Friday of Week 27 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Joel 1:13-15; 2:1-2

In today’s First Reading, the prophet calls for repentance for many sins and gives a warning about “the day of the Lord” (or in some translations, “the day of Yahweh”). The prophet excludes no one from the need to repent and do penance. He begins with the priests and all those who serve in the Temple. He calls on them to do night-long penance for they have failed in their duties of liturgical service:

Grain offering and drink offering are withheld from the house of your God.

A fast and a solemn assembly of the people is to be proclaimed by the elders. Everyone in the country is to be called together in the Temple. Similar exhortations to repentance and prayer recur in other parts of the book. The interest that Joel displays in formal observance of the liturgy contrasts markedly with the attitude of other prophets such as Amos, Hosea, Micah, and Jeremiah, but Joel too insists on the need for inward conversion.

In general, fasting was required on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) and also practised in times of calamity as a sign of penitence and humility. The New Testament, both Matthew’s Gospel and Paul, speaks strongly against outward signs that do not reflect a corresponding inward belief or attitude (see Matt 6:1-8; 23:1-36).

The reason for the fast and the assembly is that:

…the day of the Lord is near, and as destruction from the Almighty it comes.

The “day of the Lord” is the dominant theme of the Book of Joel. Other prophets also use it, such as, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Obadiah, Zephaniah and Malachi. Sometimes abbreviated as “that day” or “the day of Yahweh”, the term often refers to the decisive intervention of God in history, such as through the invasion of locusts in Joel. It can also refer to Christ’s coming at the end of time.

Some translations also use the Hebrew word Shaddai in referring to the “Almighty”. This is a play on the words shod (devastation) and Shaddai (a name for God, i.e. “the Almighty”). The plague of locusts at the beginning of the book heralds “the day of the Lord”, which is a day of terror, even though, in the context of Joel (chaps 3-4), it brings the ultimate triumph of Israel.

The last part of the reading is a sombre warning that “the day of the Lord” is very near. “Blow the trumpet” is a warning of approaching danger and the punishment of Israel for the coming day of wrath. The alarm is to be raised on God’s holy mountain, that is, Mount Zion where the Temple was situated. The trumpet, made of a ram’s or bull’s horn, was used to signal approaching danger. Its sound could fill people with fear. It was also used to summon Israel to religious gatherings. Hence it is to be the signal for the gathering of all the elect on the last day.

The coming day is a “day of darkness and gloom”, corresponding to the approach of locusts which darken the sky. The plague of locusts mentioned in chapter 1 is a kind of parable for the coming “day of the Lord”. Darkness is a common prophetic figure used of the day of the Lord and generally a metaphor for distress and suffering.

As with the locusts, the day will come:

Like blackness spread upon the mountains, a great and powerful army comes…

In some translations of this verse, the “blackness” spreads ‘like the dawn’. ‘Dawn’ usually suggests relief from gloom and the end of darkness. Here, however, it is used ironically, describing the locust infestation spreading across the land like the light of dawn, which first lights up the eastern horizon and then spreads across the whole countryside.

But an infestation of locusts is as nothing compared to “the day of the Lord”, whose like has never been seen before, and whose like will never happen again.

Despite the somewhat apocalyptic language, the words of the prophet are still applicable to our own situation. In our Church too, both priests and people have often failed in their gospel responsibilities.

There is always a time for us to repent and do some purifying penance. We are all, without a single exception, sinners. It is the humble acknowledgment of this that sets us on the way to getting closer to God and Jesus our Lord. It is understandable then, that this passage is also used during the liturgy of Lent on Ash Wednesday.

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Monday of Week 27 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 10:25-37

As we accompany Jesus firmly on his way to Jerusalem we come across this beautiful incident which is only to be found in Luke. Imagine our loss if this Gospel had not been handed down to us. What other treasures of Jesus have we in fact lost over the centuries?

We are told that a scribe approached Jesus with the intention of putting him on the defensive and perhaps making him contradict the teaching of the Law. It is not clear whether this was just a single attack or part of a conspiracy. The question sounded simple, the kind that anyone would put to a religious teacher:

What must I do to inherit eternal life?

As so often happens, Jesus throws the question back at his interrogator. In fact, as a scribe, the man should already know the answer and Jesus asks him his opinion.

He replies as a scribe might be expected to, not in his own words, but quoting two passages from the Pentateuch, from the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus which say we are to love God with all our heart and soul and our neighbour as ourselves. Jesus says in response:

You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.

However, the man is not satisfied:

…wanting to vindicate himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor”?

For him “neighbor” meant, of course, only other Jews like himself, but did it include every Jew, even those who did not follow the Law? Was he supposed to love them also?

The answer Jesus gave must have come as a surprise, not to say a shock. And it came in the form of a kind of parable. It is the story we know as the parable of the Good Samaritan. In the eyes of most Jews of the time, such a term would be a contradiction because it was about someone from Samaria. It would be like saying someone is a ‘good terrorist’.

It is most likely (for the story to have meaning) that the man who was set upon by robbers and left half dead on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho was a Jew. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho was a distance of about 30 km and involved a drop from about 800 metres above sea level to about 150 metres below sea level. It ran through rocky and desert country providing ample opportunity for hidden robbers to waylay unwitting travellers.

In the story, three people saw the injured man there. Two of them were religious people, people expected to be lovers of God and neighbour. Yet both carefully passed by on the other side. It is most likely that they were going in the opposite direction, that is, they were on their way from Jericho to Jerusalem and the Temple. The injured man would have been covered in blood. No one intending to go to pray in the Temple would dare to become contaminated and made ritually unclean by coming in contact with blood. In other words, they ignored the man for religious reasons.

But then a Samaritan came by. He was, in the eyes of the Jews, an alien and a heretic. There was strong hostility between the two neighbouring peoples on historical, geographical, racial and religious grounds. The Samaritan was regarded as a ‘half-breed’ both physically and spiritually. They were ethnically related and shared some of the Jewish beliefs, but were seen as heretics, ‘half-Jews’. We remember how surprised the Samaritan woman by the well of Jacob was when she was spoken to by Jesus, who would have been expected to ignore her.

This despised outsider, presumed to have nothing of the spirit of God’s mercy and compassion, gives the Jew lying on the ground the attention that the two other religious-minded men refuse to give. In fact, the Samaritan went to extraordinary lengths to take care of the injured man, sparing no expense. Two silver coins may not seem very much, but it represented two days’ wages and would have been enough to keep someone for up to two months in a wayside inn.

It is difficult for us, now in our time, to understand the impact that such a story would have had on the traditional Jewish listener, not to mention a scribe. In our world today, it would be something like a Palestinian fighter coming to the help of an Israeli soldier or vice versa. Perhaps you can think of examples closer to home.

The question of Jesus is interesting:

Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?

The answer of the scribe is equally interesting:

The one who showed him mercy.

The answer then to the question, “Who is my neighbour?” is not, as we learnt in our catechism, “Everybody”, though that is true. The answer of Jesus is: A neighbour is someone who shows compassion to another in need—irrespective of who the helper or the person in need may be. It is less a question of seeing every other person as my neighbour, but much more importantly, of my being actively a neighbour to others, not on the basis of their race, nationality, occupation, gender, skin colour, or beliefs, but on the basis of need. And who does not need love and compassion?

Finally, in answer to an academic, theological question, “Who is my neighbour?” Jesus tells the scribe not what or who is his neighbour, but to:

Go and do likewise.

In other words, to go and be a neighbour.

The story has a secondary lesson for us about stereotyping. For the Jews there was the negative stereotype of the Samaritan (which was probably reciprocated). Our world today is full of stereotypes. We have stereotypes of practically every race and ethnic group and skin colour, every gender and political persuasion, and they can influence our attitudes deeply and often unconsciously.

With regard to race, certainly each race can have recognisable characteristics—Jews, Italians, Irish, Germans, French, Chinese, Indians, Japanese, Africans—arising from language and traditions, but it is an irrational jump to attribute to every member of a group generalised characteristics. We can never say that “Irish are…”, or “Chinese are…”, or “Africans are…” There are too many exceptions.

Every single person has to be approached individually and there are good, bad and indifferent people to be found in every group, including our own. But they all have one thing in common: they should be confident of being helped by good neighbours in their time of need.

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