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.
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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.
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