Tuesday of Week 28 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 11:37-41

Jesus continues to highlight what is central to our relationship with God. We skip over a short passage which is about various aspects of light. In short, the Christian is to be a person full of light through and through—not like the kind of people Jesus now goes on to describe.

He had been invited to dinner by a Pharisee. Jesus apparently went straight into the dining area and reclined at the table prepared to eat. The Pharisee was quite shocked because Jesus had not first washed his hands before eating. Of course, we are strongly recommended to wash our hands before sitting down to eat. But here we are not dealing with a question of hygiene, but of ritual washing. Jesus had omitted to perform a religious ritual which was laid down by the stricter Jews, although not actually part of the Law. The rule probably had originally a hygienic purpose. By giving it a religious sanction, one made sure that it was carried out. Many other obligations, some of them contained in the Mosaic Law like those from Leviticus, seem to be of the same kind.

Most probably, Jesus, in the ordinary course of events, would have had no problem about performing this ritual, but it is likely that here he is deliberately making a point. It allows him to draw attention to what he sees as false religion. A person’s virtue is not to be judged by his performance or non-performance of an external rite.

As Jesus tells this man in a graphic image, the Pharisees concentrate on making sure that the outside of the cup is clean while inside it is full of all kinds of depravity and corruption (like the judgmental thoughts in this man’s mind and the sinister plotting that the Pharisees in general were directing against Jesus). God is as much, if not much more, concerned about the inside as the outside.

Instead, Jesus says:

So give as alms those things that are within and then everything will be clean for you.

When the inside is clean, there is no need to worry about the outside. Giving alms is a positive act of kindness to another person, an act of love and compassion. It neutralises the greed and rapacity of which he accuses them. It is not, like the washing of hands, a purely empty ritual which says little and is almost totally self-directed.

It is so easy to judge people, including our fellow-Catholics, by their observance or non-observance of certain Christian customs, which of themselves are of a non-moral nature. In the past, for instance, we might have criticised a woman for not wearing a hat in church, or a priest for appearing without his Roman collar. Today, some might be scandalised because a person goes to communion having had a huge meal well within the designated one hour of fasting, or for some still, eating meat on Friday, even though the ‘law’ does not require it. We need to recognize that most of the passages in the Gospels attacking the Pharisees are really directed against ‘pharisees’ in our Christian communities, not to mention the pharisee in our own hearts.

Elsewhere, Jesus has told us not to judge because it is very difficult for us to know what is going on within another person’s mind. What Jesus is really emphasising here is the inner spirit and motivation. Once that is right, everything else will be taken care of.

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Saturday of Week 28 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Romans 4:13, 16-18 (more…)

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Friday of Week 28 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Romans 4:1-8

Paul continues his theme about the gratuitousness of God’s love and salvation for us.  He uses Abraham as an example. Abraham is the father of the Jewish people, the great patriarch of the Jewish nation, the true example of a “justified” person, but he also preceded the introduction of the Mosaic Law and knew nothing of such a law.  As much of what Paul is saying is directed to his fellow Jews, his choice of Abraham, the ancestor of all God’s people, is not without significance.

Could Abraham have been “justified by works” by God merely on the basis of what he had achieved in his lifetime?  Actually, Jewish tradition, preoccupied with Abraham’s loyalty and his fortitude under trial, had made him the outstanding example of justification by works. The Jews believed his greatness was in what he achieved.  Paul agrees that Abraham certainly could have grounds for making that claim.  However, he asserts that this justification and these works have their source in Abraham’s faith.

And Paul believes that he has Scripture on his side.  He quotes from Genesis: 

Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. (Gen 15:6)

There is no mention here of his doing anything.  He was rewarded purely for his trusting faith in God.  Abraham had kept no law (it did not yet exist), rendered no service and performed no regular ritual that earned credit to his account before God.  It was his belief in God, who had made promises to him, which was credited to him as righteousness.

There are three ways in which the quotation can be understood:

1. Because of his faith, Abraham was regarded as an upright man, though in reality he was not.
2. Because of his faith, God had conferred on him an uprightness that was not his when he came to believe (but may have come later).
3. In God’s eyes faith and uprightness are so interdependent that they are really inseparable.

Only the last of these three would seem to be consistent with Paul’s teaching.  A person who has totally surrendered to Jesus and his Way in faith and trust is going to be a good and loving person, or at least, be moving inevitably in that direction.

The story of Abraham gives several examples of this faith and trust.  He was first asked to leave his homeland and go to a distant land where his descendants would live, and he did so.  Although his wife was well beyond the age for childbearing, God promised that Abraham’s descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the skies or the grains of sand on the seashore.  Abraham put his trust in the Lord’s word and he did indeed have a son, Isaac.

Then, sometime later, God—incredibly—asked Abraham to sacrifice his only son, the only legitimate heir who could give him descendants, and Abraham proceeded to do the Lord’s bidding, but once his faith was proved, God stopped him at the last minute.

When a man works, says Paul, his wages are not a gift; they are his due:

But to one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.

The man does nothing, not because he is lazy, but because he knows only God can produce results.  On the other hand, as we have said, the person full of faith will, by that very act, also be full of good works.

Paul finishes by quoting words of David (Psalm 32:1-2) applied to “those to whom God reckons righteousness apart from works”:

Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.
Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

It is as if God no longer sees or does not want to see the bad that we have done, and removes from us all guilt.  But that does not mean we can just sit back and relax. “Why worry?  I just have to say ‘I believe in the Lord Jesus’ and God covers over all my sins.”  No, on my part, I need to open my heart to that loving compassion of God that has been revealed by the pouring out of Jesus’ blood on the cross.  That has to have an effect on my behaviour.

I have to say a big and unconditional ‘Yes’ to Jesus’ invitation actively to follow him, even though it will happen only with his help all the way.  It will mean saying an equally big ‘No’ to many things which I know are in conflict with the Way of Jesus.

It is important to remember, too, that the root of the sin is not in the action, but rather in one’s relationship with God.  Once I am fully reconciled with Jesus by throwing myself at his feet in faith and sorrow, he takes me back in exactly the same way that the father of the Prodigal Son took his wayward son back. All is forgotten; healing has taken place.  The relationship is fully restored even though the effects of my act may still endure.  God only sees me as I am here and now.  And I respond to him in faith—now.

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Wednesday of Week 28 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 11:42-46

Jesus today continues to attack the attitudes of Pharisees. These remarks are not to be thought of as applying to all Pharisees, many of whom were good people. Paul himself was once a Pharisee as was Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night, and Gamaliel, who, in the Acts of the Apostles (5:34), urged caution in persecuting the disciples of Jesus. Jesus is to be seen rather attacking a certain mentality which can all too easily be among us Christians and, if we are honest, sometimes in ourselves.

Here Jesus attacks the Pharisees for their scrupulous observance of even the tiniest of regulations, not because that is wrong, but because they by-pass the love of God, which is what really matters. He attacks them for their status-seeking. The Pharisees expect people to look up to them and give them special honours because of their supposed higher level of religious observance. They expect to be given front seats in the synagogue and for people to greet them obsequiously in the streets.

Usually graves were whitewashed so that people would not walk over them by mistake. The Pharisees are like unmarked graves which people unwittingly come in contact with and thus become tainted with ritual uncleanness. In other words, people coming in contact with them are not aware that under the veneer of piety inside, they are really containers of rottenness and corruption. Elsewhere, Jesus also describes the Pharisees as whitewashed graves where the outer cleanliness conceals inner corruption.

In the past (and perhaps in some places it is still the case), the clergy have often expected similar honours to be paid to them. Very often, people willingly did so because they genuinely respected their bishop or their priest. Sometimes, however, the honours were demanded or expected, rather than graciously and humbly received. But as the saying goes, “the clerical habit does not make the monk, nor the Roman collar the priest, nor the mitre the bishop”.

At this point, “one of the experts in the law” (a scribe) objected because, in speaking like that about the Pharisees, Jesus was attacking them too, as some of the scribes were also Pharisees. But they are equally deserving of criticism because their narrow-minded interpretations about insignificant details of the law make it difficult for ordinary people to keep the law, while they themselves do nothing to help. Moreover, they add rules and regulations to the Mosaic Law, do nothing to support people in keeping them and find ways for themselves to get around them.

The Church itself over the centuries has not been above criticism in this area either. And perhaps it is still true today. Bishops and priests have often laid heavy burdens on the faithful and not given much help in carrying them. Sometimes church leaders have been more anxious to preserve traditional practices than lead people to a deeper love of Christ and each other.

But the clergy have no monopoly on this. Parents too can be guilty when they follow double standards, making one rule for themselves and another for their children. Similarly teachers with students or employers with employees may exhibit the approach: “Do as I say; don’t do as I do.” Pharisaism is indeed alive and well in our society, but the first person I need to fix is me.

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Monday of Week 28 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 11:29-32

Jesus has just said (last Saturday’s reading):

Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it! (Luke 11:28)

Now, with large crowds pressing around him, he throws out a warning which indicates that not many are hearing the word in the sense of accepting and following it:

This generation is an evil generation…

Why? Jesus says this generation is evil because it keeps asking for a sign by which he can prove his credentials. Today he says the only sign they will be given is the “sign of Jonah”.

Jonah was a sign from God to the people of Nineveh, a pagan city which heard his message, repented and was reconciled to God. Jesus too comes on a mission from God (“as the Father has sent me”) and he will find a hearing—not from many of his own people, but from Gentiles.

So, Jesus says, the “queen of the south will rise in judgement” on the present generation for she, a gentile outsider, came from a long distance to listen to the wisdom of Solomon. But Jesus, who now faces this generation, is far greater than Solomon. The “queen of the south” is the queen of Sheba, whose visit to Solomon is recorded in the First Book of Kings (1 Kgs 10:1-10).

Similarly, the people of Nineveh, the great pagan and wicked city, will stand in judgement over the present generation because:

…they repented at the proclamation of Jonah…

And now:

…something greater than Jonah is here!

But they refuse to listen to him.

There is always a danger that we take our faith for granted. Worse, we may even feel we are in a superior and safer position than others not of our faith or denomination. The fact that we carry the name ‘Catholic’ is not enough. Baptism and the reception of the other sacraments is not by itself a guarantee of our salvation. What counts is that we hear, understand, accept and assimilate the word of Jesus and carry it out at every moment of our lives.

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Wednesday of week 28 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Romans 2:1-11

Paul now turns his attention to his fellow-Jews, although he does not mention them by name. In this section, Paul sets forth principles that govern God’s judgment.  God judges:

1. according to truth,
2. according to deeds,
3. according to the light a person has.

Paul writes:

…whoever you are, when you judge others…in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.

Paul himself is aware, as he condemns others, that he is condemning himself if he behaves in the way they do:

We know that God’s judgment on those who do such things is in accordance with truth.

Nothing can take the place of personal virtue—not the Law, not circumcision, not even the Scriptures.  The Jew and the Gentile will be judged individually by God, since all are equally liable to sin. 

Paul’s teaching about judging is the same as that of Jesus, who did not condemn judging as such, but hypocritical judging or doing so behind people’s backs in a condemnatory way. Paul’s warning had special relevance for Jews, who were inclined to look down on Gentiles because of their ignorance of God’s revelation in the Old Testament and because of their immoral lives.

In fact, as we Christians need also to remember, greater knowledge brings greater responsibility and liability:

Do you imagine, whoever you are, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgment of God?

Jesus also had said:

Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. (Luke 6:37)

He spoke about seeing the speck of dust in a brother’s eye while ignoring the large piece of wood in one’s own.  (Isn’t it like that most of the time with us too?) Instead, Paul asks:

…do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

Awareness would lead them to ask forgiveness for their own sins.  The Jews sometimes had misconstrued God’s patience to be a lack of intent to pass judgement.  Their refusal to repent of their own sins is only piling up punishment for themselves on the “Day of Retribution”, when God’s just verdict will be given. For “he will repay everyone as their deeds deserve.” 

On this sentence the Jerusalem Bible expands:

“The prophecy of ‘a day of Yahweh’ which will be a day of anger and salvation, will be fulfilled eschatologically in the ‘day of the Lord’ when Christ returns in glory.  On this ‘day of judgment’ the dead man will rise again and the whole human race will be judged in God’s court and in Christ’s.  This trial is inescapable and impartial; it is conducted by God.  Through Christ God will judge ‘the living and the dead’.  He examines the heart and his trial is by fire; he will treat everyone according to his works.  What has sown will be reaped.  Angrily he will destroy evil powers and evil people.  But for the chosen, i.e. those who have been good, there will be freedom, rest, reward, salvation, honour, praise, and glory.” (Text references omitted.)

Therefore:

He will repay according to each one’s deeds: to those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life, while for those who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth but injustice, there will be wrath and fury.

This “doing good”, of course, presumes that all we do is done with the power of God in us.  There is nothing we can do by ourselves to ‘earn’ salvation.  Our good actions are the result of our saying ‘Yes’ to God in faith. On the other hand:

There will be affliction and distress for everyone who does evil, both the Jew first and the Greek…

With spiritual privilege and insight comes greater spiritual responsibility.  Similarly:

…glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, both the Jew first and the Greek.

In short:

…God shows no partiality.

These words are both a consolation and a warning to us also.  A warning because, as Christians, we cannot expect to get special treatment when we misbehave.  On the contrary, given all the help we have received and continue to receive, even more is expected of us.  (We should remember what happened to the man who hid his ‘talent’ in the ground.) 

This is a consolation because we know that God treats every single person with absolute impartiality and justice.  He reaches out exactly the same love to every single person. We also know that he is a God rich in compassion and slow to anger.  As a first step, it is important then for us to have some of that quality in ourselves and be less hasty in passing judgment on others, especially ‘outsiders’.

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Friday of Week 28 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 12:1-7

After his confrontation with the Pharisees and scribes, Jesus now turns to the crowds. We are told that they were gathering round him by the thousands, so densely packed that they were trampling on each other. Clearly they were hungry to hear a man who had spoken in such extraordinary and daring ways to their religious leaders.

But Jesus begins by speaking first to his own disciples.

Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees, that is, their hypocrisy.

The fermenting characteristic of yeast is seen by the Jews as a corrupting agent. That is why they only use unleavened bread at the Passover.

The corrupting agent in the Pharisees was their hypocrisy. On the outside they pretended to be what they were not on the inside:

Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered and nothing secret that will not become known.

It can mean that the hypocrisy of the Pharisees will ultimately be laid bare. In contrast, the followers of Jesus must practice transparency. And although much of the teaching that the disciples receive is in private, ultimately all will have to come out into the open.

The Church is not a secret society, although it has its ‘mysteries’, its special teachings and rituals, which are only fully understood by those who are ‘inside’. The Church is of its very essence evangelical. Its purpose is to share the vision of Christ with the whole world. This is crucial to the setting up of the Kingdom, the accepted reign of God in the world.

Therefore whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed from the housetops.

This, of course, will involve dangers. The gospel will be resisted; it will be seen as a dangerous threat to other views of life. Christians will die and, in fact, thousands have sacrificed their lives simply because they were followers of Jesus.

But physical death is not the worst enemy—it is the consequence of living. It is an end we will all have to face one day, sooner or later, one way or the other. But Paul says:

I will show you whom to fear: fear the one who, after killing, has authority to cast into hell.

Only God as the Supreme Judge has this power. Of course, the only person God “casts into hell” is one who has chosen to separate himself or herself definitively from God.

Hell (in Hebrew ge-hinnom meaning the ‘Valley of Hinnom’ or ge-ben-hinnom, ‘Valley of the Son of Hinnom’) refers to an area situated to the southwest of Jerusalem. In the time of the kings it had been the centre of a cult in which children were sacrificed (see 2 Kings 23:10 and Jeremiah 7:31), and hence was seen as a place of abomination. The Hebrew is transliterated into Greek as gaihenna, which appears in some translations of the New Testament as gehenna.

The punishment of sinners by fire after death first appeared in Jewish apocalyptic literature, but the name gehenna for this punishment only appears in the New Testament. The term is only used in Matthew, Mark, the Letter of James and here. The word is not to be confused with Hades, which was a general name for the place of the dead.

The one we are really to fear is the one who can make us deny Christ and all that Christ means, and to die in a state of denial. But whatever threats hang over us, we are not to fear. We have the example of many before us who have gone to their deaths in peace and without hesitation. They knew they had no other choice: either death or Truth. Jesus says:

Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

So our duty is clear: to proclaim the good news of the gospel with openness and integrity and not to fear the consequences. We are not alone.

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Thursday of Week 28 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Romans 3:21-29

In this beautiful passage we come to the very heart of Paul’s letter. Here, as in the letter to the Galatians, Paul discusses how a person is made “righteous” or is “justified” in God’s eyes: he explains that salvation comes solely through faith in Christ.

In order to understand what Paul is saying, we need to remember the context in which he spoke. In some of the Christian communities, there were Jewish Christians who were agitating for the return of the Mosaic Law as the basis for a life in and with God. They were urging that every Christian, including Gentiles, be circumcised. Paul, himself a circumcised Jew and formerly a Pharisee, is totally opposed to this movement, as it compromises his claim that salvation is through Christ alone.

He begins by conceding that the “righteousness of God” was formerly made known through the Law and the Prophets, in other words, through the whole Jewish tradition of the Old Testament. ‘Righteousness’ or ‘justice’ refers to God’s inherent goodness and infinite love extended to every single human being. In the Old Testament understanding, we are ‘just’ (righteous) when we are totally in harmony with God’s justice as revealed in the Law. But now he says, with the coming of Jesus Christ, God’s “righteousness” is to be seen in a completely new light and as no longer dependent on the Law. Now “righteousness” is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe in him as Lord and Saviour sent by the Father.

Formerly, the Jews regarded themselves as being on a different level before God because of the adherence to the Law, but now:

…there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

“Glory” has many meanings, but basically it refers to the importance of God. So to fall short of God’s glory means that we do not adequately recognise the importance of God. Although God is present to human beings and is communicating himself to them more and more, this process can reach its climax only when the importance of God is fully revealed in Jesus. He proclaims his Father’s importance in all he does and suffers, and so gives the Father the fullness of glory:

…I always do what is pleasing to him. (John 8:29)

Then comes Paul’s key sentence:

…all [Jews and Gentiles alike] who believe…are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus…

So much theological blood has been spilt over this one sentence! For our purposes we will try to keep it simple.  The key words are ‘justified’ and ‘grace’ and ‘redemption’.

For ‘justified’, other translations use ‘made righteous’.  In either case, we are speaking of being put in a state of total harmony with God, the opposite of the alienation that comes from sin.

And this happens “by his grace as a gift”.  The Greek word translated as ‘grace’ is charis.  The word means something which is given freely and is unearned or unmerited, and this is the meaning which predominates in the New Testament.  Paul uses the word to describe the way God saves us through Jesus—it is a work of spontaneous love to which none of us has any claim.  It is interesting that John uses the word agape in the same sense.  Agape is the love that pours out from God on to all his creation, and it is the love that we are called on to pass on to others:

In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
(1 John 4:10)

This is exactly the same as what Paul is saying to the Romans.

It was, then, an act of ‘grace’—an act of love emanating totally and only from God—for Jesus to come on earth, to suffer and die, for his Father to give him up as a gift to us:

…as a sacrifice of atonement…

The only condition on our part is our surrendering to him in total faith and trust. Salvation, then, is total gift: nothing good that we can do independently of God—even our dutiful performing of the works of the Law—can ‘earn’ it. God is never, ever in our debt. We see this in the scene of the two men praying in the Temple. The tax collector is bowed humbly at the back begging God’s forgiveness for his many sins; the Pharisee is standing up in front, telling God how good he has been in his keeping of the Law, with the implication that God is obliged to reward him accordingly. And it is the tax collector who goes away ‘justified’ (see Luke 18:9-14).

So Paul says:

…through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness… [i.e. his total union with the Father]

On the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), the ‘throne of mercy’ was sprinkled with the blood of a sacrificed goat.  But now the blood of Christ has done what the ancient ritual could only symbolise—purified us from sin.

We are told that God:

in his divine forbearance had passed over the sins previously committed…

This implies that total forgiveness and reconciliation were to follow, and that the complete destruction of man’s sin was accomplished through the saving death of Christ.

And the same applies “at the present time” to show how God is just and makes just everyone who has faith in Jesus as Lord and Saviour.

Then Paul says:

…what becomes of boasting? It is excluded.

He is clearly addressing those Jews in the community who are going back to strict observance of the Law as the way to God. The word Paul uses here expresses the attitude of one who boasts of their own achievements, relies on them, and claims to accomplish their supernatural destiny by their own strength. This attitude is ruled out, since one does not receive God’s acquittal by superior strength—one receives it as a gift. The act of faith excludes self-sufficiency because in it, human beings explicitly attest their radical insufficiency.

But he says:

Through what kind of law? That of works [i.e. actions]? No, rather through the law of faith.

Faith in Christ is what counts, not adherence to a set of man-made rules. And he repeats what he has already said:

For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works [behaviors or actions] prescribed by the law.

And that ‘person’ is any person: 

Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of gentiles also? Yes, of gentiles also…

There were those who believed that only the Jews were God’s Chosen People and that salvation for the Gentiles was out of the question (remember the story of Jonah we had recently).

Summing up, then, it is the “law’ of faith”, that total giving and surrendering of the self to God in Christ, that saves and not the ‘law’ of works’. Salvation is not based on self-initiated acts, but on entering into an intimate relationship with a God who reaches out in love (agape) to me and calls me to share his life. That reaching out in spontaneous love is called here ‘grace’. My good works are not the down payment by which I ‘buy’ salvation; rather they are the sign of God’s love working in and through me.

There have been various interpretations over the centuries in regard to the relationship between God and ourselves:

• One is the idea that we “get to heaven” simply by the good works we do, by “keeping the Commandments”. In this view, God owes us salvation, as an employer owes the workers their wages. In reality, this misses out on the centrality of God’s overflowing grace, and is called Pelagianism. There is a hint of this in most of us!
• Another gives the impression that good works are irrelevant—all one needs to be saved is to “call on the name of Jesus”. But a balanced view is summarised in the Letter of James (2:14-26) which says: “Faith without good works is dead”. God does not love me because I am good; I am good because God makes me good from my creation, and so I am to be a carrier of goodness to others—this is to build the Kingdom of God. By my closeness in faith to Jesus I try to live by the gospel of love. I live in the light of God’s ongoing forgiveness.
• But the ideal of “Justification by faith alone” tends to see no goodness at all in our behaviour. In this view we are irrevocably sinful and only the blood of Christ “covering over our sins” makes access to God possible. In essence, this was Luther’s solution to his own very scrupulous conscience: overwhelmed and riddled with guilt he felt that God could never forgive his sins, but hoped that Jesus the Redeemer would turn a blind eye to them. He would say that we are saved in spite of the sinfulness which remains in us, whereas the Catholic position is that we are already created in grace, and its lifelong effect is to bring our interior transformation.
• Luther’s position on ‘interiority’ led to a Christian life which makes little accommodation for what we would call an “interior” life. Classical Protestantism speaks little of spirituality; it dropped what we call the “religious life” of the monk, friar, nun. It did not include schools of prayer and contemplation, or the making of retreats. It did not recognise saints. Despite all of this, however, the lives of many Protestants are deeply penetrated by the Spirit of Christ, and they often put to shame many of us Catholics by the love and care they show for the poor and the needy.
• Some forms of extreme Protestantism focus on ‘private salvation’ and seem to lack concern for bringing God’s Kingdom on earth through the struggle for justice, freedom and peace. The focus seems rather on personal salvation. For them, the only task is that of calling on Christ in faith. With this thinking, there will also be the exclusion of what Karl Rahner called the “anonymous Christian” or the “Kingdom person”, that is, someone who, though not aware of the Christian message, leads a life which reflects the deepest attitudes of truth, love, justice, community sharing, respect for the dignity and equality of every individual. But these are the values for which Jesus lived and died.
• It is gratifying to know that in recent times Catholics and Lutherans (as well as other Protestant groups) have come together in dialogue and, freed from the polemics of an earlier time, have learnt that there is really not so much disagreement as before over the understanding of Paul’s words. Many churches, too, have been taking back features of the Roman church whose absence were a loss to their Christian life.

On our part, we Catholics are getting a richer concept of faith which, in the past, was often identified with the intellectual acceptance of the Church’s doctrines and an obsession with orthodoxy as the test of a “good” Catholic. We are becoming more aware that faith as trust and surrender to a loving Christ is of primary importance. The Latin word credo literally means ‘I give my heart to’. In praying the Creed we ‘give our hearts to God.’

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Tuesday of Week 28 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Romans 1:16-25

In today’s reading, Paul begins:

…I am not ashamed of the gospel…

Paul says this because his is a message that meets with a lot of opposition and ridicule. But he continues:

…it is God’s saving power for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek….The one who is righteous will live by faith.

This also expresses the theme of the whole Letter. In speaking of shame, perhaps he is thinking of his coming journey to Rome, the capital of a whole empire, with all its pagan sophistication.  There were many other places where his message was ridiculed, such as Athens and Ephesus, to give just two examples. Right at the beginning he uses the word “faith”, the understanding of which is at the centre of his whole message. 

The characteristics of Christian faith, as presented in the New Testament, may be listed as follows:

• A response of the human being to God as Truth and Goodness;
• The one source of salvation.

Faith requires belief in the Son and the kerygma or proclamation made by the Apostles, which says that God raised Jesus from the dead, made him Kyrios (Lord) and through him offers life to all who believe in him.

Faith is a necessary condition for salvation. It is not only intellectual assent, but includes trusting and obeying the life-giving Truth. It is a reliance on God and not on self. As such, it is in contrast with the old order of the Law and its vain search for holiness by works.

Only faith can bring about true holiness. In so far as faith is related to the promise made to Abraham, it makes salvation accessible to all, pagans included. When coupled with baptism, faith calls for public profession, and expresses itself in love (agape). Faith is supported by hope and must be allowed to grow amid struggles and sufferings, demanding fortitude and tenacity right up to the vision and possession of God.

Because Paul sees the gospel as “God’s eternal power”, it brings salvation, wholeness and life to all who accept it, Jews and Gentiles alike.  This is something he has personally experienced. 

The gospel reveals the ‘justice’ of God, his inner truth and goodness and harmony which we are invited to share.  The key to reaching it is faith: the acceptance of the truth of the message and a total commitment in trust to basing our lives on the message and its Messenger.

Salvation comes to “the Jew first”.  In the actual development of salvation history the Jews come first.  In John’s Gospel Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that:

…salvation is from the Jews… (John 4:22)

Jesus, the Messiah, was himself a Jew.  Paul said that:

…the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God.
(Rom 3:2)

The covenants, Law, Temple worship, revelation of the divine glory, and the Messianic prophecies came first to the Jews.   These privileges, however, were not extended to the Jews because of their superior merit or because of God’s partiality towards them. It was necessary that the invasion of this world by the gospel begin at a particular point with a particular people, who in turn were responsible to carry that gospel to the other nations. And Paul is not ashamed of the gospel:

For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith, as it is written, “The one who is righteous will live by faith.”

“Righteousness” here is not the justice of giving someone what belongs to them, but speaks rather of the inner goodness of God, who extends his promise of salvation to all as a free gift.  But the experience of this justice requires a faith and trust in God as Lord of one’s life.

Paul now moves on to consider the fate of those unbelievers who totally reject God:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of those who by their injustice suppress the truth.

In developing the theme of righteousness and justice from God, Paul sets the stage by showing that all have sinned and therefore need the righteousness that only God can provide.  He shows the sin of the Gentiles and the sin of the Jews and then summarises the sin of all—Gentile and Jew alike. He begins by saying that no one—not even one who has never heard of the Scripture or of Christ—has an excuse for not honouring God, because the whole created world reveals him. 

The “wrath of God” is not a petulant, irrational burst, such as humans often exhibit, but a holy, just revulsion against what is contrary to and opposes his holy nature and will.  This ‘wrath’ is being revealed now in the wicked becoming the victims of their own evil acts.  By their behaviour they “suppress the truth”.  That is, they block the truth about God which is so clearly evident in our created world:

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. Ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been seen and understood through the things God has made.

Reason alone, by observing the beauty of creation all around, can easily bring us to an awareness of the Source of all these things. 

As the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, whom we have cited numerous times before, said:

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”

This sentiment has been repeated by poets and artists all down the centuries and in every culture. Hence, as Paul says:

…they are without excuse, for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless hearts were darkened.

An awareness of a Creator being responsible for such Truth, Goodness and Beauty naturally leads to forms of praise and thanks and worship. We give thanks for many earthly blessings such as sun, rain and crops and we offer prayers of petition when these things are lacking.

Again, this is a phenomenon found in some form in every human culture. Instead:

Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.

The glory of God in nature was replaced by the making of all kinds of images—the likeness of humans, birds, animals, reptiles and other living or non-living things. Even the sophisticated Greeks and Romans, with all their enlightened philosophies, indulged in such idolatries and superstitions.

The result of such behaviour was that:

God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.

The pagan temples all over the Near East and the Mediterranean were notorious for the sexual indulgences and perversions which were widely practiced.  In Paul’s letters we read how even Christians were tempted and often fell. The traditional biblical phrase “God abandoned”, or “left them”, used three times for emphasis, means that religious error, if blameworthy, results in moral and social ills.  Sin produces its own consequences and its own punishment. 

Though Paul judges and condemns pagan society, he does not condemn individuals (whose intentions God alone must judge) since he presupposes that there are pagans who obey the natural law written in their hearts. What so many of the Gentiles did was to exchange God’s truth for a lie, because they worshipped and served a creature instead of the Creator.

We have been blessed with the revelation of God which has come to us through the Scriptures and especially through Jesus Christ, the Word of God, and his Church.  Even so, we too can profit by seeking and finding God’s active presence in the world in which we live and spend our days. 

We live, as the Jesuit writer Teilhard de Chardin wrote, in a “divine milieu”, an environment where every single thing we come in contact with is touched by God.  And there is the beautiful phrase from the Jesuit Jean Pierre de Caussade, describing our celebrating: “The sacrament of the present moment”—where every single moment of every day is a sign of God’s presence and love. We are never alone.

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Monday of Week 28 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Romans 1:1-7

Today we return to the New Testament and begin reading Paul’s Letter to the Romans.  This is one of the most important of his letters and one of the key books of the New Testament.  It is listed first among the Pauline letters not only because of its importance, but because it is also the longest (the Pauline letters are listed according to their length and not in chronological order). 

We will spend the whole of the next four weeks on this letter, up to the end of Week 31. The letter seems to have been written in Corinth or nearby Cenchrea (in southern Greece) about the year 57 AD.  By this time, the Christians in Rome were mainly Gentile with Jewish Christians in a minority.

Apparently, Paul was planning a missionary journey to Spain (then a Roman colony) with the intention of using Rome as his headquarters.  He had not yet been to Rome, but must have been informed about the Christian situation there and he must have been known to them. The principal theme of the Letter is the relationship between Christianity and Judaism, a question which is also dealt with in the Letter to the Galatians.  While there is a more urgent tone in the Galatian letter, the Letter to the Romans treats the question in a more measured way. 

Paul was a strong advocate of the freedom from the Law which Christianity brought, and constantly opposed the efforts of some Jewish Christians to re-impose the requirements of the Law, including circumcision.  It is under this heading that the great issue of “justification by faith” is discussed and whose interpretation became the great dividing issue during the Reformation.

In the usual way of the time, the letter begins with greetings—with Paul identifying himself and the church to which he is writing.  But as is usual with Paul, his words are always much more than the banalities that normally accompany the beginnings of letters (including our own).  The very opening words are almost a battle cry: 

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God…

• As a “servant” (Greek, doulos)—The word literally means a ‘slave’, someone who belongs completely to his owner, but it also means ‘servant’, someone who willingly chooses to serve a master.
• As someone “called to be an apostle”—The word ‘apostle’ means someone sent on a special mission. It is used in the Gospel narratives for the Twelve followers Jesus chose to continue his mission.  Paul regarded himself as an Apostle because, like the Twelve, he had seen the risen Christ (on the road to Damascus), and had been given a special mission to bring the gospel to the Gentiles.
• As someone “set apart for the gospel”—His mission was not something he had decided on himself.  Jesus had specially chosen him for a special mission to proclaim the gospel of the Kingdom.  Every one of us is called in this way.  How would I describe my vocation?

In a way, every baptised Christian can say the same in some degree. We are all servants of Jesus, putting ourselves totally at his disposal for his work.  We are all called to be apostles, in the sense that each of us has a mission in our own particular way to proclaim the gospel message. We have all been set apart for the gospel of God, that is, the euanggelion, or “good news” that God brings to the world through Jesus Christ and through each one of his members.  How would I describe my unique vocation?  In what way can I share the gospel with others?

It is interesting that Paul uses the word “gospel” because the four Gospels in the form in which we know them were not yet in existence.  But the idea was already present.  The ‘Good News’ about Jesus was already being proclaimed.  It is a gospel, as Paul implies, which did not just drop out of the sky, but which had long been prepared for by the prophets and teachers of the Hebrew Testament (remember the words of Jesus to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus as he explained the Old Testament to them). In his opening greeting Paul often adds in his own Christian point of view and even anticipates some of the themes of his letter.  In Romans, these themes are:

• God’s freedom to choose his people;
• the connection between faith and being made ‘holy’;
• salvation through Christ’s death and resurrection;
• the harmony of the two Testaments—the Old and the New.

He now describes the gospel he is going to write about:

…the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord…

Here we have the elements of the Incarnation described and the link between Old and New Testaments.

In human terms, Jesus was born a descendant of David, but because God raised him to life through the Holy Spirit, Christ is established in glory as Lord (Kyrios), and meriting in virtue of his work as Messiah-Redeemer King the name he had from all time—the “Son of God”.

And it is through Jesus Christ that:

…we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the gentiles for the sake of his name…

To be with and under Christ is both a ‘grace’, a totally unmerited gift, and a responsibility to be partners with Jesus in bringing peoples everywhere to faith and personal commitment to Christ and the gospel he proclaims.  This is where life in its truest form is to be found.

The Christians of Rome, to whom Paul is writing, are included among these ‘graced’ ones called to live and proclaim the gospel because:

…for the sake of his name…you who are called…belong to Jesus Christ…

Our mission, too, is to spread his name to all those who do not know him, inviting them to submit themselves in faith and trust to Jesus as Lord, as the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Then there comes the end of the initial salutation:

To all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

In calling them God’s “beloved” people and “called to be saints”, he is saying that they are ‘holy’, not that they are ready for canonisation.  The word ‘holy’ (hagios) really means ‘set apart’ and is applied to the Christians in general.  All Christians are ‘saints’ in that they are ‘set apart’ by God and are experientially being made increasingly holy by the Holy Spirit working in them.  This ‘setting apart’ is not to be understood as removing themselves from surrounding society; on the contrary they are to be fully inserted in society as Jesus was. 

Only in this way can they be the “salt of the earth” or “the yeast in the dough” or “the light of the world”. And Paul wishes them “grace” and “peace”—grace and peace that only God and his Son can give.  “Grace” can be understood as the tangible experience of God’s love in my life and “peace” is that inner sense of wholeness and harmony with God, with other people, with oneself and one’s whole environment. Could one have more precious gifts or could one wish more precious gifts on another person?

Let us remember today our calling as servants, as apostles and as a people set apart for a very special work, witnessing to Christ and his gospel through the particular circumstances of our lives.

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