Saturday of Week 23 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 6:43-49
In our final reading from Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Plain, Jesus speaks of the qualities of a genuine disciple. The goodness of every disciple comes from within and is not to be measured merely by one’s external behaviour:
No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit; for each tree is known by its own fruit.
At the same time, consistently good behaviour is a sign of a healthy interior:
The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil, for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.
We need to focus our energies on our interior spirit. If that is good, the rest will take care of itself.
Another measure of the good disciple is how he or she listens and acts on the words of the Master. To ‘listen’ includes hearing, understanding, accepting, and assimilating into one’s self the Master’s teaching and vision. The behaviour then follows naturally, spontaneously and, to a large extent, effortlessly.
Such a person is compared to a man who has built his house on a strong foundation. When floods came, the house stood firm. On the other hand, the one who listens, but does not take in and so does not act on what has been heard is like a man who built his house on a poor foundation. When the floods came, it collapsed.
This parable needs to be read in the context of the early Church where, in time of persecution, some stood firm because their faith was deeply rooted, while others fell away at the first sign of pressure.
Even if there is no overt persecution of the Christian faith where we live, we live in times which are very threatening to a genuinely Christ-centred life. Without a sure foundation, it is very easy to be enticed away to a life of materialism, consumerism, hedonism, and individualism. Because of their superficial attractiveness and their being indulged in by so many around us, these things are often far more insidious than outright attacks on our faith.
In fact, experience shows again and again that nothing strengthens people’s faith more than open persecution. Most of us live in a much more dangerous environment, an environment not of torture and imprisonment, but of advertising and media hype promising untold happiness and pleasure, where the vision of the gospel is ignored, irrelevant or actively rejected. We need to have very sure foundations to live in such a world.
Read more
Thursday of Week 23 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 6:27-38
For many people, even those who identify themselves as Christians, this may be one of the most difficult passages in the Gospel. It seems to express an idealism that is totally unrealistic and unattainable.
We live today in a world of terrible violence, of murder, of terrorism—the horror of attacks on the innocent, of vicious vendettas often stirred up in the press (especially the tabloids) and internet media, of rampant litigation—suing and counter-suing. Are these things not to be avenged?
Where do Jesus’ words fit in? It is worth noting that the passage begins:
I say to you who are listening…
In order to understand what Jesus is really saying to us, we have to put aside our prejudices and assumptions and really listen to what he is saying. This passage, in particular, is one where we are likely to react emotionally.
Jesus says:
Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you.
We may feel that to follow this teaching is to try something which is totally beyond our capacity, that it would require a tremendous amount of will-power, and that it would only encourage those people to behave even worse. In the Old Testament, hatred of evildoers is presumed to be the right attitude to have. But Jesus is extending love to the enemy and the persecutor.
This is the core of Jesus’ teaching, which he himself practised. The Golden Rule, which is sometimes expressed as “Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you”, is expressed here in positive terms.
The first big hurdle is the word “love”. For us, it is a very emotional word, implying both affection and intimacy. For us, in English, to ‘love’ is most often associated with to ‘be in love with’, to ‘be attracted to’, to ‘desire’. But Jesus is not telling us to be in love with our enemies. He is not even telling us to like them. The Greek verb which the Gospel uses is agapao from which the noun agape comes. Agape [pronounced ‘ah-gah-pay’] is a special kind of love. It is not the physically-expressed love of lovers, nor is it the love of close friends. It is rather an attitude of positive regard towards other people by which I wish for their well-being.
This, in fact, is the love that God has for us. It is a one-sided love in the sense that a return is not expected. God reaches out in infinite love to every single person without exception. God wishes every person to experience that love; God wishes the fullest well-being of every single person. That love of his is often not returned; it is often rejected or ignored.
But it continues unabated, like the father in the story of the prodigal son waiting for his boy to come back. The father continued to love his son even in his lowest moments of debauchery and degradation. It was the same with the people who were nailing Jesus to the cross. He prayed for them—for their being forgiven—and that they might come to a realisation of just what they were doing. In this sense, loving our enemies seems altogether reasonable. And not only not impossible, but really the only thing to do.
Who are our “enemies”? First of all, they are not our enemies in the sense that we hate them or want to harm them. In that sense, a Christian should have no enemies. Rather, enemies are people who are hostile to us. They want to harm us, take revenge on us, even destroy us. There are two ways we can deal with such people. We can set out to do more harm to them, to take revenge on them, or try to wipe them out completely. Or we can try and work to turn them round.
Our problem is that we tend to focus too much on ourselves and our own immediate needs, and overlook the needs of others. To love as God loves is to focus more on others. We can only do this if we have a strong inner sense of security and self-acceptance. Then we are not too worried about what people say about us or do to us.
And then, too, we can turn our attention much more to the one who is hating or harming. We will begin to ask why do they have to act in this way. What is hurting inside them that drives them to such behaviour? Already we are, just by thinking in this way, beginning to care for our enemy and beginning to love him or her. And is not this a much better solution to the problem? Is it not better to bring peace back into that person’s life and initiate a healing process in them and between them and us?
Jesus is not at all asking us to do something ‘unnatural’. We do not naturally want to hate or be hated. We want to love and to be loved. We see many parts of the world where, for years, there has been a process of hatred and retaliation in a never-ending spiral of vengeance and loss of life. The only way to break this cycle is to follow Jesus’ advice. It is not a lose-lose or lose-win situation; it is a win-win situation where everyone benefits.
Perhaps words of the late St Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa) are appropriate here:
“Love, to be true, has to hurt. I must be willing to give whatever it takes not to harm other people and, in fact, to do good to them. This requires that I be willing to give until it hurts. Otherwise, there is no love in me and I bring injustice, not peace, to those around me.”
To put Jesus’ teaching into effect is not a matter of strengthening our will to do something very difficult, but to change our conventional thinking at the deepest level, to see things his way. Once we do that, it becomes much easier.
Jesus’ application of this teaching has also been the subject of much mockery:
If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt.
We think that in a world where macho reigns, this is just too much! Only wimps would follow Jesus’ advice because they are afraid to do anything else! Our movie ‘heroes’ know what to do in such cases: mow them down, knock them out, blow them up!
Again, it is a question of seeing things from Jesus’, that is, God’s viewpoint. Turning the other cheek, as it is presented here, is not at all an act of weakness. It requires great courage and great inner strength and an awareness that the one who strikes is the one who is really weak. It is easy to lash out at another person by word or act. It is easy to hit back; it is almost an instinctive reaction, but it is not the truly human response.
To hit back is to reduce oneself to the same level as one’s attacker, and it solves nothing in the long run. Deliberately and calmly not to hit back is to refuse (in the words of Canadian-born psychiatrist, Eric Berne) “to play the other person’s game”. It is to break the cycle and change the level of the playing field and move it to a higher level—the level of mutual respect and human dignity.
Jesus set the example when he was struck on the face during his trial. During the whole degradation of the Passion his dignity shines out, in contrast to the pathetic posturings of his judges and tormentors. This was the spirit that guided some leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr, and which is behind all movements devoted to active non-violence.
Jesus lived the example of the principle: ‘Treat others as you would like them to treat you’. You do not want to be hated or struck so you refuse, no matter what happens, to hate or strike another person. He also said:
If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.
So no, we will not react simply in the way others deal with us. As followers of Christ, we see things in a completely different way and we want to behave differently. We believe that not only do we personally benefit from following Jesus’ way, but that others too will benefit and may even come to our point of view.
Finally, Jesus calls us to follow the model of God himself:
Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
In Matthew’s Gospel it is written:
Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
(Matt 5:48)
The meaning is the same: our perfection consists in our empathetic reaching out in compassionate agape to every single person. And, through us, the compassion of God can then be experienced by people.
We are not to judge or condemn persons. (This is not the same as being asked and required to give an objective and discerned evaluation of a person’s behaviour or fitness for some task or position; behavior does have consequences.) And we are to forgive. Then we will not be condemned, and we will in turn receive forgiveness.
The emphasis is on reaching out to others rather than gathering for ourselves and being turned in on our little, insecure selves. Jesus says:
Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.
Jesus put this graphically when he told us to give not only our cloak to someone asking for it but our tunic as well. Given that the poor in those days only had two garments, that would leave the donor totally naked!
But that is the point—the one filled with the spirit of Christ has nothing to lose, nothing of which to be ashamed. Life consists in what we are able to give and not what we can get. Jesus says to us:
…the measure you give will be the measure you get back.
And that, above all, applies to agape-love. Everyone can give an endless supply of that.
Read more
Wednesday of Week 23 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 6:20-26
Today we begin what is known as Luke’s ‘Sermon on the Plain’, which more or less parallels Matthew’s ‘Sermon on the Mount’. Luke’s is much shorter, but both begin with the Beatitudes and end with the parable of the house builders. Some of what is found in Matthew’s Sermon is found elsewhere in Luke, because Matthew’s Sermon consists of disparate sayings of Jesus gathered into one place. Luke also omits Matthew’s specifically Jewish material which would not have been relevant to his gentile readers.
Luke’s Sermon can be summarised as follows:
- An introduction of blessings and woes (vv 20-26)
- The love of one’s enemies (vv 27-36)
- The demands of loving one’s neighbour (vv 37-42)
- Good deeds as proof of one’s goodness (vv 43-45)
- A parable on listening to and acting on the words of Jesus (vv 46-49)
Similar to Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, Luke’s Sermon on the Plain begins with his version of the Beatitudes. But there are striking differences. Whereas Matthew has eight (some would say seven) Beatitudes, Luke has four “Blesseds” and four contrasting “Woes”. As is typical of his uncompromising style when it comes to following Jesus, the language of Luke is much more direct and hard-hitting, and it may well be closer to what Jesus actually said.
Matthew’s Beatitudes propose a set of attitudes which reflect the spirit of the Kingdom—qualities to be found in the truly Christian and human life. Luke, on the other hand, speaks of material conditions in this life which will be overturned. Later in this Gospel, this is illustrated graphically in the story of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-30).
Luke also has Jesus speaking in the second person: “Blessed are you” and “Woe to you“, rather than in the third person as Matthew does (“Blessed are those who…”). Nor does he speak of the “poor in spirit”, but of “you who are poor”, and he certainly means the materially poor.
He goes on to say how blessed too are:
…you who are hungry…you who weep…you when people hate you and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man.
Undoubtedly Matthew’s Beatitudes can be read to consider just spiritual poverty and a hunger for righteousness, which in fact are also a form of real poverty and real hunger. In contrast, Luke’s is a Gospel for the materially poor and distressed, and we must be careful not to turn our focus away from them. That is why he has Jesus being born in poverty and dying naked and destitute (of even his ‘friends’).
Jesus tells those who are poor and hungry and abused to:
Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.
And this is the way Jesus the Prophet will also be treated.
In a first read, it seems like a classical example of religion as the ‘opium of the people’: Be happy that you are having such a hard time now because there is a wonderful future waiting for you in the next world (as was mockingly described by the atheist Karl Marx).
The second part is not likely to go down well in our contemporary developed world:
- But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.
- Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.
- Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.
- Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.
How are we to understand these sayings which turn our common worldview upside down? They have to be seen in the light of the Kingdom, in the kind of society that Jesus came to set up, a society based on mutual love and sharing and support. This is a Kingdom for this world and not just the next. The coming of such a society could only be good news for the poor and destitute (material and otherwise), for those suffering from hunger (physical and otherwise), for those depressed by deep sorrow and for those abused and rejected for their commitment to Jesus and his Way.
On the other hand, it would not be good news for those self-focused people who amass material wealth at the expense of others, who indulge in excessive consumption of the world’s goods, who live lives centred on personal hedonism and pleasure, and who feed off the envy and adulation of those around them. They are really not part of that Kingdom. To enter fully into the Kingdom, they have to unload all these concerns and obsessions and let go. Instead of focusing on what they can get, they will have to focus on what they can share of what they have.
A clear example is the rich young man in the Gospel. How rich he was—and yet how sad he was! Compare him with Zacchaeus, whom we will be meeting later on.
Read more
Friday of Week 23 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 6:39-42
In Matthew, the parallel passage today is addressed to the Pharisees, but in Luke it is addressed to the disciples, and Jesus makes two points.
First, the blind cannot lead the blind. The disciple, left to himself or herself, does not know very much and depends on their teacher. But once the disciple is fully trained and has learnt everything it is possible to discern from the teacher, then the learner becomes an extension of the teacher. At that point, the disciple shares the teacher’s knowledge and wisdom and can, in turn, be a guide to others.
This is something we all have to do: to listen carefully to what Jesus tells us and make it part of our own lives. Only then can we effectively lead others to him.
Second, we have to be very careful about sitting in judgement on others. Jesus uses a graphic image of someone trying to remove a speck of dust from another person’s eye while there is a large “log” in their own. How can we see properly to correct the vision of our brother or sister when our own vision is so distorted?
The faults we so easily see in others are often trivial in comparison with our own shortcomings. Of course, much of the energy we exert in putting down others (the main staple of gossiping sessions!) is sub-consciously designed to compensate for the shortcomings we are all too aware of in ourselves. Instead of lifting ourselves up by changing our ways, we try to drag others down.
And so often our judgements are based purely on external behaviour. We usually have no idea of the inner motives or intentions of other people, or an awareness of their inability to behave otherwise than they do.
And, while we can be very ready with criticism behind people’s backs, we do not dare to say such things to their face. Yet, there may be times when we will be asked to give—as far as is possible—an objective evaluation of a person’s behaviour or their fitness for some responsibility. And, not infrequently, we sadly shy away from this responsibility.
Read more
Tuesday of Week 23 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Colossians 2:6-15
We come now to the instruction part of the letter with some warnings against errors into which the Colossians were reported to be falling. As we saw in yesterday’s reading (Monday of Week 23), they were apparently being carried away by a fascination with various cosmic powers and angelic forces. Paul begins by telling the Colossians that, since they have received Jesus as their Lord and Christ (Messiah), their lives should be totally rooted in him and built on him. They will be held firm by the faith which was passed on to them and they should be filled with expressions of thanksgiving.
But then comes the warning. They are to make sure that they are not made captive by the lure of some kind of ‘philosophy’, a set of ideas that comes from humans and which is based on the principles of the world, but not on Christ. To deny or abandon Christ after he has liberated them from the tyranny of ‘darkness’ by going back to error is nothing else than to undergo a new slavery.
As he did earlier, Paul goes on to refute the ideas with which the Colossians had been toying, ideas that the world was governed by cosmic angels of some kind. It is in Christ and only in him, in bodily form, that the divinity lives in all its fullness.
The word “fullness” (Greek, pleroma) here is defined as the ‘divinity’ that is now ‘filling’ Christ in his human body. In other words, the risen Christ, through his incarnation and resurrection, unites together the divine and the created. In this way, he himself is the pleroma of all possible categories of created being.
And it is in Christ, too, that the Colossians find their own fulfilment, in the One who is the head of every sovereignty and ruling force. A Christian shares this pleroma of Christ by being part of it, i.e. part of Christ’s body, and as a consequence of this, humans are raised to be higher than even the highest grade of angel. Paul then also reminds them that they have been circumcised, but with a special kind of circumcision. Here he is likely speaking to the Jewish Christians. There may have been some backsliding on their part and others coming under the influence of Jewish proselytisers emphasising the importance of circumcision. The same problem is dealt with in the letter to the Galatians.
Christian ‘circumcision’ is one performed not by human hands, where a piece of skin is removed, but:
…a spiritual circumcision, by the removal of the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ.
It is the total giving of oneself to Christ, to God—the complete letting go of the natural self. This is circumcision according to Christ and it is sacramentally celebrated through baptism. Baptism was done by having the catechumen take off his or her clothes, be fully immersed in a pool and then emerging and putting on a white garment. It was a re-enacting of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus himself and an expression of total identity with him.
…you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.
Then, speaking to the gentile Christians, Paul says:
And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands.
Through our faith, that is, through our total commitment to Jesus, we are reconciled and made one with him. No physical circumcision can bring about this. Prior to that, they were dead, but now:
…God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses…
The Colossians—both Jewish and Gentiles—are now liberated from their debt to the Law; it no longer governs their lives. This liberation was brought about by that debt’s being wiped out—by nailing it to the cross.
The Law was able to do nothing about a sinner except condemn that person to death. This death sentence is what God has carried out on his own Son in order to suppress it for the rest of the world, and it was for this very reason that God’s Son was ‘made sin’, ‘subject to the Law’, and ‘cursed’ by the Law.
In the person of his Son, whom he allowed to be executed, God nailed up and destroyed our death warrant, as well as all the charges it made against us. Finally, God:
…set this aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it.
The tradition was that the Law had been brought down to Moses by angels, and by honouring them as the lawgivers, people became distracted from the true Creator. Now that God has brought the regime of that Law to an end by means of the crucifixion, these angelic powers have also lost the one thing that had given them power, and they too must acknowledge that Christ has triumphed over them.
Once again Paul demonstrates that Christ is supreme in sovereignty and the angels and all other cosmic powers are subservient to him. Christ, then, as we saw earlier, is the head of all created things and the head of his people—his body, the Church. Before him everyone must bow.
For us, it is important that we not be misled by fads and fashions which can come into our society or into our church. The problems the Colossians had can be found practically everywhere in the Church and society today. We have the paradox of an agnostic worship of science combined with an obsession with ‘New Age’ thinking and all its eccentricities.
It is so important to realise and to experience that the Gospel in its purity is a genuine source of freedom, because it touches the deepest aspirations of the human spirit. Many sects and elitist groups both within and outside the Church, however attractive, do not normally increase our inner freedom; often they do quite the contrary.
Read more
Monday of Week 23 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 6:6-11
Immediately following the incident of Jesus’ disciples plucking the grains in the cornfield, we have another confrontation with religious leaders also on a Sabbath day. This one is even more sinister as it involves what is called in some police movies a ‘set up’ or ‘entrapment’.
Jesus had gone into the local synagogue, as was his practice on the Sabbath, and began to teach. Right in front of him was a man “whose right hand was withered”—no doubt a condition he was born with. There were scribes and Pharisees in the congregation and, we are told, they “were watching him” to see whether he would heal the man on a Sabbath day so that they could accuse him of breaking the Law.
Medical work was forbidden on the Sabbath because it normally took time. Jesus, of course, healed with just a word, but even if he did not, could one say that healing was against the spirit of the Sabbath? At the same time, it is also worth noting that the man was suffering from a chronic and probably non-painful disability. There was no need for him to be cured on the spot; it could easily have waited until the next day.
That gives further point to Jesus’ argument. The poor man had clearly been ‘planted’ by the religious authorities. He was being used as bait for their malicious ends. For the Pharisees and their co-conspirators, the man and his plight were secondary. Their goal was to prove their point and the man was seen as a useful tool.
Jesus, of course, is fully aware of what is going on. He speaks directly to the man with the withered hand:
Come and stand in the middle.
In some translations, the word “come” is stated as “Rise up” and is used as an indication of what is going to take place; the man is going to be given new life. Nor is there any secrecy. What Jesus is going to do will be seen by all.
But first he puts a question to the whole congregation, scribes and Pharisees included:
I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?
There is really no question because the answer is so obvious. But it was not the way these Pharisees were thinking.
Their question would be very different: “Is it right to obey the Law or to violate it?” For them the Law—every letter of the Law—was paramount. There is an irony in Jesus’ question because Jesus is planning to bring healing into a man’s life, while they were preparing to bring about his destruction. Who was really breaking the Sabbath?
In contrast to the Pharisees’ perspective, for Jesus the Law was relative to the true and the good. No implementation of a law can offend the true and the good. And sometimes the following of the true and the good may have to go against the letter of the law. What is legal is not always moral. It can be immoral, that is, evil, to obey a law in certain circumstances. What is moral sometimes transcends the law and may even contradict the law.
Jesus, hearing no dissenting answer, and:
After looking around at all of them…said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was restored.
The scribes and Pharisees:
…were filled with fury and began discussing with one another what they might do to Jesus.
Their plans had been brought to nought. They showed no pleasure that a crippled man had been made whole. Their interpretation of the Law had been shown to be wanting and they had to get back at Jesus.
Such situations are by no means unknown in our Christian life and in our Church. We will run into situations where doing good may be in conflict with traditional regulations and legal formulae.
We will find ourselves in situations where contemporary Pharisees will try to put the Church into a straitjacket of narrow-mindedness and fundamentalism whether it involves our understanding of the Scripture or the liturgy or morality or something else. These are people who put the letter of the laws, regulations and rubrics before love. For them it is more important to observe the externals of rules than to be a loving person. Let us pray that we are not such people.
Read more
Saturday of Week 23 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on 1 Timothy 1:15-17
In today’s short reading we pick up immediately where we left off yesterday and we are on the same theme, i.e. God’s mercy to the sinner and Paul as a striking example of it:
Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
This, Paul tells Timothy, is a saying he can rely on and that no one should doubt. There is no such saying found anywhere else in the New Testament, and it may simply be a creation of Paul himself and an expression of his firm belief.
For him, the truth of the statement is perfectly clear because Paul says that he himself is one of the greatest of sinners. This was because of his record in persecuting innocent Christians and throwing many of them into jail. As has been previously mentioned, it looks also as if he was an accomplice in the stoning of Stephen, if not the chief instigator (see Acts 7:58). That must have been very much on his conscience. So, if he has received mercy and forgiveness for his past—as is indicated by his being chosen personally by Christ as apostle—it is because Jesus Christ meant to make him a striking example of his inexhaustible patience with sinners everywhere, who threw themselves at God’s mercy.
And he concludes:
To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.
Reflecting on these words, we can, first of all, recall how we ourselves have experienced the mercy and “utmost patience” of Christ our Lord, considering how many times we have failed in our service of him and in loving those around us.
Second, we need to have some of that same compassion and patience in our own dealings with those whose behaviour we feel falls short of Christian and human values. We live in a very judgmental world, but we need to remember the warning that Jesus gave us in yesterday’s Gospel reading:
Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye but do not notice the log in your own eye? (Luke 6:41)
Read more
Friday of Week 23 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on 1 Timothy 1:1-2,12-14
We begin reading today from Paul’s First Letter to Timothy. The two letters to Timothy and the letter to Titus are known as the Pastoral Letters because of their main subject matter.
Timothy was a native of Lystra (in modern Turkey). His father was Greek, while his mother was a Jewish Christian (Acts 16:1). From childhood he had been taught the Old Testament (2 Tim 1:5 and 3:15). Paul called him “my true child in the faith” (1:2), perhaps having led him to Christ during his first visit to Lystra.
At the time of his second visit Paul invited Timothy to join him on his missionary travels, and circumcised him so that his Greek ancestry would not be a liability in working with the Jews (Acts 16:3)—a good example of Paul’s pastoral flexibility, considering how strongly he spoke against those who wanted to re-introduce circumcision into the Christian church or to force gentile Christians to undergo it.
Timothy shared in the evangelisation of Macedonia and Achaia (Acts 17:14-15; 18:5) and was with Paul during much of his long preaching ministry at Ephesus (Acts 19:22). Thessalonika and Philippi, both recipients of Pauline letters were in Macedonia, while Corinth was in Achaia in southern Greece. Timothy travelled with Paul from Ephesus to Macedonia, to Corinth, back to Macedonia, and to Asia Minor (Acts 20:1-6). He seems even to have accompanied Paul all the way to Jerusalem.
He was certainly with Paul during the Apostle’s first imprisonment (Phil 1:1; Col 1:1; Philem 1).
Following Paul’s release (see Acts 28), Timothy again travelled with him, but eventually stayed at Ephesus to deal with the problems there, while Paul went on to Macedonia.
Paul’s closeness to and admiration of Timothy are seen in Paul’s naming him as the co-sender of his letters (2 Corinthians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians and Philemon) and in his speaking highly of him to the Philippians (Phil 2:19-22).
At the end of his life, Paul requested Timothy to join him at Rome (2 Tim 4:9,21). According to Heb 13:23, Timothy himself was imprisoned and subsequently released—whether at Rome or elsewhere, we do not know. Timothy was not an apostle and he was probably not an ‘overseer’ (Greek, episkopos), since he was given instructions about overseers (3:1-7; 5:17-22). It may be best to regard him as an apostolic representative, delegated to carry out special work (see Tit 1:5).
According to the New International Version Study Bible:
“Paul, apostle of Christ Jesus, appointed by the command of God our Saviour and of Christ Jesus our hope.” The letter purports to come from Paul, but there is discussion among scholars to what extent the Letter is Paul’s own writing, although it certainly reflects much of his thinking as we know it from his genuine letters.
He calls himself an ‘apostle’, seeing himself as being specially commissioned by “the command of God our Saviour”, a claim he makes more than once and a term which the Letter to the Hebrews applies to Jesus himself (Heb 3:1). In his other letters, Paul seldom uses the term ‘Saviour’, but in the Pastoral Letters he uses it when speaking both of the Father and of Christ. In speaking of Christ Jesus as “our hope” he is, as was mentioned elsewhere, speaking of an attitude of complete confidence in God’s promises yet to be fulfilled.
The Letter is addressed to Timothy, “true child of mine in the faith”. Timothy seems to have been found by Paul on a visit to Lystra (in present-day Turkey) during one of his missionary journeys and brought into the church by him. Paul, in other words, was his ‘God-father’. He also calls Timothy his son in the First Letter to the Corinthians (“my beloved and trustworthy child in the Lord”, 1 Cor 4:17) and in the Second Letter to Timothy (“Timothy, my beloved child”, 2 Tim 1:2).
To Timothy, Paul wishes:
Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and from Christ Jesus our Lord.
Compared to other letters, it is a rather brief salutation. Yet we could hardly ask anything more precious from God our Father and the Lord Jesus than “grace”, the tangible experience of God’s love in our life; “mercy”, the compassion of God ready to forgive us at all times; and “peace”, the inner peace that only God can give and which no one can take from us.
Paul then gives a personal testimony of God’s love in his life. He expresses his deep gratitude:
…Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me…
This was the strength to break away from his old rigid religious beliefs which were a source of such hatred and violence. By calling Paul into his service, Christ his Lord has made a vote of confidence in his trustworthiness.
God had good reason to have doubts given the fact that Paul had been:
blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence.
By going all out to destroy the Christian communities, he was a blasphemer because he was, in fact, attacking Christ himself. On the road to Damascus, he had been knocked to the ground and had heard a voice say:
Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?
Paul asked in reply:
Who are you, Lord?
And the answer came:
I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. (Acts 9:4-5)
In attacking the Christians, he was attacking Jesus himself:
Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me. (Matt 25:40)
It is another affirmation of the real presence of Christ in his Body, the Christian community.
His blaspheming, of course, arose out of his persecuting activities and his Pharisaical arrogance in wanting to rid the world of what he regarded as renegade and heretical Jews.
However, the Lord showed compassion on him because, due to his lack of faith in Christ at the time, he basically was acting in ignorance. Most prejudice against other people arises from ignorance and hence is not seen by the prejudiced person as prejudice, but a conviction about the ‘truth’, a ‘truth’ which, in fact, is very incomplete and often completely false.
But since then, Paul says:
…I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
It is never too late to be converted and change one’s ways. No matter what we may have done, God is ready to receive us back. We, however, have a very strong tendency to continue condemning people for their past or for their perceived background. We tend so easily to stereotype and scapegoat people.
But people can change; they can change radically; and they should be judged and evaluated on how they are now and not on how they were at a former time. Paul is a good example of this.
We need to remember that God always accepts us as we are in the here and now. It is important that we try to act towards others in the same way. One sincere act of love on our part wipes out everything.
Read more
Tuesday of Week 23 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 6:12-19
In today’s Gospel, we move on now to a different phase in Luke’s story and some very crucial sayings of Jesus. We are told that Jesus went up into the mountains to pray and spent the whole night there in prayer to God. Some might wonder what Jesus would have to pray about. Such a question may reveal a limited concept of what prayer is. It is not just a question of asking for things. It is even less a question of fulfilling a religious duty, i.e. ‘saying our prayers’.
Prayer is ultimately making contact with God, the beginning and end of all things. It makes a lot of sense that Jesus would have wanted to be in intimate contact with his Father and to spend long periods with him. One of Jesus’ main concerns was that he do the will of his Father. Prayer was one way of making sure that there was complete harmony with that will.
Luke’s Gospel shows Jesus at prayer more than any of the others. He shows Jesus praying before all the important stages in his public life.
As soon as this period of prayer was over, he called together his disciples and from them he chose twelve as Apostles. We know that among those who came to hear Jesus was a group, comprising both men and women, who regularly followed him and were committed to his teachings. Elsewhere we know of 72 such disciples who were sent out on a mission to do what Jesus was doing. After the Ascension, we are told of 120 believers waiting for the coming of the Spirit. It is from these that Jesus chooses 12 to be Apostles, with a special mandate to continue his mission for the Kingdom. Although the order of names varies in the different Gospels, the list is always headed by Peter while Judas is placed last.
We can sometimes be rather casual in our use of the terms ‘disciples’ and ‘apostles’, but they have very distinct meanings. The word ‘disciple’ is applied to any person who commits himself to be a follower of Jesus. The word ‘disciple’ comes from a Greek word which means ‘to learn’ (discere). There is a passive element present, in the sense of the disciple sitting at the feet of the guru and learning from him. Jesus’ disciples regularly called him ‘Rabbi’ or teacher. The word ‘apostle’ (Greek, apostolos), however, has a much more active meaning. It refers to a person who goes out as an emissary, delegated to pass on information or commands or instructions to others on behalf of some authority.
In the Gospel, the word ‘apostle’ first applies to the twelve people who were especially chosen by Jesus to hand on his message. They would, after the departure of Jesus, become the foundation stones of the new community. In them would be invested the integrity of the original message and it would be up to them to interpret its acceptable developments. They were the beginnings of what we call today the ‘magisterium’, the teaching body of the Church responsible for the maintenance of the integrity of the gospel message.
In this, as in all the lists of the Apostles, the first person listed is Simon, whose name is now changed to Peter. In Matthew, the change is made at Peter’s confession of Jesus as Messiah (Matt 16:18). There are variations of the Apostles’ names in all the lists. Bartholomew here seems to be the same as Nathanael in John (1:45) and is associated with Philip. Matthew seems to correspond to Levi (Mark 2:14). James, son of Alphaeus, is probably the same as James the younger, not the brother of John (Mark 15:40). The other Simon is called a Zealot. This could be either to describe his religious zeal or indicate his original membership in the party of the Zealots, a Jewish revolutionary group violently opposed to Roman rule. Judas, the son of James is another name for Thaddaeus (Matt 10:3; Mark 3:18). He is also known as Jude to distinguish him from the other Judas, who always appears last in the lists. ‘Iscariot’ may mean that Judas came from Kerioth. The town Kerioth Hezron was about 19 km south of Hebron and appears in the Old Testament (Josh 15:25; Jer 48:24).
We know, of course, that one of the chosen failed utterly and betrayed his Master. He was replaced by Matthias. Later, too, Paul—who never saw the pre-resurrection Jesus—would be called to be an Apostle. The term would also be applied to others in the New Testament, e.g. Barnabas, a missionary colleague of Paul.
Secondly, however, the word ‘apostle’ applies to every baptised Christian. All of us, one way or another, are called to pass on the Gospel message so that others can hear and respond. There are many ways we can do this. One thing, though, is clear—it is not enough for us simply to be disciples, i.e. passive followers.
Immediately following the call of the Twelve comes what is really Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount. Significantly, for him it is going to take place in a plain, down on the ground in the midst of all the people. Luke’s version is sometimes known as the “Sermon on the Plain”. It somehow indicates the humility of Jesus and his closeness to the people, while Matthew uses the more biblical concept of a mountain as the place where God reveals himself.
Jesus is surrounded by all his disciples, his newly chosen Apostles, and a huge crowd from Judea and Jerusalem, from the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon, including both Jews and non-Jews. They all came to listen to Jesus, and to be healed. And they were all eager to touch him physically, because a certain power went out from Jesus and brought healing to all.
Let us then hear today the call of Jesus, first to be his disciples, totally committed to accepting and assimilating his message. As well, let us accept the responsibility to spread the gospel actively through the way we live our lives, through the way we speak and through the relationships we establish with people. Finally, let us also reach out and touch Jesus so that we may experience his healing wherever we need it.
Read more
Monday of Week 23 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Colossians 1:24—2:3
A story is told of a woman who went to one of Shakespeare’s plays for the first time. Asked her reaction, she responded: “It was full of quotations!”
Sometimes one gets the same feeling reading the letters of Paul. Scattered through what were simply letters to Christian communities with no thought that they would ever be part of the inspired word of God one comes across gems of sayings which have become the very fabric of our Christian culture and spirituality.
Right at the beginning of today’s reading we have such a gem. Paul tells the Colossians:
I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.
In his preaching of the Gospel to the Gentiles, Paul experienced all kinds of afflictions, but here he is probably referring especially to the imprisonment he is experiencing at the present time. In saying that, through his own sufferings, he is trying to make up what is lacking, he does not mean that there was a deficiency in the sacrifice of Christ.
Jesus suffered in order to establish the Kingdom of God and anyone who continues his work must share in this suffering. Paul is not saying that he thinks his own sufferings increase the value of the redemption (since that value cannot be increased). The sufferings of Christ were of infinite value and not deficient in the least. But Paul is saying that he shares by his sufferings as a missionary in those that Jesus had undergone in his own mission. These are the sufferings predicted for the messianic era, and are all part of the way in which God had always intended the Church to develop. Paul feels that being the messenger Christ has chosen to send to the pagans, he has been specially called on to experience these sufferings.
For Paul, too, the Body of the Risen Christ is his church. That Body continues to suffer and undergo hardships and Paul wants to share in these sufferings and identify with them—as all of us are called to do.
What a beautiful concept! At this time, Paul is in prison in Rome. He offers up his pain and sufferings and joins them to those of Christ that they may benefit the Body of the risen Christ, the whole Church.
In uniting his sufferings with those of Jesus, it is part of Paul’s sense of an extremely intimate closeness to Jesus. In a sense, all the sufferings that Christians have ever offered to God, and have yet to offer, may be seen as united as part of the sacrifice that Christ made on the cross. In a way, the work of redemption is made full by Christians identifying their own sufferings for the Gospel as the building blocks of the Kingdom. Paul’s sufferings were for the church and he:
…became its minister according to God’s commission that was given…for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
The meaning of ‘to make the word of God fully known’ seems to be that the word of God is brought to completion, i.e. to its intended purpose, only when it is proclaimed (see Rom 10:13-15). Paul’s commission to bring the word to completion thus required him to make the word of God heard in Colossae as well as in many other places. In doing so he is continuing what Jesus did on the cross. We should remember that Jesus said his followers would do more than he did—certainly in terms of spreading his Message.
Paul’s role is to unfold that ‘mystery’ which has been hidden from ages past, but is now revealed to the ‘saints’, that is, the Christians. By ‘mystery’ he means not so much something that is difficult to understand, but rather something hidden which is only now being revealed. It is different from the more prevalent use of the word ‘mystery’ to describe esoteric religions (sometimes called ‘mystery religions’) where only the initiates were given special knowledge denied to others.
The Church is not like that. What Paul means is that truths about God or God’s plans, hitherto unknown to the Gentiles, have been made known through Jesus Christ and are now being proclaimed to the whole world. Paul radically changes the original meaning of ‘mystery’ by always combining it with words such as “unfold”, “made known” (Eph 1:9), “make everyone see” (Eph 3:9) and “revelation” (Rom 16:25). The Christian mystery is not secret knowledge for a few. It is a revelation of divine truths—once hidden but now openly proclaimed.
The ‘mystery’ he is referring to here is that extraordinary love of God which has been made known to us through the life, sufferings, death and resurrection of his incarnate Son Jesus, and which Paul and his fellow evangelisers continue to unfold to those who have not yet heard.
To them God chose to make known how great among the gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
The mystery is the fact that Christ now indwells in believing Gentiles, for it had not been previously revealed that the Gentiles would be admitted to the church on equal terms with Israel.
Previously, when it had seemed (to the Jews) that pagans could never be saved, as salvation was restricted to ‘Israel’, pagans had seemed to be without a Messiah and consequently to be deprived of all hope. The ‘mystery’ or secret of God that had now been revealed was that the pagans too were, and had been, called to be saved through union with Christ, and so to reach eternal glory.
It is he whom we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ.
The Christ Paul proclaims is the wisdom which makes us “mature” or perfect. ‘Perfect’ was a word used by the mystery religions and the Gnostics to describe those who had become possessors of the secrets or knowledge boasted of by the particular religion. But in Christ every believer is one of the perfect. The wisdom of the Christian is not (as the Gnostics believed) perfect knowledge, but the Way of Jesus, the Way of the Cross, the Way of universal and unconditional Love, the Way of the Beatitudes, the Way of Service, the Way of Justice and Compassion. In other words, the vision of the Kingdom. That is the meaning of being “mature in Christ”.
And Paul says, it is:
For this I toil and strive with all the energy that he powerfully inspires within me.
He puts all his effort into his work for the Gospel, but it really is “his” (i.e. Christ’s) energy which produces the results. As Paul says:
…whenever I am weak, then I am strong… (2 Cor 12:10)
And he wants the Colossians to know how much he is struggling on their behalf and also for the Christians of nearby Laodicea and other places he had not visited. Laodicea (modern Pamukkale) was about 17 km from Colossae and this letter was intended for both towns. Paul had not been to either place, but was fully aware of the problems the Christians were facing in each one. His concern for them is no less because of that.
Finally, the reading ends with another lovely passage in which Paul says that his purpose is for:
…their hearts to be encouraged and united in love, so that they may have all the riches of assured understanding and have the knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
In the mystery of God is revealed what till then had been ‘hidden’, namely the ‘infinite wisdom’ of God. That it is Christ who is revealed in the mystery is of course true, and he himself is also the Wisdom of God and he is also the Mystery that is hard to understand.
Paul also stresses knowledge in this letter because he was refuting a heresy that emphasised knowledge as the means of salvation (Gnosticism). Paul insists that the Christian, not the Gnostic, is the one who possesses genuine knowledge about the meaning of life.
These are the ‘mysteries’ which are now being made known:
…that is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
This wisdom is within the reach of even the simplest person. It requires not a massive intellect, but an open heart.
Read more