Saturday of Week 22 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 6:1-5

Yet another confrontation between Jesus and some Pharisees is described in today’s Gospel. Following immediately, as it does, after the parable about the patch and the wineskins (Luke 5:33-39), it confirms what Jesus said about the gap between the traditionalists and his vision.

He and his disciples were walking through a cornfield and it was a Sabbath day. The disciples were plucking heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands and eating them. The Sabbath did not forbid walking short distances. And custom did not forbid ‘gleaning’, that is, taking grain left over by reapers. It did forbid reaping and threshing. Only a very narrow-minded interpretation could have described plucking as reaping and rubbing between the hands as threshing, but that seems to be what is happening here.

The disciples are asked:

Why are you doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?

Jesus answers very quickly and to the point. He makes no reference to the narrow-minded legalism that his critics reveal, the ‘old wineskin’ mentality. Instead, he throws at them an incident from the past. David and his men were hungry so they went into the house of God and, with his approval, ate the holy bread of the Presence which only the priests were allowed to eat (1 Sam 21:6). Each Sabbath, twelve loaves of fresh bread were set on a table in the Holy Place. The stale bread was eaten by the priests.

As king, David put himself above the law. Both David’s and the disciples’ actions involved godly men doing something forbidden by law. However, it is never a violation of a law to do what is good and to save life (eating for survival). In that sense both David and the disciples were within the spirit, though not the letter, of the law.

And Jesus, too, is above the law:

The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.

Jesus has the authority to overrule man-made laws concerning the Sabbath, particularly as interpreted by the Pharisees. This does not mean, of course, that Jesus (or even God for that matter) will do anything he feels like doing. Jesus will never go against anything that involves the True or the Good; with his Father he is the Source of all that is true and good.

But many of the Jewish laws (like civil laws) are ‘positive law’. In themselves, they involve matters which are neither good nor bad. In itself, it is neither good nor bad to stop at a green light or go through a red one. It is neither good nor bad of itself to abstain from work on the Sabbath. What makes these acts good or bad is the deeper good of which they are a sign. That deeper good may sometimes involve their non-observance. Hunger and survival may over-ride a rule to fast. In a matter of extreme urgency it may be necessary to drive (safely) through a red light. The letter of the law is violated, but not the good it intends.

As noted in the Jerusalem Bible, “some manuscripts of Luke contain a very pertinent [but likely spurious] saying at this point”:

On the same day, seeing a man working on the Sabbath day, Jesus said to him: ‘Friend, if you know what you are doing, you are blessed; but if you do not know, you are accursed as a breaker of the Law’.

That is a sentiment that goes with new wine and new wineskins. If truth and goodness are not violated by doing or not doing something, can we say there is sin or evil there?

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Saturday of Week 22 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Colossians 1:21-23

This brief reading follows immediately on the triumphant hymn in praise of Christ, head of all creation and head of his body, the Church (see Col 1:15-20).

Having said that Christ had reconciled the whole world to himself and brought peace by his death on the cross, Paul reminds the Colossians that they themselves have experienced the reconciling effect of Christ’s death, and appeals to them to adhere firmly to him as their only mediator with God:

And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him…

Paul rejoices that the Colossians are among those who, once alienated from God by a pagan and sinful life, have now been reconciled and united with him through the death of Jesus. The “fleshly body” is that of his Son. This provides the locus where reconciliation takes place. Into this body the entire human race is effectively gathered. This is beautifully put in the Letter to the Ephesians where it says that Jesus, through his death, broke down the divisions and brought peace and reconciliation between Jews and Gentiles, creating a single new Person (see Eph 2:14). This work has to continue between peoples everywhere. Our world today is riven with divisions.

This state of peace and reconciliation will only continue:

…provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith…

They can now stand before God “holy and blameless and irreproachable”, provided they remain true to the foundation of their faith and keep close to the hope engendered by the gospel message. It is a message that is extended to the whole world and Paul is its servant.

We, too, need to remain faithful to the gospel message we have received through Christ and his Church. We, too, are called, like Paul, to be its servant and to be agents of peace and reconciliation in every area where we discern harmful divisions between peoples and groups. As the popular song says:

Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.

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Friday of Week 22 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 5:33-39

The call of the first disciples is followed in Luke by the cure of a leper and then of a paralytic. Then there is the call of Levi (who is called “Matthew” in Matthew’s Gospel) and the discussion with Jesus about his mixing with sinful and unclean people. It is the first of many confrontations between Jesus and the Jewish leaders.

We then come to today’s reading. Some scribes and Pharisees want to know why, when their disciples and those of John the Baptist regularly fast, Jesus’ disciples freely eat and drink. We know that John grew up in the desert and lived on an austere diet of locusts and wild honey. He also preached an austere penitential message and lived a highly disciplined life. The Pharisees also led a highly regimented and strict lifestyle. Jesus, however, together with his disciples, is frequently seen eating at the tables of Pharisees, tax collectors and in the houses of friends. But while Jesus rejected ostentatious fasting, we know he fasted (once for 40 days) and praised it together with prayer and almsgiving, provided it was done discreetly and not for display.

Jesus gives two answers to the question. First, he says that it is not appropriate for guests to fast when the bridegroom is still around. A Jewish wedding was and is a specially joyous occasion (plenty of wine needed, as we saw in Cana) and it could last for a week. It would be unthinkable to fast at such a time. Here Jesus is the bridegroom. There will come a time when he is not physically with his disciples, and then they will fast.

The second reason goes deeper and is presented in the form of a parable. One does not use a new piece of cloth to patch an old garment. At the first sign of stress, the new cloth will be stronger and the old cloth will tear out. Nor does one put new wine into old wineskins. The new wine is still fermenting and expanding. The old wineskins, made of goatskins, are already stretched and no longer flexible. When the new wine expands, the old wineskins will not be able to stretch any more and will burst. The result is lost wine and ruined wineskins. So new wine has to be poured into new wineskins.

In this Jesus is clearly saying that his whole vision of religion is new, and that it can only be accepted and adopted by people who are prepared to see things in a new way. His teaching and vision cannot be grafted on to the old religion. The old religion emphasised externals like observance of legal and ritual regulations and fasting; Jesus emphasises the interior spirit, which is the real measure of a person’s value.

This parable may also be read in conjunction with John’s account of the wedding feast at Cana, where Jesus produced new and better wine from the water in the ritual washing jars.

Jesus knows the difficulties his adversaries face:

No one after drinking old wine desires new wine but says, ‘The old is good.’

Those who had grown up with the ‘old wine’ of the Mosaic Law would find it difficult to switch to the ‘new wine’ that Jesus was offering.

Even in our Church today there are some who still hanker for the ‘old wine’ of the pre-Vatican II days. They have not made the inner shift which is necessary. They have not understood that Vatican II was much more than a change of external practices (such as have taken place in the liturgy). They nostalgically long for the Tridentine Mass in Latin and proclaim it preferable to the ‘new’ liturgy which they find superficial and lacking in reverence. But they do not seem to have grasped the thinking which is behind the liturgical changes. The new patch does not fit their old cloth. “The old wine is better,” they say.

Going forward, this thinking will not likely disappear because “the world writes the agenda for the church” and there will no doubt be other changes. The new wine will not be appreciated until the wineskins are also changed; otherwise we are in the same situation as the Pharisees were with Jesus.

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Friday of Week 22 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Colossians 1:15-20

One of the main problems Paul was dealing with in writing to the Colossians concerned their ideas about angelic powers in the cosmos which threatened to push Christ into second place. Today we have Paul’s magnificent response, one of the most inspired passages in the New Testament which, as we shall see, has many echoes of John’s magisterial prologue on Jesus as the Word.

Originally, it was perhaps an early Christian hymn on the supremacy of Christ, and was used here by Paul to counteract the false teachings at Colossae. It is divided into two parts:

1. Christ’s supremacy in creation (vv 15-17)
2. Christ’s supremacy in redemption (vv 18-20)

The New American Bible gives the following analysis of the passage:

Scholars raise the question whether Paul may not have adapted these verses from a Christian hymn or a Hellenistic wisdom poem. Whatever the case, the passage with all its lyricism is probably Paul’s. Its exalted Christology synthesises the growing awareness in New Testament times of Christ as man, Son of God, king and judge of the world, endowed with divine redemptive power, and containing in himself the fullness of that effective presence of God among humans which was first manifested in the Old Testament (see John 1:1-18). Whereas the human person is patterned after the image of God, being given a certain likeness to him (Gen 1:26), Christ is the actual likeness of God. Through faith, the remote reality of the Deity is rendered discernibly present in him and comprehensible to humans. He is the image of the invisible God (v 15), in the sense that as a person he is supreme in every way over all creation. Christ’s supremacy requires not only that nothing appear in creation except in relation to him, but also that he himself share in the creation of all things (v 16). Such is his supremacy that he existed before creation came into being. It is to him that creation owes all that it has been, is, and will be (v 17).

Christ cannot be anything but supreme over the whole church, which in any case is unthinkable and unrealisable without him (his body). Furthermore, because of his supremacy he was the first to be raised by God from the dead; and his resurrection placed him in full possession of headship over the community which he brought into being (v 18). Since, as is clear from Christ’s role in creation (v 16), the cosmos is dependent on him (v 19), his death upon the cross has its effect on the whole of creation without exception, bringing it peace and uniting it to God (v 20). Paul’s clear exposition of the supremacy of Christ was occasioned by the Colossians’ difficulties concerning the relationship of angelic spirits to the world. (edited)

Paul introduces two ways in which Christ can claim to be the ‘head’ of everything that exists:

1. He is the head of creation, of all that exists naturally (vv 15-17).
2. He is head of the new creation and of all that exists supernaturally through having been saved (vv 18-20).

The subject of the poem is the pre-existing Christ, but considered only in so far as he was manifest in the unique historic person that is the Son of God made man (see Phil 2:5-8). It is as the incarnate God that Jesus is the ‘image of God’, i.e. his human nature was the visible manifestation of God who is invisible (see Rom 8:29). As such, it is in his concrete human nature, and as part of creation, that Jesus is called the ‘first-born of creation’—not in the temporal sense of having been born first, but in the sense of having been given the first place of honour.

Let us now go to the text of the reading from Paul.

Christ’s supremacy in creation (vv 15-17):
Jesus is the image of the invisible God; i.e. when we see and hear him, we see and hear God, though veiled in the limitations of human form. The full glory of God cannot be seen in the humanity of Jesus. In Hebrews, he is described as the:

…reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being. (Heb 1:3)

This figure of the image suggests two truths:

1. God is invisible (“no one has ever seen God”, see John 1:18)
2. Christ, who is the eternal Son of God and who became the God-man, reflects and reveals him to us (see John 1:18; 14:9).

Just as Moses had to veil his face when speaking to the Hebrews after conversing with Yahweh, so Jesus needs to veil his divine nature by his humanity so that we may have access to him. During the experience of the Transfiguration, the three disciples got a glimpse of the veil being briefly removed.

Jesus is the first-born of all creatures:

He was in the beginning with God. (John 1:2)

As a member of the human race, he is first-born in dignity, but not in time. Just as the firstborn son had certain privileges and rights in the biblical world, so also Christ has certain rights in relation to all creation—priority, preeminence and sovereignty (vv 16-18):

…in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers… (vv 16-18)

As John also said:

All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. (John 1:3)

In the reading, we have Paul’s refutation of the Colossians’ belief in cosmic powers. Everything that exists, however lofty and powerful, comes into being through Christ and goes back to God through him.

Seven times in six verses Paul mentions “all creation”, “all things” and “everything”, thus stressing that Christ is supreme over all. “Thrones, dominions, rulers or powers” refers to angels, and a hierarchy of angels figured prominently in the heretical beliefs of some Colossians. Here Paul clearly asserts that the angels have their origin from Christ as the Creative Word of God. They were created through him and for him. They bow down in worship before him.

Christ exists before all else that is:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. (John 1:1-2)

and

Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am. (John 8:58)

In him all things hold together:

What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. (John 1:3-4)

The continuing existence of every created thing totally depends on his creative and conserving power.

Christ’s supremacy in redemption (vv 18-20)

And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. (Eph 1:22-23)

For Paul’s description of the church, we read in 1 Corinthians (12:12-16) that the church is the Body of the Risen Christ.
In other words, it is through his Body that Christ remains visible to the world. It is through his Body that he continues to communicate his Good News of the Kingdom. For each one of us, both individually and especially collectively, it is a huge responsibility. And we can only fulfil our mission effectively in so far as we are totally united in mind, heart and spirit with the Head of the Body, Christ Jesus our Lord and with the Word he brought for the world.

Christ is the Beginning, the first-born of the dead, so that he should be supreme in every way. Jesus comes before all, on earth and in the heavens. Nothing or no one comes before him in time or in rank. He is the Beginning of the new creation. He is the First-born, because he was the first to rise from the dead with a resurrected body. Elsewhere Paul calls him “the first fruits of those who have died” (1 Cor 15:20).

Others who were raised from the dead—the widow’s son raised to life by Elisha (2 Kings 4:35); the widow’s son at Naim (Luke 7:15); Lazarus (John 11:44); Tabitha, raised to life by Peter (Acts 9:36-41); the boy who slept during one or Paul’s sermons, fell out of a window and died and then was restored to life by Paul (Acts 20:7-11)—all were raised only to die again.

God wanted all fullness to be found in him—Jesus is the source of the fullness to which we all aspire, to be totally filled with the Spirit of Christ. ‘Fullness’ (pleroma) is a word rich in meaning when used by Paul. Originally it was part of the technical vocabulary of some Gnostic philosophies. In these systems it meant the sum of the supernatural forces controlling the fate of people. For Paul, ‘fullness’ meant the totality of God with all his powers and attributes (Col 2:9).

In this context, the exact meaning of the word pleroma (literally, the thing that fills up a gap or hole, like a patch, see Matt 9:16) is not certain here. Some writers have thought it must mean the same as in Colossians 2:9 (“…the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily…”), but since vv 15-18 have already dealt with the divinity of Jesus, it seems likely that the reference here is to the biblical concept of the entire cosmos as filled with the creative presence of God.

This concept was also widespread in the Graeco-Roman world. Paul teaches that the incarnation and resurrection make Christ head not only of the entire human race, but of the entire created cosmos, so that everything that was involved in the fall is equally involved in the salvation. So, in Romans Paul writes:

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God…We know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor. (Rom 8:19,22)

And to the Corinthians he wrote:

But we speak God’s wisdom, a hidden mystery, which God decreed before the ages for our glory and which none of the rulers of this age understood, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. (1 Cor 2:7)

This is the work of Jesus: to bring reconciliation and healing where there is division. The end of today’s passage says:

…through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

That is, the work of Jesus is to bring together not only people, but the whole of creation. This reconciliation of the whole universe (including angels as well as human beings) means, not that every single individual will be saved, but that all who are saved will be saved by their collective return to right order and the peace of perfect submission to God. This was the mission that Jesus gave to his disciples as he breathed his Spirit on them after the resurrection:

Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained. (John 20:22-23)

In this scene the only mission given is to reconcile people with God and with each other in Christ. This is the work of the Kingdom, to bring all peoples and the whole of creation into peace and harmony based on truth, love and justice.

Making peace through Christ’s death on the cross
After all the triumphant language of the passage this comes as something of a surprising anticlimax, but totally in keeping with the meaning of Christ. The peace and reconciliation that he brings is through the blood of the cross, the ultimate sacrifice of his humanity in love for his people and the world. This is what constitutes the real greatness of Christ. Because of his death on the cross:

…God exalted him even more highly
and gave him the name
that is above every other name,
so that at the name given to Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2:9-11)

We, too, are called to follow in his footsteps, ready to carry our cross for the sake of the Kingdom:

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. (Matt 5:9)

The passage is extraordinarily rich in meaning and requires much time to be absorbed into the fabric of our thinking. It is both a profession of faith and the basis for very deep prayer.

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Wednesday of Week 22 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 4:38-44

After the scene in the synagogue where Jesus healed a man possessed by an evil spirit, he goes straight to Peter’s house. It was a Sabbath day, so Jesus could not move around or do any major activity. He seems to have used this house as his base when in Capernaum and that part of Galilee. Jesus had “nowhere to lay his head”, no dwelling of his own, but it seems clear that he was not homeless. There were always people ready to offer him hospitality—a custom of the Middle East and a model for Christians of every age and place.

Peter’s mother-in-law was in the grip of a fever and the disciples begged Jesus to do something for her. Jesus stood over her and, with a word, cured her. Immediately she got up and began to serve Jesus and his group.

There is a lesson here. Health and healing are not just for the individual. Her healing immediately restored her to the community and the duty of serving that community. And not just because she was a woman! If it had been the father-in-law, the same would have applied. As long as we are in health, our energies are meant to be directed to the building up of the community and not simply for our personal enjoyment.

The rest of the Gospel story takes place “as the sun was setting”, and we need to remember it was a Sabbath. The Sabbath went from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday (so Jesus could not be properly buried on the Friday evening when he died). According to the traditions, Jews could not travel more than two-thirds of a mile or carry any load. Only after sunset could the sick be brought to Jesus.

As soon as the Sabbath was over, large numbers brought their sick to him:

…and he laid his hands on each of them and cured them.

As Jesus had announced in the synagogue at Nazareth, the Kingdom of God had arrived and was entering the lives of people, bringing them health and wholeness.

Many were also liberated from the power of evil spirits. These spirits shouted at Jesus:

You are the Son of God!

As we have said before, by using Jesus’ title they hoped to exert control over him. That did not work, of course. Whether these were actual cases of possession or were psychological or mental disorders which made people behave in abnormal ways, and perhaps ways harmful to themselves and others, is not clear. What is clear is that the presence of the Kingdom is being felt.

Then at daybreak—Jesus had been working the whole night for the people—he went off to a quiet place. The desert is the place where God is to be found and very likely, as Mark tells us, Jesus went there to pray and to be alone.

The people, who had seen what he did for them, wanted him to stay with them (their attitude is in marked contrast to the people of Nazareth), but he could not and would not:

I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other cities also, for I was sent for this purpose.

And so we are told that he was now preaching in the synagogues of Judea—in the south of the country, although the term may simply refer to the whole of Jewish territory. No place could have a monopoly on his attentions.

We need to attach ourselves to Jesus and keep close to him, but we cannot cling to him in a way that prevents others from experiencing his healing touch. On the contrary, it is our task as his disciples to see that as many as possible come to know and experience his love, his compassion and his healing.

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Wednesday of Week 22 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Colossians 1:1-8

Today we begin reading from Paul’s letter to the Christians in the city of Colossae. The letters to the Christians of Ephesus and Colossae (both in the Roman Province of Asia, now part of western Turkey) and the letter to Philemon are all closely related. All three were written while Paul was under arrest in Rome.

Several hundred years before Paul’s day, Colossae had been a leading city in Asia Minor. It was located on the Lycus River and on the great east-west trade route leading from Ephesus, on the Aegean Sea, to the Euphrates River. By the first century AD (when this Letter was written) Colossae had been diminished to a second-rate market town and had been surpassed long ago in power and importance by the neighbouring towns of Laodicea and Hierapolis, both of which are cited in the Letter (see Col 4:13).

What gave Colossae importance in New Testament terms, however, was the fact that, during Paul’s three-year ministry in Ephesus, a convert, Epaphras, had carried the Gospel to Colossae. The young church that resulted then became the target of heretical attack, which led to Epaphras’ visit to Paul in Rome and ultimately to the writing of the Colossian letter.

The danger at Colossae was due to basically Jewish speculations the Christians had taken up about the heavenly or cosmic powers. These were the powers thought to be responsible for the regular movement of the cosmos, and the speculations about them, much influenced by Hellenistic philosophy, attached an importance to these powers that threatened the supremacy of Christ. Paul’s point is not to deny these powers, but to show that Christos Kyrios (Greek, “Christ the Lord”) has established a new order of things and he now governs the cosmos.

According to notes from the Jerusalem Bible and the New International Version Study Bible:

Paul’s purpose is to refute this Colossian heresy. To accomplish this goal, he exalts Christ as the very image of God (1:15), the Creator (1:16), the pre-existent Sustainer of all things (1:17), the Head of the church (1:18), the First to be resurrected (1:18), the Fullness of deity in body form (1:19; 2:9) and the Reconciler (1:20-22). Christ is completely adequate. We “have been given fullness in Christ” (2:10).

Colossians is a relatively short letter and contains much material also found in the longer letter to the Ephesians.

Following the custom of putting the writer’s name at the beginning of a letter, Paul introduces himself as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and his fellow-evangeliser, Timothy. Right from the opening words he reveals how Christ-centred he is. In this relatively short letter, he uses the title ‘Christ’ 26 times and the title ‘Lord’ (referring to Christ) 7 times.

Timothy is also mentioned in 2 Corinthians, Philippians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians and Philemon, but Paul is really the sole author of the letter, as indicated by his constant use of ‘I’. In fact, at the end of the letter he says it has been penned in his own hand (4:18).

The letter is addressed:

To the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in Colossae: Grace to you and peace from God our Father.

Paul frequently calls the members of Christian communities ‘saints’ or ‘holy ones’ (Greek, hagioi). It is a term which includes the Old Testament idea of the people of God, but here also expresses a relationship with Christ. They have been called by God to union with Christ and have experienced the spiritual benefits of this union. The awareness of it helps them to be “faithful brothers and sisters in Christ”, i.e. dedicated to working together on the tasks implied in their calling. And Paul mentions their spiritual union “in Christ” no less than 13 times in the course of the Letter.

Following the opening greeting there is an expression of thanksgiving and a prayer which forms the rest of the reading and will be continued in tomorrow’s reading. Recalling his prayers for them and the deeply satisfying account of them he has received, Paul congratulates the Colossians upon their acceptance of Christ and their faithful efforts to live his gospel. For their encouragement he mentions the success of the gospel in other places, and assures them that his knowledge of their community is accurate since he has been in personal contact with Epaphras, their presumed founder.

In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.

Every one of Paul’s letters, except that to the Galatians, begins with thanks or praise. The possible reason for Galatians being an exception is that Paul was quite disturbed by developments there. In Colossians, thanks is an important theme, repeated a number of times. The Letters, too, do not thank humans for their faith and love, but rather God, who is the source of these virtues. And, although Paul usually begins with words of thanks and praise, the words of concern or criticism will usually follow later on.

We might note also that thanks is given for the manifestations of faith, hope and love that the Colossians so clearly display. The three great Christian virtues of faith, love and hope appear also in Romans, 1 Corinthians, Galatians, 1 Thessalonians and Hebrews.

And that hope of a future life without end has come to them through “the word of the truth”, the gospel. The gospel has come to them in the same way that it is producing fruit and growing all over the world. This Christian hope is not mere wishful thinking but based on firm assurances that what is believed will be realised.

Just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world…

“The whole world”—even if we mean the known world of the Mediterranean, is still somewhat of an exaggeration. But it does dramatise the rapid and remarkable spread and acceptance of the gospel into nearly every corner of the Roman Empire within 30 years of Pentecost. In refuting the charge of the false teachers, Paul will insist that the Christian faith is not merely confined to Colossae or the region, but is ‘worldwide’. Paul knew that because he travelled so much, but many of those he is writing to would have very little contact with anyone outside their own immediate environment.

And their strong Christian faith is something they learnt from Epaphras who is:

…our beloved fellow servant…a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf.

It was he who told Paul about their love in the Spirit.

Epaphras was a native and probably the founder of the Colossian church, but also evangelised in the nearby towns of Laodicea and Hierapolis (although the Book of Revelation has some hard words for the Christians of Laodicea). Paul was clearly fond of Epaphras and admired him, calling him a “fellow prisoner” (Phil 1:23), his “beloved fellow servant” and a “faithful minister of Christ”.

Epaphras was the one who told Paul at Rome about problems in the Colossian church and thereby stimulated him to write this letter. His name, a shortened form of Epaphroditus (derived from Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love), suggests he was a convert from paganism—but he is not the Epaphroditus mentioned in the Letter to the Philippians.

Let us today give thanks for the faith we have received and also to those through whom we have received it and who have helped to enrich it over the years. As well, we might also consider how many people’s faith has been enriched by their coming in contact with us, and how much more we could do in this regard.

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Tuesday of Week 22 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 4:31-37

Immediately after his mixed reception in Nazareth, Jesus moves on to Capernaum, a town on the north shore of Galilee, which was to be the base from which Jesus did much of his missionary work. As in Nazareth, he taught the people in the synagogue on the Sabbath. Unlike in Nazareth:

They were astounded at his teaching because he spoke with authority.

He did not quote other authorities like the teachers of the law, because his authority was directly from God; it was his own.

At the same time, it was not the authority of domination. It was the authority of someone who has access to special knowledge, the authority of someone who speaks in his own name and not just on behalf of others, the authority of one who empowers others and makes them grow.

The word ‘authority’ comes from the Latin auctoritas, which in turn comes from the verb augere, meaning to increase or augment. And Jesus’ authority is not only in word and teaching. Right there in the synagogue as he speaks is a man possessed by a “spirit of an unclean demon”. The spirit, through the man, speaks in fear of the power of Jesus:

Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.

This title seems to indicate that the spirit recognises Jesus’ divine origin, but not his Messiahship. There was a belief in those times that knowing the exact name of one’s opponent gave one power over him.

Jesus ordered the evil spirit to leave the man, who was thrown to the ground, but not hurt. The people are amazed. Exorcism was not new to them, but they had never seen it done with such speed and effectiveness. They are astounded again at the power and authority of Jesus. They realise they are in the presence of someone very special, in fact, the “Holy One of God”.

Each one of us is given authority of some kind—as a parent, a teacher or perhaps our job responsibility. Let us make sure that we use it in such a way as to enhance the abilities of others rather than diminish them.

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Tuesday of Week 22 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on 1 Thessalonians 5:1-6,9-11

Today we have our final reading from this letter. We will read Paul’s Second Letter to the Thessalonians next year at this time.

In this passage, Paul continues what we saw in yesterday’s reading on the subject of the Lord’s final coming. The theme today is watchfulness. As far as the Lord’s coming is concerned, there is no point in talking about times and dates because:

…the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.

In the first verse of today’s reading, the phrase “times and the seasons” is like a cliché. Behind it is the idea that God is outside time, but at the same time, controls time and its divisions. There have always been some Christians who try to fix the date of Our Lord’s return (“The end is nigh!”) and some Thessalonians may have been among them. We saw earlier how some Thessalonians were not bothering to work any more because they believed that the Lord was due any day soon. Paul wants to scotch such a mentality.

The expression “day of the Lord” goes back to Amos 5:18. In the Old Testament it is a time when God will come and intervene with judgement and/or blessing. In the New Testament the thought of judegment continues, but it is also the “day of redemption” (Eph 4:30); the “day of God” (2 Pet 3:12), or of Christ (1 Cor 1:8; Phil 1:6); and “the last day” (John 6:39), the “great day” (Jude 6) or simply “that day” (2 Thess 1:10). It is the climax of all things. There will be some preliminary signs, but the coming will be unexpected:

…if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake… (Matt 24:43-44)

Paul, in fact, asserts he has no idea when the Last Day will come, and he merely repeats what the Lord said about having to stay awake till it comes. The Day of the Lord will come like a thief, so it is necessary to stay awake because it will come soon. At first Paul expected he might live to see the Last Day; he later realised he might die before it, and warns people it will not come as soon as they thought. More than anything, the prospect of how long it would take to convert the pagans made it certain that the Last Day would not come for a very long time.

Paul warns that it is precisely when people are saying how quiet and peaceful everything is that sudden destruction comes on them. It will come as suddenly as labour pains on a pregnant woman and there will be no escape. This ‘destruction’ will not mean annihilation, but exclusion from the Lord’s presence, the end of real living and the nullification of all human ‘success’ and accomplishment. Hell is being separated from God and all that God stands for, separated from the deepest needs of our being.

Paul emphasises the surprise that will strike the unbeliever especially. The Greek word for ‘sudden’ (or ‘unexpected’—aiphnídios) is only found once in another New Testament text, but in the same context:

Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, like a trap.
(Luke 21:34)

In speaking about labour pains, the emphasis is not on the pain, but rather on the suddenness and inevitability of such pains for an expectant mother.

But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief…

True believers do not live in darkness nor do they belong to darkness. The mention of ‘the Day’ without further qualification helps Paul to introduce the mention of light and day and contrast ‘wakefulness’ with the dark, night and sleep. It also allows him to make the contrast between Christians (children of the light) and others (children of darkness).

The Thessalonian Christians, says Paul:

…are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness.

In Semitic languages (such as Hebrew), to be called the ‘son (or child) of’ a particular quality meant the person was characterised by that quality. Christians do not simply live in the light; they are characterised by light, they radiate light. Jesus said of himself:

I am the Light of the world. (John 8:12)

And he said of his followers

You are the light of the world… (Matt 5:14)

As children of the day, then, they should:

…not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober.

Unbelievers are insensitive to things of the spirit; they are in a kind of sleep. Such sleep is not for the “children of light”. On the contrary, they are to be on the watch, ready for the coming of the Lord no matter when it happens. They need too to be “sober”, in full control of themselves and aware of what is going on around them. This contrasts with what Paul says in the next verse (not in our reading):

…for those who sleep sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night

They should realise that God’s plan for them is not vengeful punishment, but that they should win salvation through Jesus Christ. God is on our side; he wants to be with us and for us to be with him. It was his will that Jesus died for us so that “awake or asleep” (i.e. whether still living or already dead), we should live united with him. The same opportunities for salvation are open to all—the living and the dead alike.

Paul then ends with an exhortation he gave earlier:

…encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.

Literally, he tells them to build each other up, using a verb that basically applies to the building of houses, but frequently used by him for ‘building up’ the Body of Christ, which the Christian community is. All in all, it is a message of positive hope and confidence and reassurance.

We, too, need to maintain a balance between being ready to be called at any moment of any day, while being free from unnecessary fear and anxiety about the time or circumstances of our death. Let Paul’s attitude be ours—living or dead, he longed to be united with the Lord. The best preparation is to live always in the now: seeking, finding and responding to God in every person and in every experience of every moment of every day. Such a person will never be taken by surprise.

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Monday of Week 22 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 4:16-30

Today we begin the reading from Luke’s Gospel, which will bring us to the end of the Church year. We have already gone through Matthew’s and Mark’s, and John’s Gospel has been spread through various parts of the year, especially during the Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter seasons.

Luke’s Gospel is a companion volume to the Acts of the Apostles, and the language and structure of these two books indicate that both were written by the same person. They are addressed to the same individual, Theophilus, and Acts refers to Luke’s Gospel. Luke’s Gospel and Acts could be considered as volume 1 and 2 of the same book.

Luke presents the works and teachings of Jesus that are especially important for understanding the way of salvation. Its scope is complete from the birth of Christ to his ascension and it appeals to both Jews and Gentiles.

Today, we take up Luke’s Gospel at the beginning of Jesus’ public life (chap 4). After his baptism by John the Baptist:

Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee…
(Luke 4:14)

As we know, Galilee is the northern province of Palestine and his home province. Already people were talking about him everywhere.

Now, as our reading opens, we find him in Nazareth, the small town in Galilee where he grew up. From the verses immediately preceding, it does not seem that Jesus actually began his ministry in Nazareth. The event described here may not have taken place until a year later. One suggestion (NIV Bible) is that all that is described in John’s Gospel between 1:19 to 4:42 took place between the temptation in the desert and the moving north to Galilee (see Luke 4:13-14).

But Luke has arranged the structure of his Gospel so that Jesus will begin his public life in Nazareth, and will gradually proceed southwards towards his goal, Jerusalem, without turning back. In the other Synoptics, he moves around Galilee in all directions, and John suggests that he made a number of visits to Jerusalem during his public life.

The Jerusalem Bible suggests that our passage today actually combines three distinct parts:

1. vv 16-22 Jesus is honoured: occurring at the time indicated by Matthew 4:13;
2. vv 23-24 Jesus astonishing his audience: the visit of which Matthew and Mark speak;
3. vv 25-30 the life of Jesus threatened: not mentioned by Matthew or Mark and to be placed towards the end of the Galilean ministry.

In this way Luke presents an introductory tableau which is a summary and symbol of Christ’s great offer and of its contemptuous rejection by his own people.

As the reading opens we find Jesus in the town synagogue. It is a Sabbath day. He gets up to read the Scripture and comments on it. The ruler of the synagogue could authorise any adult Jew to read the Scripture lesson. The passage he reads is full of significance. It comes from the prophet Isaiah, and Jesus’ reading of it amounts to a manifesto or what we might call today a ‘mission statement’. ‘Books’ in those days were in the form of scrolls, and the Scriptures were kept in a special place in the synagogue and given to the reader by an attendant. Jesus may have chosen the passage himself or it may have been assigned for that day.

But it is more than just a mission statement. As he reads, it becomes clear that the whole statement is about Jesus himself:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…

This has already been confirmed during his baptism in the river Jordan when “the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove” and a voice was heard to say:

You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.
(Luke 3:22)

Next Jesus, still reading from Isaiah, says:

…because he has anointed me…

In saying this, he is making an unequivocal claim to be the Messiah or the Christ, the long-awaited liberating King of Israel. The word ‘Messiah’, translated into Greek as Christos, means someone who is anointed with oil (we call the oil in baptism and confirmation ‘chrism’). And a person was made king by having oil poured over his head (remember how David was anointed king). Jesus, of course, was not literally anointed, but had been figuratively ‘anointed’ by the coming of the Spirit on him during his baptism. ‘Anointing’ is our equivalent of ‘coronation’, symbolised by the putting of a crown on the new king.

Then comes the mission of this King:

-to bring good news to the poor,
-to proclaim release to the captives
-and recovery of sight to the blind,
-to set free those who are oppressed,
-to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

There is nothing here of restoring the glories of Israel, nothing about conquering enemies and laying waste their lands. No, it is about letting the poor of this world hear the Good News of God’s love for them. It is about healing and reconciliation. It is about liberating those who are tied down by any form of enslavement. It is about helping people to see clearly the true meaning of life. It is about restoring wholeness to people’s lives and to societies. It is about the inauguration of the Kingdom by its King.

It is, in short, the whole picture of Jesus that will unfold in the pages of Luke, a Gospel which focuses on the poor and vulnerable, a Gospel of tenderness and compassion, a Gospel of the Spirit and of joy, a Gospel of prayer and healing.

It is about proclaiming “the year of the Lord’s favor”. This refers to the Messianic age when salvation would be proclaimed. Isaiah, in the original text, is alluding to the Year of Jubilee, when every 50 years slaves were set free, debts were cancelled and ancestral lands were returned to the original family. Isaiah was thinking mainly of freedom from Babylonian captivity, but Jesus was speaking of liberation across the board of human living.

As he finished the reading, Jesus put down the scroll and said:

Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

And the townspeople who thought they knew him so well were overawed by the wisdom with which he spoke. This positive reaction to Jesus is a favourite theme in Luke.

Rhetorically they asked:

Is not this Joseph’s son?

But they were wrong. He was not Joseph’s son. He was the son of Mary and of the Father, the divine Word sharing our ‘flesh’ (as suggested above, this event may have occurred on a second visit).

And this in turn leads us to the third section of the reading, which provides an unexpected turn of events and is more in harmony with the later part of Jesus’ public life. Jesus’ hearers were surprised at the way he spoke, but they were not moved to change. After all, he was ‘just’ the son of Joseph, and someone they knew so well could have nothing to say to them. At the same time Jesus says they, his own townspeople, must be wondering why he is not doing the things in Nazareth that he was doing in places like Capernaum.

Capernaum, apparently a sizeable town, was where Peter lived and Jesus made his house, the centre out of which he did his missionary work in Galilee. A modern church now stands over the ruins of a 5th century basilica on the supposed site of Peter’s house and there is a 4th century synagogue nearby.

The reason for the townspeople’s non-acceptance of Jesus is that they do not really accept him for what he is. He reminds them that prophets are seldom accepted in their own place. Familiarity blinds people to their message. Their attitude was: “I know who he is and he has nothing to say to me.” Jesus then gives two rather provocative examples:

• During a great famine in the time of the prophet Elijah, Elijah was sent to help, not his fellow Israelites, but a poor widow in Zarephath, near Sidon, in non-Jewish territory. Sidon was one of the oldest Phoenician cities on the Mediterranean coast and about 33 km north of Tyre. (Later, Jesus would heal the daughter of a gentile woman here.)
• In the time of the prophet Elisha, there were many lepers in Israel, but Elisha was sent to cure Naaman, a gentile general from Syria.

God’s reaching out to Gentiles through his prophets sets the stage for the Gentiles to receive the message of the Prophet Jesus, which is so much a theme of Luke’s writings. These remarks so angered the people of Nazareth that they dragged Jesus to the brow of a hill with the intention of throwing him down, but:

…he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

Whether he did this miraculously or from the sheer power of his personality is not clear. In any case, his time had not yet come.

Prophetic voices being rejected by their own is a phenomenon only too common in our own day. And it was something Jesus foretold would happen to his followers, simply for being his followers and proclaiming his vision of life. In the meantime, let us make Jesus’ mission statement our own. It is what being a Christian means.

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Monday of Week 22 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

The early Christians, including the Thessalonians, were convinced that Jesus would return in their lifetime. They were consequently upset about the fate of their brothers and sisters who had already died. What would happen to them if they were not around to greet the Lord when he came?

So here Paul takes up the practice among the Thessalonians of mourning excessively for their dead, a reaction deriving from the stress placed by the community on their belief that the Second Coming of Christ was going to happen very soon, definitely in their lifetime. But now people were dying off before this took place: what was going to happen to them? Did they think that the dead, in accordance with Jewish and Greek belief, went to a place for the dead (Hebrew, Sheol or Greek, Hades) from which there was no escape? And so they would not be around when Jesus came to take all the Christians to himself?

The Apostle reminds them of the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the dead in Christ. On the basis of Christ’s teaching, he affirms that the resurrection of the dead is to precede the Second Coming. Those who are alive at the time of the latter will not have the advantage over the dead of being the first witnesses to it. On the contrary, the Lord will first command the dead to rise; the living will then join them and both groups will be witnesses of the Parousia.

The doctrine spoken of here is to be remembered when there are more deaths in the community. Since Paul does not know the time of the Parousia, he aligns himself with the Thessalonians in the hope of living to that day, i.e. within the first Christian generation. In his mind such a possibility seems not to have been excluded by the teaching of Jesus himself.

That is the background, now to the reading proper. The converts in Thessalonica had obviously been worried about friends and relatives who had died and would not be there to see the coming of the Lord. Replying to their questions, Paul affirms the fundamental doctrine of the resurrection so as to strengthen their faith and hope.

Paul wants the Thessalonians to be quite certain about the fate of those who have “fallen asleep”. This euphemism for death was common in both the Old and New Testaments and in Greek literature. It was natural, then, to refer to ‘resurrection’ to new life or from death as an ‘awakening’. For the Christian, sleep is a particularly apt metaphor for death, because of its finality.

Some of the Thessalonians seem to have misunderstood the meaning of the Parousia and thought all believers would live until Christ returned. When some died, the question then arose, “Will those who have died have part in that great day?”

But, says Paul, there is no need to grieve over them, as others do who have no hope. Inscriptions on tombs and references in literature show that first-century pagans viewed death with horror, as the end of everything. The Christian attitude was in strong contrast (see 1 Cor 15:55-57; Phil 1:21-23).

For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. [i.e. those who have died as Christians]

The resurrection of Jesus is absolutely essential for Christian belief in a future life. As Paul wrote to the Christians of Corinth:

…if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is in vain and your faith is in vain…If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. (1 Cor 15:14,17-20)

Paul can also state from the Lord’s own teaching, namely, that those who are still alive when the Lord comes will not have any advantage over those who have fallen asleep, that is, who have already died. The Thessalonians had evidently been concerned that those among them who died would miss their place in the great events when the Lord came, and Paul assures them that this will not be the case. There is no exact reference in the written Gospels for this saying of Jesus. Perhaps Paul is relying here on traditions he had received from others, but which did not find their way into the Gospel texts. There must have been many such sayings.

Paul next speaks about those believers who are still alive at Christ’s Second Coming:

…we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord…

‘We’ does not necessarily mean that Paul thought he himself would be alive then. He often identified himself with those he wrote to or about. Elsewhere he says that God will raise “us” at that time (1 Cor 6:14; 2 Cor 4:14). If he is including himself among those who will be present at the Parousia, it is more by hope or desire rather than by conviction.

The Apostle then gives an image of the Parousia using traditional apocalyptic imagery for a divine intervention. It is not to be taken as a literal description of an experience that is totally beyond our imagination.

For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven…

The only named archangel in the Scripture is Michael (Jude 9; Dan 10:13). In Luke, Gabriel is simply called an angel, and similarly, so is Raphael in the Book of Tobit. Later tradition calls them all ‘archangels’. The ‘trumpet’, together with voice and clouds, were traditional signs that accompanied a theophany, a divine manifestation, such as that at Mount Sinai. They were later adopted as conventional elements in apocalyptic literature, as for example, in Matthew’s description of the coming of the Son of Man at the end of time (Matt 24:29).

Then, in a reassuring remark, Paul affirms that:

…the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air…

This is the only place in the New Testament where a ‘rapture’—being caught up or taken up to God—is clearly referred to. Although some hold that such experiences will be secret, Paul seems to be describing something open and public, with loud voices and a trumpet blast.

Contrary to their fears, Paul says that:

…we will be with the Lord forever.

Of all the details given here: that the dead will answer the summons by returning to life, that they and the living will be taken to meet the Lord, and that they will accompany him to the judgement with which the eternal kingdom begins, the essential one is the last—eternal life with Christ. That is the ‘salvation’, the ‘glory’, the ‘Kingdom’ that Jesus shares among his chosen followers.

And, Paul concludes:

Therefore encourage one another with these words.

The primary purpose of the whole passage is not to give a chronology of future events, though that is involved, but to above all urge the Thessalonian community to mutual encouragement.

As mentioned, it is not necessary to take the scenario here described too literally; in fact, it would be quite wrong to do so. It consists of traditional apocalyptic and scriptural language to describe the indescribable—our future life with God after our death.

Very soon in the life of the Church people began to think less and less about this problem. We need to remember that this Letter is a very early Church writing. By the time we get to the Gospels, this anxiety has passed and the concern is now about how to live in a time of uncertain and presumably lengthy or indefinite duration.

But the warnings we saw in Matthew’s Gospel last week still remain valid. The critical issue is not the when or the how of the Lord’s final coming, but the when and the how of our leaving this earth. Will I be ready? Am I ready now?

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