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.

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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)

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