its importance was in its holiness and not in its geographical location. According to the Jerusalem Bible commentary:

“Tradition locates it in the southern region of the Sinai peninsula at Jebel Musa (2,500 m), the northern rock-face of which dominates a barren plain surrounded by mountains. This locality admirably satisfies the data of the text. It was at Sinai, also called Horeb or ‘Mount of God’, that Moses received his vocation and had his second meeting with his father-in-law Jethro. At Sinai, the Law was given and the Covenant concluded. At Sinai, God placed himself at the head of his people for the journey to the Promised Land. It was to Sinai that Elijah the prophet returned as to the pure spring of divine revelation. Sinai also stands for the Old Covenant that was eventually superseded (see Gal 4:24).”

It was three months after leaving Egypt that the Israelites arrived in the desert of Sinai and set up camp there. In a paragraph omitted from our reading, God speaks to Moses with a message for the people. He reminds them of all that he has done for them:

You have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. (Exod 19:4)

Though the whole earth belongs to God, if the Hebrews listen to his voice and observe the covenant he has made with them, they shall be his special possession, dearer to him than all other people.

…you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. (Exod 19:6)

In this context, “holy” means ‘set apart’.

When Moses passed on the message to the people, they responded together:

All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do. (Exod 24:3)

Sadly, this is a promise they will continually make—and break.

We now come back to our reading. The Lord tells Moses that he is going to come to him in a thick cloud. When the people, who have grumbled so much against Moses, will hear God speaking to him (but not able to see anything), they will have their trust in Moses restored.  At the same time, the people are told to prepare themselves on that day and the next. They are to wash their clothes and to be ready for the third day, but they are not to have any sexual intimacy during these days. They were told:

…on the third day the Lord will come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people.

On this day, the great theophany takes place. God is not seen face to face, but his presence is evident through all the symbolic signs of thunder and lightning, a heavy cloud and trumpet blasts.

Not surprisingly, the people are filled with fear and trembling. The thunderstorm is the chosen scene of God’s self-manifestation; the gale is his herald’s trumpet, the thunder his voice, the cloud and the fire the signs of his presence. (Compare the encounter of Elijah with God in 1 Kings 19:11-12.) The purpose of this theophany is not only to show God’s mastery of nature, but also his majesty, his sublimity and the religious awe that he inspires. 

Moses then led the people to the foot of the mountain. God had earlier indicated the limits of their approach. Anyone who even touched the holy mountain itself was himself not even to be touched, but to be killed from a distance by stoning or by being shot with an arrow. This also applied to their animals. 

Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, because the Lord came down on it in fire. The smoke rose as if from a furnace and the whole mountain trembled violently, as if there was an earthquake. The trumpet blasts grew louder and louder, while Moses spoke with God and God replied with peals of thunder. ‘Thunder’ here may mean the voice of God, which sounded like thunder.

Finally, when God came down on the mountain, he invited Moses to the top of the mountain and Moses went up to meet him. We are preparing for what is perhaps the most awesome moment in the whole of the Hebrew Testament. The stage is now set for God to communicate his Law to the people, the Law which will seal the covenant between the two sides. We see here the paradoxical remoteness of our transcendent God and, at the same time, his closeness in speaking intimately with Moses.

Obviously, the images here are not to be taken literally. They are intended to convey the awesomeness, the unapproachability and unknowability of God, his simultaneous transcendence and immanence.

Strangely, those who are most aware of this are those who have been closest to him—the great mystics like Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross or Ignatius Loyola. The nearer they come to God, the deeper their awareness of his total transcendence. Thomas Aquinas will also say that every statement made about God must be at once denied—God is Truth, but not the truth that we can reach; God is Love, but love far beyond our most intense experience of it. At the same time, God is closer to us than breathing, and penetrates the deepest recesses of our being. Where God is concerned, familiarity breeds awe—but not fear. It also generates an indescribable love.

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Thursday of Week 16 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 13:10-17

Today’s passage continues from the Parables of the Kingdom and forms an interlude between the parable of the sower and its interpretation. Jesus is asked by his disciples why he speaks to the people in parables. The implication is that he does not speak in parables to his own disciples.

It would be possible to interpret Jesus’ reply as meaning that he speaks clearly to his disciples but to the people in riddles because they are outsiders. This would seem to contradict the purpose of speaking in parables, which is to use helpful and familiar images in order to lead towards a better understanding of a deeper message (the parable of the sower is a good example).

The Jerusalem Bible sees it somewhat differently:

“Those who saw so dimly could be further blinded by the light of full revelation. Jesus, therefore, does not reveal with complete clarity the true nature of the messianic kingdom which is unostentatious. Instead he filters the light through symbols; the resulting half-light is nevertheless a grace from God, an invitation to ask for something better and accept something greater.”

It seems that we are dealing here again with the difference between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’. The ‘insiders’ are those who give Jesus a ready hearing. Naturally, they are more open to hearing about the ‘mysteries’ of the Kingdom and to assimilating what they hear. The ‘outsiders’ on the other hand, are precisely that because they have closed minds; they are not ready to listen.

In the particular context of Matthew’s Gospel, those who refuse to listen are those who have rigidly bound themselves within the confines of the Mosaic Law and who refuse to listen to the message of Jesus. His message is a “fulfilment” as well as being a radical restatement of the Law and the proclamation of a totally new covenant in the person of Jesus as Messiah. Or, as the Jerusalem Bible puts it:

“The ill-disposed will even lose what they have, namely, that Jewish Law which, without the perfection Christ brings to it, is destined to become obsolete.”

This gives meaning to the words which Jesus uses. Speaking of the ‘insiders’ he says:

For to those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance, but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.

Those who have opened themselves to the Word of God will find themselves evermore enriched, while those who have not even begun to accept the Word will end up in even a worse situation than they are now. Similarly, those to whom the parables are addressed:

…look but do not see, listen but do not hear or understand.

This happens, not because the parables are difficult, but because the hearers are not prepared to listen. In fact, they are, one might almost say, watered down and easily digestible versions of the full message.

And Jesus quotes words of Isaiah (9:13) which are not meant to be understood as God deliberately blocking his Word from reaching people as this would not make any sense. The prophet is better understood as speaking in a strongly sarcastic tone:

You will indeed listen but never understand,
and you will indeed look but never perceive.
For this people’s heart has grown dull,
and their ears are hard of hearing,
and they have shut their eyes,
so that they might not look with their eyes,
and hear with their ears
and understand with their heart and turn—
and I would heal them.

That is where the issue lies. If we are prepared to see and to listen, it will mean a radical change in our lives, in our attitudes, in our values and priorities, in our relationships. Many are not ready to have their lives turned upside down. They prefer to remain blind and deaf.

On the contrary, Jesus says to the ‘insiders’:

But blessed are your eyes, for they see [i.e. understand and accept], and your ears, for they hear. Truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it and to hear what you hear but did not hear it [i.e. listen, accept and carry out].

And to the extent that we have become ‘insiders’ with Christ, we too are deeply blessed. But we do need to be sensitive to our own tendencies not to see or not to listen because of our unreadiness to go all the way in our following Jesus, or in our reluctance to let go and make the changes in our lives he is asking of us.

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