Wednesday of Week 27 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Jonah 4:1-11
After having single-handedly (with some help from the Lord, of course) converted a city of 120,000 people from the king downwards, one would have thought that Jonah would have been filled with a wonderful sense of achievement. At best, he would have thanked and praised God for his wonderful works; at the least, he would have been patting himself on the back for being such an effective prophet.
Instead, we find him in a foul humour and very angry. He is angry that God could have compassion on a longstanding enemy of Israel, one who had caused great suffering to God’s people. His thinking was that God’s goodness should be shown only to Israelites, not to Gentiles and certainly not to Assyrians.
His self-righteous world has been turned upside down. As a devout Hebrew, one of God’s chosen and a prophet to boot, he has regarded all unbelieving Gentiles as deserving only of God’s fiercest punishments. That was why he did not want to have anything to do with them; that was why he wanted to flee as far from them as he could get.
He is very disappointed in his God, but attributes it to God’s basic weakness:
O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning, for I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment.
This description of Yahweh is one which God himself gave to Moses (see Exod 34:6-7) at Sinai and becomes a formula repeated more than once in the Old Testament. God’s gentle patience is in strong contrast to Jonah’s anger.
Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.
To Jonah, God’s mercy to the Ninevites means an end to Israel’s favoured standing. Jonah shortly before has rejoiced in his deliverance from death in the sea, but now that the pagan and sinful Nineveh lives, in anger and frustration he prefers to die. But Yahweh asks:
Is it right for you to be angry?
Jonah is angry because God has not treated the Ninevites the way he thinks they deserve.
Jonah then leaves the city and sits down to the east of the city where he makes a shelter for himself. He wants to see what is going to happen to the city. He expects and hopes that a terrible destruction is going to come down on it. After all, at the beginning of the story God had said how angry he was with the Ninevites.
Jonah’s shelter does not seem to have been very effective because God then ordains that a castor-oil plant should grow up over him to give shade for his head and soothe his bad humour. Jonah is delighted with the shelter the castor-oil plant provides. A castor-oil plant is a shrub growing over 4 metres high with large, shady leaves. God graciously increases the comfort of his stubbornly defiant prophet. Jonah does not see the contradiction between God being kind to him when he disobeys Yahweh, and his being kind to the Ninevites who have promised to give up their sinful ways and disobedience.
But just when Jonah is enjoying the shade of the tree, God ‘appoints’ a worm to attack the tree which causes it to wither. On top of that, Yahweh further ‘prepares’ a scorching east wind to blow in from the desert. Without shelter and under the blazing sun, Jonah feels absolutely miserable:
It is better for me to die than to live.
God then quietly asks Jonah:
Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?
Jonah replies:
Yes, angry enough to die.
But it is now time for Jonah to learn his lesson. The message is clear. Everything is God’s doing. He is the ultimate Lord. He gives and he takes away. And he gives and takes to whomever he will—Jew or Gentile.
Jonah has got all worked up over a tree which, without any effort on his part, appeared overnight and just as quickly disappeared. Why should Yahweh, then, not be concerned:
…about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left and also many animals.
Jonah can only see wilfully wicked people, but Yahweh sees a people, who, like small children, need a father’s gentle compassion to point them in the right direction.
The message of the story is clear. It says that God’s compassion reaches out to every single person. Jonah, representing a certain class of Israelite, whom we see later in the Gospel, could not extend God’s compassion to the Gentile. Jonah and his countrymen traditionally rejoiced in God’s special mercies to Israel, but wished only his wrath on their enemies. God here rebukes such hardness and proclaims his own graciousness.
In the story, God takes compassion on Jonah, when he is thrown into the stormy sea, on Nineveh which repented of its sin and even on the prophet in his moment of self-pity. At the end, Yahweh explains with gentle irony how his solicitude extends even to the animals—how much more then to men, women and children, “who do not know their right hand from their left”. The story thus prepares the way for the Gospel: God is Love (see 1 John 4).
And this is the lesson of the whole book. It is a lesson in tolerance. It is a lesson that others besides God’s chosen people can be forgiven their sin, that they can repent of their sin, that they can be open to the influence of God and do good things.
In this book we are very close to the spirit of the New Testament where Jesus comes to save and not to condemn. The first Christians were all Jews and it came as something of a surprise to them that Gentiles could receive and respond to the Spirit of Jesus just as well as they could.
Jonah is a book attacking narrow-minded bigotry and sectarianism. As such its message is still all too relevant in a world where cynics say that the world would be better off without religions which are the source of so much suffering, violence and divisiveness. Let us remove all bigotry and intolerance from our Christian lives. Let us rejoice to see the Spirit working in other people and be happy to work with them to bring about the Kingdom.
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Saturday of Week 27 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 11:27-28
Today’s short passage is linked to yesterday’s because it begins:
While he was saying this…
After Jesus has effectively silenced his opponents and their ridiculous accusations:
…a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!”
It was a beautiful tribute first to Jesus himself, but also to his mother (someone, presumably, totally unknown to the speaker). In more contemporary terms, we might rephrase it as, “May God bless the woman that produced such a fine son as you!” This woman is clearly one of the crowd that has been amazed at the work Jesus is doing—in contrast to the cynical unbelievers who want to destroy Jesus.
And indeed, we, on a very different level, do recognise the extraordinary privilege that was Mary’s to be the Mother of God’s only Son. We pray to Mary:
Blessed are you among women…
But Jesus turns the woman’s words around:
Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!
Greatness in God’s eyes lies not in gifts and privileges that have been granted, but in the response that is given to God.
The true source of Mary’s greatness was not in her being chosen to be Jesus’ mother, nor even in her preservation from original sin, but in that unconditional ‘Yes’ she gave to the angel at the Annunciation. This ‘Yes’ she faithfully honoured to the day she stood in grief at the foot of the cross. She heard the word and she kept it—to the very end.
Some of the people we saw Jesus arguing with yesterday were powerful and influential in their society; they were the ‘great’ ones of that society. But they neither heard, nor saw, nor kept the word of God, although they claimed to be experts in it.
And even Jesus himself was not great just because of his powers over demons or his ability to silence his accusers, but because he, too, heard the word of his Father and kept it. There was a total identity between what his Father wanted and what Jesus was saying and doing.
For us, too, it must be exactly the same. That is the only greatness that matters, the only greatness that we need be concerned about.
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Friday of Week 27 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 11:15-26
As said by the prophet Jeremiah:
Hear this, O foolish and senseless people,
who have eyes but do not see,
who have ears but do not hear. (Jer 5:21)
In today’s passage, Jesus frees a person from enslavement to an evil power which had rendered him mute, so that he could not speak (in Matthew’s version of this story, the man is also blind). As Christians, many of us can suffer from the same evil influence when we refuse or are afraid to acknowledge openly our Christian faith. We hide and we remain silent, especially when the values we hold are attacked or ridiculed. Once liberated, the man could speak and he did so, much to the amazement of the crowd. Let us, too, pray for this gift of speech—to be able to say the right thing at the right time.
But there were those present who accused Jesus of using the demon’s power to drive out the evil spirit. At the same time, in spite of the extraordinary signs that Jesus was initiating on almost a daily basis—including the one they had just witnessed which caused such astonishment among the people—his enemies asked him for a sign from God.
There is a clear gap between the leaders and the people here. While the leaders keep asking Jesus for his credentials, the people are shown as constantly praising and thanking God for all that is being done among them through Jesus.
Jesus then shows the self-contradictions in his opponents’ charges. A kingdom that is split by internal rivalries cannot survive. Why would evil spirits attack each other and as such frustrate their goals? And, Jesus says to his accusers:
Now if I cast out the demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your exorcists cast them out?….But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out the demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
When people are liberated from the control of evil spirits, that is a sure sign that the loving power of God is at work. Any other interpretation does not make sense. And the ‘Kingdom of God’ is personified and embodied in Jesus himself. It will also become present in his disciples who do his work.
And Jesus goes on to give another image. A strong man guarding his house and possessions remains undisturbed until someone stronger comes and overthrows him. That is clearly what is happening. Jesus is the stronger one and the evil spirits are being driven away by him. They are helpless before him. This liberation of people and society from evil powers is one of the most dramatic proofs that the all-powerful reign of God is present in the person of Jesus. What further signs could be asked for?
Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.
There can be no neutrality where Jesus is concerned. We have to make our choice—for him or against. Not to choose is itself a choice—against him. Compare this with the similar, but actually quite different saying we saw earlier:
…for whoever is not against you is for you. (Luke 9:50)
This was in the context of the Apostle John complaining that he saw a man cast out demons in Jesus’ name. In so far as that nameless person was doing Jesus’ work and doing it in Jesus’ name, he was with Jesus. That surely has implications for the many good things that non-Catholics and others who are not Christians at all are doing.
And this saying about the non-acceptance of neutrality leads to another warning. It is not enough to have been liberated from the power of an evil (“unclean”) spirit. Otherwise this “unclean spirit” may say:
I will return to my house from which I came.
But:
When it returns, it finds it swept and put in order. Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself…
The end result is that the evil spirits:
…enter and live there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first.
No, instead, the emptiness left by the departure of the evil spirit has to be actively filled with the Spirit of Jesus.
Was Jesus referring to some of the people around him? Was he especially calling out his critics? These were people who by their meticulous observance of the Law saw themselves as morally blameless, but in whose lives the positive presence of the Spirit, as exemplified in Jesus himself, was totally absent.
It is easy to use the sacrament of reconciliation to get the forgiveness of our past sins and leave it at that, feeling comfortable with having a ‘clean slate’. Nature may abhor a vacuum, but the devil loves one!
The true reconciliation that the sacrament calls for, even demands, is a new and stronger commitment to the living of our Christian life. The sacrament is intended to be an experience of conversion and change. It is much more concerned with the future than with the past. The past is gone and there is nothing we can do about it. The present is in our hands and that is where we meet God.
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Tuesday of Week 27 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Jonah 3:1-10
After his three days and nights in the belly of the big fish, Jonah was, at the word of God, “vomited out onto the dry land”. Without delay, the word of Yahweh comes to Jonah a second time. It is almost as if God was saying to his prophet, “OK…let’s try this one more time!”
Jonah is told again to rise up, to go to Nineveh and to preach to it in the words that Yahweh will lay down. That, of course, is the role of the prophet—to pass on a message from God, not to preach his own word. A much chastened Jonah now submissively, if not with much enthusiasm and against his better judgement, obeys and sets out for Nineveh. He is not expecting much response.
We are told that:
Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across.
In Hebrew, it is literally “great in the eyes of God”—the strongest superlative in the Hebrew language. So big, in fact, that it took three days to walk across it.
Later in the story we are told that the city had more than 120,000 inhabitants, just a large town by today’s standards. Archaeological excavations indicate that the later imperial city of Nineveh was about 12 km around. The fact, however, that “a visit required three days” may suggest a larger area, such as the four-city complex of Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah and Resen mentioned in Genesis 10. Greater Nineveh covered an area of some 100 km in circumference.
On the other hand, “three days” seems to have been a conventional way of describing a medium-length distance. But as we are dealing here with a story, the author simply wants to say that Nineveh was a very big place with a lot of people.
Having arrived at Nineveh, Jonah had only walked one day’s distance into the city proclaiming Yahweh’s warning:
Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!
The 40 days are reminiscent of the 40 days of the Flood or the 40 years of Israel wandering in the desert. Jesus will also fast for 40 days in the desert and, in the Acts of the Apostles, ascend to his Father 40 days after his resurrection. And the response:
…the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.
A fast and sackcloth were conventional signs of repentance for sin. This speedy conversion of the Ninevites after hearing God’s word will be commented on later by Jesus and contrasted with the reluctance of the scribes and Pharisees to accept Jesus’ word:
The people of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the proclamation of Jonah, and indeed something greater than Jonah is here! (Matt 12:41)
Then:
When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.
This is the mighty King of Assyria, king of an empire which brought so much suffering to the Chosen People. Here he is, humbly submitting to Yahweh and acknowledging his sinfulness.
Further, he gives orders for a general fast from eating and even drinking water, an order extended to both people and animals. And he gives the order:
Humans and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands.
Inclusion of domestic animals was unusual, but here it expresses the urgency with which the Ninevites were to seek mercy.
Said the king:
Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.
He knew they deserved any punishment God could send them, but they lived in hope that Jonah’s God might relent and put aside his great anger against them. In Jeremiah, Yahweh says:
At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it. (Jer 18:7-8)
And, indeed, God does see their efforts to abandon their evil ways and withdraws the disaster he had planned for the city.
One would imagine that Jonah would have been absolutely delighted with such a response to his preaching and with the conversion of the Ninevites to the Lord, but he reacted very strangely indeed. For his actual response we will have to wait for tomorrow’s reading.
Like the pagan sailors in the boat, the people of Nineveh show that they are ready to change their ways and recognise the power of Yahweh. Ironically, the one rebellious person in the story is a member of God’s own people and his prophet. In our world, too, non-Christians can frequently put us to shame in the way they show a Christian spirit.
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Monday of Week 27 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Jonah 1:1—2:1,11
The book of Jonah is one of the most delightful in the whole Bible. It is probably the only book where the author wrote with his tongue firmly in his cheek. While there are marvellous things in the Bible, humour is generally not one of its characteristics. There is a lot of humour, of the biting kind, in this book. And, what is even more rare, the laugh is mainly on the chief character.
Although it is written in a narrative style, it is not history. It is a didactic story with a moral—and a very important moral at that. The fact that it is a book which can provoke laughter does not mean that its message is to be taken lightly. In fact, it is one of the most radical of Old Testament writings and has been described as being on the threshold of the gospel. We will see why as we read on.
Today’s reading sets the stage for the unfolding of the story. As the story opens, the word of Yahweh is addressed to a man called Jonah, son of Amittai. There is mention, in fact, of a prophet Jonah in the Second Book of Kings, who lived at the time of Jeroboam II (786-746 BC). This story, which was written some 300 years after that time, is not about him, but just uses his name.
As a prophet, Jonah is told to go to the great city of Nineveh and warn them that God is displeased with their great wickedness. According to Genesis, Nineveh was first built by Nimrod (perhaps along with Rehoboth Ir, Calah and Resen) and was traditionally known as the “great city”. About 700 BC, Sennacherib made it the capital of Assyria, which it remained until its fall in 612 BC. It was long destroyed by the time this book was written. It would have been about 800 km from Gath Hepher, Jonah’s hometown, a long way for the prophet to travel.
Except for violent behaviour mentioned later on in the story, the “wickedness” of Nineveh is not described. The prophet Nahum later states that Nineveh’s sins included plotting evil against the Lord, cruelty and plundering in war, prostitution and witchcraft and commercial exploitation. In any case, Jonah, as a pious Hebrew, would take rampant immorality and its rejection by Yahweh as a given in such a great pagan city.
Not only was its immorality to be taken for granted, as far as Jonah is concerned, its people should be left to the fate of all wicked unbelievers. Jonah is appalled at the idea of trying to convert them and does not want to go there. It seems he has no intention of having anything to do with such wicked pagans. They deserve all that God can throw against them.
So Jonah sets off westward, the opposite direction, and boards a ship at Joppa (the modern Israeli city of Jaffa) bound for Tarshish to get as far away as possible from both Nineveh and Yahweh—quite a futile thing to do. As Psalm 139 puts it:
Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast. (Ps 139:7-10)
Jonah will soon find out how true these words are.
For the Jews ‘Tarshish’ represented the end of the world. The word may be a corruption of Tartessus, a Phoenician mining colony near Gibraltar in southern Spain. Perhaps the modern equivalent would be Timbuctoo!
The ship has hardly got under way when Yahweh hurls a mighty wind and such a great storm blows up that the ship is in danger of breaking up. This is just one of several interventions by Yahweh in the story. Jonah’s disobedience has not only put his own life in danger, but is threatening the lives of a totally innocent crew.
In an effort to save their lives, the sailors throw the cargo overboard to lighten the ship and then each one prays to his own god—perhaps one of them will bring the help they need. One person, however, is not doing any praying. Jonah is below decks fast asleep. He is not only indifferent to his own fate, but also that of his shipmates. Maybe he thinks ‘his’ Yahweh will take care of his prophet, even a disobedient prophet.
However, these pagans are shown to be somewhat more religious than Jonah gives them credit for. Certainly his behaviour is in stark contrast to the captain who is using every possible method, including prayer to every known god, to save those on board. And he wakes up Jonah and urges him to call on his god, who might be able to do what the other gods do not seem to be able to do. The “pagan” captain’s concern for the welfare of everyone on board contrasts with the ‘believing'(?) prophet’s refusal to bring God’s mercy and compassion to the people of Nineveh.
As a last resort, the sailors come to the correct conclusion that there is someone on board who is bringing them all this misfortune. They cast lots to find out who it is and—surprise, surprise—the lot falls on Jonah. In the context of the story, this is no chance accident.
The casting of lots was a custom widely practiced in the ancient Near East. The precise method is unclear, though it appears that, for the most part, sticks or marked pebbles were drawn from a receptacle into which they had been thrown. Games such as this are still found in various parts of the world.
Immediately, the sailors begin to interrogate Jonah to find out where he comes from. He replies:
I am a Hebrew…I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.
The sailors would have understood Jonah’s words as being descriptive of the highest divinity. Their present experiences confirm this truth, since, in the religions of the ancient Near East generally, the supreme god was master of the seas.
This is Jonah’s first confessional statement, and, like those that follow, it is thoroughly orthodox. Though orthodox in his beliefs, Jonah refuses to fulfil his divine mission to Nineveh. It is important for us, too, to realise that theological orthodoxy is not enough to fulfil the most important requirements of Christian discipleship. The Pharisees were impeccably orthodox as well.
The sailors are terrified at Jonah’s self-revelation. They now know the cause of their peril. A believer in the god who controls the seas has disobeyed his god and made him angry. And they are all the victims of his disobedience. “What is this that you have done!”, they say to him—a rhetorical question that needs no answer. Then, as the sea gets rougher and rougher, they then ask Jonah what they are to do with him in order to restore calm in the sea. It seems as if they are looking for a way to save their lives, but without doing harm to Jonah. Once again, the pagan’s care for the Hebrew far surpasses the Hebrew’s care for them. This is all part of the central lesson of the story.
At last, Jonah begins to accept responsibility for the situation:
Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you, for I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you.
At the same time, Jonah’s readiness to die to save the terrified sailors contrasts with his later behaviour when he leaves Nineveh expecting to watch its destruction by Yahweh at a safe distance—which of course, to his great chagrin and disappointment does not happen.
Even now, the sailors are still reluctant to do what Jonah suggests, even to save their own lives. Instead, they tried to row hard in order to reach the shore (it probably was not very far away; ships in those days tended to stay close to the shore rather than risk being caught in the open sea). In Hebrew, the language uses the picturesque word meaning ‘to dig’ (with the oars) to indicate their strenuous efforts. Again, the reluctance of the sailors to throw Jonah into the sea stands in sharp contrast to Jonah’s reluctance to bring God’s warning to Nineveh of impending judgment.
Finally, and still with great misgivings, the sailors make their prayer to Jonah’s god Yahweh, asking him not to hold them responsible for the death of an innocent man’s life:
Please, O Lord, we pray, do not let us perish on account of this man’s life. Do not make us guilty of innocent blood, for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.
They then toss Jonah into the raging sea which immediately becomes calm. They have done the right thing. At the same time, the sudden calm fills them with great fear.
Jonah’s God is truly Master of the seas and they offer him a sacrifice and make vows. They know that only the most powerful of gods can control the seas and the wind. Remember too, the reaction of the disciples after Jesus had calmed the storm on the lake:
What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him? (Matt 8:27)
They are both shocked and afraid that Jonah can be so disobedient to his God and they try to make up for his terrible behaviour. The author also emphasises the piety of the pagan sailors. They are scandalised that Jonah should disobey Yahweh, and are themselves afraid to offend Yahweh by sacrificing Jonah, and then offer worship to Jonah’s God whose power they recognise.
And such is the providence of God. He turns even the disobedience of Jonah into a grace for those sailors, a grace they would not have experienced had Jonah gone to Nineveh in the first place—God’s straight writing with crooked lines.
Of course, there is no evidence that the sailors renounced all their other gods as a result of this experience. Ancient pagans were ready to recognise the existence and power of many gods. At the least, however, the sailors acknowledge that the God of Israel is in control of the present events, that he is the one who both stirred up and calmed the storm, and that at this moment he is the one to be recognised and worshipped.
Once again Yahweh intervenes and arranges that a big fish should swallow Jonah, who remained in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights. The “big fish” is not likely to have been a whale, which is not found in the Mediterranean. It is not to be confused either with ‘Leviathan’, the sinister “serpent” of the sea (see Amos 9:3) or the “dragon” (see Job 7:12 and other texts).
“Three days and three nights” may, as in the burial of Jesus (Friday evening to Sunday morning), refer to a period of time including one full day and parts of two others. In any case, the New Testament clearly uses Jonah’s experience as a foreshadowing of the burial and resurrection of Jesus, who was buried in the earth for “three days and three nights” (Matt 12:40).
While inside the fish, Jonah made a long prayer of distress and appeal to Yahweh, which is not included in our readings. And, on the third day, again at the command of Yahweh, the fish “vomits” Jonah on to dry land.
He is back where he started. And, not surprisingly, this gives Jonah some time to reflect on his situation. When the next call comes, he will respond differently—up to a point.
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Wednesday of Week 27 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 11:1-4
It is surely no coincidence that Jesus’ commendation of Mary for spending time listening to Jesus should be followed by a section on prayer.
Luke’s Gospel has been called the Gospel of Prayer. It is in his Gospel, more than any of the others, that we are told about Jesus praying, especially before the more important moments of his public life—such as at his baptism by John, the choosing of the Twelve, before Peter’s confession of his Messiahship and in the garden before his passion.
Today we see Jesus just praying somewhere, and we get the impression that it was something he did quite often. We mentioned earlier that it was perfectly natural for Jesus to pray to his Father—if we understand that by prayer we mean being in close contact with God.
Sometimes it will be to ask God for help in our lives or in making the right decision, sometimes it will be to thank and praise him, sometimes it will be to pray on behalf of someone else and sometimes it will be just to be in his company. We saw this yesterday with Mary of Bethany sitting quietly at the feet of Jesus listening to him. In fact, a lot of our prayer should be in silent listening. Some people talk so much in their prayer that God cannot get a word in! And then they complain he does not answer their prayers!
After seeing him pray on this occasion, Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them how to pray. In reply, he gives them what we know as The Lord’s Prayer. It is not quite the form we are familiar with—that comes from Matthew’s Gospel. In the Gospel of Luke, the prayer is simpler, but the basic structure is still the same.
Matthew’s text has seven petitions (we know how he likes the number ‘seven’), but Luke’s has only five. It is believed that Matthew follows an earlier form which may be closer to Luke’s.
When Jesus taught this to his disciples did he mean that praying meant reciting this formula at regular intervals? In fact, it is (in Matthew’s version) a formula we all know by heart and which we recite regularly during the Eucharist, when we say the Rosary and on many other occasions. But it seems more likely that Jesus intended to do more than just teach them a formula to be recited. It is probably much better to see his words as an answer to their request:
Lord, teach us [how] to pray, as John taught his disciples.
We will get much more out of the Lord’s Prayer if we take each petition separately and spend time praying around each one. When we do that seriously and conscientiously, we will see that it is a very challenging prayer.
Let us briefly look at the petitions as they are in Luke:
Father:
To begin with, let us agree that ‘gender’ is a feature that belongs to humans, and God is beyond gender. We can address God as either Father or Mother; the basic meaning is that God is the source of life and the Creator of every living thing. In addressing God as Father (or Mother) we are acknowledging that we are children, sons and daughters, of God. But if we are children of the one God, then we are brothers and sisters to each other. And there can be no exceptions to this, not even one.
Is this what I mean when I utter the word “Father”? Am I prepared to see every single person on the face of this earth, irrespective of race, gender, nationality, ethnicity, skin colour, class, occupation, age, religion or behaviour as my brother and sister? If not, I have to stop praying at this first word. We can begin to see now what teaching his disciples to pray meant to Jesus as well as to them and us.
May your name be revered as holy:
God’s name is already holy and nothing we can do can make it any more so. In this petition we are rather asking that the whole world recognise the holiness of God—that the whole world sing with the angels: “Holy, holy, holy…” God does not need this, but we do. And when we sing like this in all sincerity, then we are saying that we belong to him and recognise him as Lord. And it is, in fact, another way of expressing the following petition.
May your kingdom come:
We refer frequently in these reflections to the Kingdom. It is that world where God’s reign prevails in people’s hearts and minds and relationships. It is a world where people have submitted gladly to that reign and experience the truth and love and beauty of God in their lives and in the way they interact with the people around them. It produces a world of freedom, peace and justice for all.
Though, in praying this petition, we are not just asking God to bring it about while we sit back and wait. We are also committing ourselves to be partners with God in bringing it about. Our co-operation in this work is of vital importance. To be a Christian, to be a disciple of Jesus, is essentially to be involved in this task of making the Kingdom a reality. And it has to begin right now; it is not just to be left to a future existence. In Matthew’s version (Matt 6:5-15), we pray:
May your kingdom come.
May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Like many of these petitions, it is a prayer that God’s will be carried out through our involvement. Again, it is a really challenging prayer.
Give us each day our daily bread:
This is a prayer that we will be always provided with what we need for our daily living. There is a highly dangerous word buried in the petition. That word is “us”. To whom does “us” refer? My family? My friends? My work companions? My village, town, city, country, nationality, race or gender? Surely it refers to all God’s children without exception.
If that is the case, then we are praying that every single person be supplied with their daily needs. But that cannot happen unless we all get involved. The petition is not simply passing the buck to God. The feeding of our brothers and sisters is the responsibility of all.
Yet millions are hungry and millions suffer from malnutrition as well as being deprived of many of the other essentials of dignified living. Clearly, we are not doing all we can to see that all of “us” have “our” daily bread. So again this is a very dangerous prayer.
It is even more dangerous when we say it in the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the sacrament or sign of a community that takes care of all its members and of others in need. It is the sacrament of breaking bread with brothers and sisters. If we leave the Eucharistic table and do nothing about this, then our sign has been a sham.
And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us:
How easily we say this again and again! Yet it is a very frightening thing to do—to put God’s forgiving us conditional on our forgiving others. Forgiveness and reconciliation must be part and parcel of Christian living, and we all know that at times it can be very difficult. Yet, as we see in the book of Jonah (read during Cycle I at this time), our God is so ready to forgive. To be like him, to be ‘perfect’, is to have that same readiness to forgive. Our deepest urge should be not to condemn and punish, but to rehabilitate and restore to life.
And do not bring us to the time of trial:
We are surrounded by forces which can draw us away from God and all that is true, good and beautiful. We pray that we will not succumb permanently to anything of the sort. We need constantly God’s liberating hand to lift us up as he lifted the drowning Peter. This is the one petition where we depend totally on God’s help.
The Lord’s Prayer is beautiful. It is challenging. It needs to be taken slowly and meditatively so that we have time to enter deeply into each petition. Perhaps as we pray we can stop at just one petition which at this time is particularly meaningful to us and leave the others for another time. It is primarily not a formula to be recited, but themes for prayer. Any one petition is enough to last a long time.
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Saturday of Week 27 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Joel 4:12-21*
Today we have our second and final reading from the prophet Joel. It is an apocalyptic-style call to a people who are suffering, who see only a bleak future with threats on all sides. It is a message full of hope in the ultimate future.
It begins with a call to the nations. The nations may “rouse themselves” (literally “sanctify”) to make war on Yahweh and march on Zion, but there in the “valley of decision” they will meet their judgement and ultimate defeat. It is considered ‘holy’ because all war was regarded as a sacred undertaking. Earlier in the chapter, Yahweh had said he would gather all the nations together and take them to the Valley of Jehoshaphat where he would put them on trial. That is now about to happen. The call for the nations is to hammer their ploughshares into swords and their bill-hooks into spears. This is the exact reversal of what is to happen in paradise as described by Isaiah (2:4).
Let the nations rouse themselves
and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat,
for there I will sit to judge
all the neighboring nations.
The valley of Jehospaphat is called the “valley of decision” later in the passage. It seems to be a symbolic name for a valley near Jerusalem that is here depicted as the place of God’s ultimate judgement on the nations gathered against Jerusalem. It was there that King Jehoshaphat had witnessed one of the Lord’s historic victories over the nations.
Put in the sickle,
for the harvest is ripe.
Go in, tread,
for the winepress is full.
The vats overflow,
for their wickedness is great.
Because of their numerous crimes, the nations are ripe for punishment. The use of warlike weapons against them is likened to the use of reaping instruments on the fields and vines at harvest time.
As a result of the Lord’s great army (the plague of locusts) that had marched against Judah (see Joel 1:1-11), there have been no harvests. That harvest was now to be restored. In the final great day of the Lord, there will also be a harvest—the harvest of God’s judgement on the nations. Revelation (14:14-20) draws heavily on this picture of judgement.
Today’s reading continues:
Multitudes, multitudes,
in the valley of decision!
For the day of the Lord is near
in the valley of decision.
The word for “decision” also means an instrument with sharp wheels or stones used in threshing. Just as the threshing machine divides the wheat from the chaff, so will God’s decision be against those who have been unfaithful. The valley is now viewed as the place where that decree will be executed.
Next comes a brief description of the Day of Yahweh.
The sun and the moon are darkened,
and the stars withdraw their shining.
The Lord roars from Zion
and utters his voice from Jerusalem,
and the heavens and the earth shake.
The language is apocalyptic. “The Lord roars” like a lion and destroys the unbelieving nations. And as God at the head of his army had thundered against Jerusalem, so he will on that day thunder against Jerusalem’s enemies, and he will:
dwell in Zion, [his] holy mountain.
And Jerusalem shall be holy,
and strangers shall never again pass through it.
On “the day of the Lord” his people will know that he is Yahweh their God, residing on Zion, his holy mountain. Jerusalem will be his sanctuary and it will never again be over-run by the “stranger” (i.e. foreigner). The Lord from now on will be with his people forever. The final blessed state of the now unholy and vulnerable city will be God’s abiding presence in her. Then she will be holy and impregnable.
In the third and last part of the reading, God blesses his people in a dual way: he not only destroys their enemies, but he also gives them good things.
Times of plenty are coming:
In that day
the mountains shall drip sweet wine,
the hills shall flow with milk,
and all the streambeds of Judah
shall flow with water…
The Eden-like lushness pictured in this verse is in great contrast to the terrible drought which followed the plague of locusts.
…a fountain shall come forth
from the house of the Lord
and water the Wadi Shittim.
Flowing out from God’s presence, streams of blessing will refresh his people and make their place endlessly fruitful. The location of the “Wadi Shittim” is uncertain in this apocalyptic description of the new Jerusalem. The picture is of a desert now with an abundance of water.
On the other hand:
Egypt shall become a desolation
and Edom a desolate wilderness,
because of the violence done to the people of Judah,
in whose land they have shed innocent blood.
Egypt and Edom were old enemies of Israel and here represent all those nations hostile to God’s people.
All life-sustaining blessings are removed from these nations, thus setting in sharp focus the contrasting destiny of God’s people and the enemies of God’s Kingdom. This picture of desolation also recalls the earlier description of Judah’s condition after the locusts. Then:
…Judah shall be inhabited forever
and Jerusalem to all generations.
I will avenge their blood, and I will not clear the guilty,
for the Lord dwells in Zion.
Once God’s judgement and redemption are complete, his Kingdom will endure and flourish forever. And this book of judgement ends on a promising and encouraging note: “the Lord dwells in Zion” and therefore all will be right with those who trust in God and live with him.
We do not now hold that God preserves any particular place forever, not Jerusalem, not Rome. For us, Zion is not a physical place. God is present not in stones, but in the hearts of those who open themselves to him, who hear his word and keep it. The ‘New Jerusalem’ is not a place, but the composite of all those who are in loving relationship with God and with each other because of Him. As Jesus told the Samaritan woman:
But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. (John 4:23)
Indeed, an hour is coming, and is already here, when authentic worshippers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth. It is just such worshippers the Father seeks.
This brings us to the end of our selection of readings from the post-Exilic prophets which began in the 25th Week of Ordinary Time (three weeks ago). We have read passages from Ezra, Haggai, Zechariah, Nehemiah, Baruch, Jonah, Malachi and Joel.
What they have in common is that all come from the same period, following the return of the Hebrews from exile in Babylon. Two are historical books (Ezra and Nehemiah) and the rest are from prophets. And they have appeared more or less in chronological order. On Monday we will return to reading from the New Testament.
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*In some Bible translations, today’s passage is Joel 3:12-21.
Tuesday of Week 27 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 10:38-42
Today we find Jesus in the home of the sisters, Mary and Martha. We also know that they have a brother named Lazarus. We meet the sisters again (showing the same characteristics as in this story) in John’s account of the raising from death of their brother (John 11:1-44). They lived in Bethany, a village about 3-4 km from Jerusalem and it seems that Jesus was a familiar visitor to the house and a friend, for at the time of Lazarus’ illness, Jesus is told:
Lord, he whom you love is ill. (John 11:3)
The story of Martha and Mary is, in a way, a contrast to the previous story about the Good Samaritan. It restores a balance in our following of Christ. The story about being a neighbour could lead us to think that only if we are doing things are we loving God.
Martha was a ‘doer’ to the point of being a fusspot. Martha, we are told:
…was distracted by her many tasks…
Serving others is something that Jesus himself did constantly, and he urged his followers to do the same. But it should not be a burden or distraction. And, after Martha had complained about her sister, Jesus told her:
…you are worried and distracted by many things…
A true servant does not experience anxiety and worry because that signifies a lack of peace.
Because Mary seemed to be doing nothing, Martha saw her as idling and even selfish. Martha must have been somewhat surprised when Jesus said that:
Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.
What was that better part? Wasn’t Mary just sitting at the feet of Jesus and doing nothing? No! We are told that she:
…listened to what he was saying.
Listening to his message is something Jesus tells his disciples and the crowd they need to be doing all the time. And we have mentioned before that listening involves understanding, accepting and assimilating that message so that it becomes part of our very selves.
If we do not spend time listening to him, how can we know that our activity is properly directed? It is easy for us Christians to be very busy, but are we busy about the right things?
To answer that question we have to stop to listen, to discern and to pray. And, ultimately, the highest form of activity in our lives is contemplation—being in conscious contact with God and his Word. If I find myself saying that I do not have time to give some time to prayer or contemplation each day, then there is a serious imbalance in my priorities and in my understanding of what it means to love and serve my God.
This story blends nicely with the parable of the Good Samaritan which went before it. Taken together they express what should be the essence of Christian living—action for others that is guided by what we learn in contemplation. This was the pattern of Jesus’ own life—he spent long hours bringing healing to people’s lives (being a neighbour), but also retired to quiet places to be alone in communion with his Father. The same pattern must be ours too. We call it being ‘contemplatives in action’.
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Thursday of Week 27 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 11:5-13
Jesus continues his instructions to his disciples about prayer. Today the lesson is one of perseverance.
Jesus gives the parable of a man coming to a neighbour in the middle of the night looking for some food to provide hospitality to an unexpected visitor. The neighbour is not willing to get up and disturb his wife and children who are sleeping with him (which would be very common in a one-room house). But says Jesus, if the man persists, the neighbour, simply to get some peace, will eventually get up and give the man all he needs. If a grumpy neighbour will listen to an inconvenient request, how much more will a loving God pay heed to the needs of his children?
In another example, Jesus asks if a father would give his child a snake instead of a fish, or a scorpion instead of an egg. If even a very ordinary father would not think of treating his children so callously:
If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!
Of course, a very pertinent question comes to mind: if God is such a loving and caring parent who will only give good things to us, why do we have to persist in asking? Why do we have to ask at all? The reason is not because God needs persuading (like the sleepy neighbour). Persistence in prayer is for our benefit.
There are a number of ways of praying persistently. One is to keep begging God to give us something we want or that we think we need. Another is to think that somehow we can manipulate God or put him under some kind of obligation by asking him repeatedly. So, if I do a nine-day novena and say certain prayers each day, I may expect that God or some saint somehow is under an obligation to give me what I am asking for. In some kinds of novenas or other devotional exercises, there are people who would tell us that “satisfaction is guaranteed”. This, in fact, is very close to superstition—if not heresy.
The kind of prayer that Jesus is talking about is really something quite different. He seems to presume that what we are asking for is the gift of God’s Spirit:
…how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!
Is that what we normally ask for? To ask for the Spirit is to ask to have the same Spirit that inspired Jesus in his life and work. It is a Spirit which is totally at one with the will of the Father. In the parallel text in Matthew (7:11), it is “good gifts” which the Father will give. What could be more of a “good” thing than the very Spirit of God?
The other types of asking can be a subtle way of asking God to do our will, instead of submitting our will to God as Jesus does:
Father…not my will but yours be done. (Luke 22:42)
Whatever form our prayer takes, ultimately it must be to be like Jesus, so that we may grow in the likeness of the Father:
To know him more clearly, love him more dearly, follow him more nearly.
One way of moving in this direction is to make this the constant theme of our prayer. The more we pray for this, the more likely it will become a reality in our lives. And it is inconceivable that God should refuse to hear this prayer.
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Thursday of Week 27 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Malachi 3:13-20
We just have one reading from this book and it comes from the final verses of the last chapter. The Jerusalem Bible entitles the passage: “The triumph of the upright on the Day of Yahweh”. Yahweh is complaining that some of his people are saying harsh things about him. They are complaining:
What do we profit by keeping his command or by going about as mourners before the Lord of hosts?
The salvation they have been longing for is not being realised. They feel depressed like mourners in sackcloth and ashes.
On the contrary, it is the proud and arrogant who seem to be the happy ones; those who practise immorality are the ones who prosper and do well out of life. They constantly challenge God’s laws with their behaviour, but nothing ever happens to them. What is the point, then, in trying to live a good life?
However, there were some God-fearing people, those who did not give way to doubt and cynicism, who got together in fellowship and gave each other mutual encouragement. They drew up a “book of remembrance” in the Lord’s presence in which were recorded the good deeds “of those who revered the Lord and thought on his name”. This book was analogous to the records of notable deeds kept by earthly rulers. In this way, they kept their faith and confidence in Yahweh.
By doing this they could clearly see the difference between the genuinely good person and the wicked one, between the one who served God and the one who did not.
Then comes the prophet’s warning from Yahweh:
See, the day is coming, burning like an oven…
Fire, smoke and cloud were traditionally a feature of the coming of the Lord. We saw it when Moses and the Israelites were at Sinai. And Isaiah says, for example:
See, the name of the Lord comes from far away,
his anger burning and his burden heavy;
his lips are full of indignation,
and his tongue is like a devouring fire. (Is 30:27)
That will be the day when the proud and the arrogant and those who do evil will be set afire and destroyed root and branch. Speaking about the work of Jesus, John the Baptist told the crowds who came to the Jordan:
His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.
(Matt 3:12)
On the other hand, for those who have remained faithful, even through those days when evil seemed to prosper, for those who feared the Lord’s name:
But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.
The “sun of righteousness” implies power and triumph. Isaiah compared God and his glory with the sun (see Is 60:1,19).
The title “Sun of Righteousness”, applied to Christ, has had its influence on the liturgy of Christmas and the Epiphany. Luke speaks of Christ as the “rising sun” from heaven in Zechariah’s hymn known to us as the Benedictus, which is recited every day in the Church’s Divine Office. Zechariah’s son, John the Baptist, will prepare the way as:
…the dawn from on high will break upon us, to shine upon those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. (Luke 1:78-79)
Yes, the Light that is Christ has brought healing and wholeness into so many lives. Let us open ourselves to that healing and wholeness also.
However, times and people do not change very much and what Malachi says is still true in our own time. We, too, can be so easily tempted to go the way of those who seek the good life and get carried away by the materialism, consumerism and hedonism that washes over us day after day. We, too, can pay lip service to the call of our faith and just go through the motions of ‘religious observance’. Let us eat, drink and be merry for as long as we can and then, when the end seems to be on the horizon, we can straighten things out with God.
It is not a very wise way of dealing with a God who can come “like a thief in the night”. It is not a very enlightened choice. On the other hand, once we really enter into the Way of Christ we will find that it is there we find our deepest needs satisfied. Let us ask God to open our eyes to the true spirit of Jesus’ gospel and make it the driving force of our lives.
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