Wednesday of Week 17 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 13:44-46

Today we read the 5th and 6th of the Parables of the Kingdom which have basically the same message, but with some difference in emphasis. In the first of these today, a man unexpectedly discovers treasure in a field and quickly puts it back again. In ancient times it was common to hide treasure in the ground since there were no banks as we know them. There were, however, ‘bankers’, people who could handle money, probably closer to what we would call moneylenders. (Remember the parable of the talents, where the man who hid his talent was told he should have deposited it with a banker so that it could earn interest. Instead, he did what someone in this parable had done—buried it in a field.)

The finder then goes and quietly buys the field, selling everything he has in order to do so; the treasure is now his.

In the second parable, a jewel merchant comes across a magnificent pearl. Again, he sells all the lesser pearls he already has in order to gain possession of it.

These, Jesus says, are images of the Kingdom. Yet there is a significant difference between them. In the first parable, the man comes on the treasure purely by accident. He was not looking for anything like that. He just came across it while working in someone else’s field. That is the way that Christ can come into some people’s lives. They are living their lives with a greater or lesser degree of happiness and satisfaction and then, out of the blue, they are brought face to face with the Christian message. It can happen in so many ways and has been described in many accounts of conversion. The effect is to turn their whole life around.

In the second case, the man is looking for something. He has a very definite goal in mind—the perfect pearl. Similarly, a person can be looking for real meaning in their life. They may have tried many things already with only partial satisfaction. Then they come across the gospel of Jesus and they know that here is the answer they have been looking for. Everything else is abandoned as they focus entirely on following the Way of Jesus. They know that this is it.

Once we truly understand what it really means to live under the Lordship of God, once we have a full understanding of the vision of life that Jesus proposes, then everything else pales into insignificance. And, whatever enticements may come our way, we know that there is no other way to go. Jesus is the Way, Jesus is Truth, and Jesus is Life. We would not exchange his Way for anything.

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Wednesday of Week 17 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Exodus 34:29-35

Today’s reading comes after an account of God’s covenant being renewed with his people. The first covenant had fallen through when the Israelites set up the golden calf as an image of God and worshiped it with sacrifices and holocausts. God had been displeased and Moses was so angry at the sight of the revelling Israelites that he threw the tablets on the ground where they were smashed to pieces. It was the end of that covenant. It was not God who had broken it, but the people who had reneged on solemn promises to keep the Lord’s commandments. Moses then asked God who was to be their leader from now on, to renew the covenant. If they were to continue their journey, the people needed the assurance that the Lord was with them.

Moses was told to cut two new tablets so that the Lord could write on them as he did with the first pair. Then Yahweh appears and speaks consoling words:

The Lord, the Lord,
a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger,
and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,
keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin… (Exod 34:6-7)

They are to know that this is the God they are dealing with. Of course, if they alienate themselves from him, they will be the losers. He will not force himself on them.

God then makes a new covenant with the Israelites and gives them a set of instructions for them to follow. It is a summary of commandments already given. Finally, Moses is told to put all this in writing as the terms of the covenant between God and Israel.

And Moses, we are told, stayed up on the mountain with Yahweh for 40 days and 40 nights, eating and drinking nothing, and on the tablets he wrote the words of the covenant—the Ten Words, the Decalogue (Greek, deka logoi).

Here today’s passage takes up the story. It is a story of uncertain origins and records a tradition about the radiance of Moses’ face, expressed by the verb qaran meaning ‘horn’. The radiance is seen like two horns of light rising from the head of Moses and represented as such in many works of art, including the famous statue by Michelangelo in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Our passage makes use of this tradition to describe Moses on his descent from the mountain back to his people.

As Moses came down from the mountain with the two newly inscribed tablets, he was not aware of the radiance of his face after having been speaking face to face with the Lord. When Aaron and the people saw the face of Moses, the radiance of his skin was such that they were afraid to go near him.

Moses told them not to fear and invited them to come close. Aaron and the other leaders approached and then the rest of the people followed. And Moses passed on to them all the instructions that he had received from the Lord on Mount Sinai. Once he had finished speaking, Moses put a veil over his face.

From now on, whenever Moses went into the Lord’s presence, he removed the veil to speak face to face with the Lord. This can refer to the times when Moses went into the Tent of Meeting to talk with God, which we saw in yesterday’s reading.

When he came out again, he would give the Lord’s instructions and the Israelites would see the radiance of his face, but then Moses would put the veil back again until the next time he spoke with the Lord.

Paul sees in Moses’ veil a symbol of the failure of many of his people to recognise in Jesus the true Messiah and Saviour. When they read the Old Testament, it is as if a veil is concealing its full meaning from them:

…to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, the same veil is still there; it is not unveiled since in Christ it is set aside. (2 Cor 3:14)

It is significant in this context, that Moses only put on the veil after he had passed on the Lord’s message.

The symbol of the veil also occurs in John’s description of Jesus’ resurrection. When the Beloved Disciple looks into the tomb he notices that the veil which covered the face of Jesus is now wrapped neatly into one place. On seeing this, he believed, that is, he knew that his Lord was with the Father. The veil represents the humanity of Jesus by which his disciples could look on him during his earthly life; now, face to face with the Father in glory, there is no need any more for this veil.

Finally, we might say that the veil that Christ wears now is his community. We are the Body of Christ and it is through his Body that he now communicates with the world. How well are we fulfilling this responsibility, especially on a community level?

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