Monday of Week 30 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 13:10-17
Last Saturday we saw Jesus telling people that they should not be distracted from their own obligations by getting caught up in tragedies which happened to others. Rather than wonder about the eternal salvation of others, they should pay more attention to their own situation. Today we have an example of people so busy criticising what others are doing that they are totally unaware of the emptiness in their own lives.
We are told that Jesus was teaching in a synagogue on a sabbath day. In the congregation was a woman who was suffering from what seems to be curvature of the spine for 18 years. There is a certain symbolism in the fact that she was badly stooped and was not able to stand up straight. Spiritually speaking, is that not also our problem too? So many of us are bowed down with the burdens and worries of our lives.
In fact, nearly all the healings done by Jesus can be seen as symbolic of deeper afflictions from which all of us can suffer, and even at the same time! For example, we might be deaf (we can’t hear God speaking to us), blind (we cannot see the truth or understand the Word of Jesus in the Gospel), mute (we can’t or won’t proclaim our faith), or paralysed and have other crippling afflictions (we are not able to do the things we ought to be doing). We might suffer from leprosy (we are cut off from relating with others or we cut other people off), or be possessed by evil spirits (in the grip of various compulsions and addictions).
Jesus saw the woman, called her to him and told her she was free from her affliction. Her affliction was seen as caused by an evil spirit and Jesus had liberated her. He laid his hand on her and immediately she stood up straight and began thanking God.
One might expect that everyone present would also start thanking and praising God for what had happened to the poor woman. But alas no, the chief of the synagogue was indignant that the healing had taken place on the Sabbath because medical services were not allowed on the day of rest. He said, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured and not on the Sabbath day.”
The ruler of the synagogue was not a priest. He was responsible for conducting services, inviting people to read the Scriptures and preach, and in general maintaining order. He was a layman who also had administrative duties such as taking care of the building. Normally, only one person held this post, but sometimes it could be simply an honorary position.
In a way, of course, the ruler was perfectly right. A woman who had lived with this kind of ailment for 18 years could easily have waited for just one more day to be cured. But that was not the point, as Jesus made perfectly clear. He accused the synagogue head and his like of pure hypocrisy:
Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it to water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?
They put the needs of animals before that of a human being. All the synagogue head could see was the letter of the law. He could not marvel at the healing power of Jesus and the deep compassion behind it. He could not see that he was in the presence of God’s very power.
It would be like someone at Mass criticising the brevity of a lector’s dress while being totally oblivious to the Word of God she was reading—perhaps this very text!
There is also the sinister possibility, which was the case on other similar occasions, that the woman had been put there deliberately to see whether Jesus would violate the Sabbath. It was not the Sabbath that some of the religious leaders were concerned about, but rather the gathering of evidence to convict Jesus of heresy. The story is an example of taking the beam out of our own eye before dealing with the speck in someone else’s, or of none being so blind as those who refuse to see.
In the end, we are told that Jesus’ critics were “put to shame”, while the ordinary people, often with far more insight than their religious leaders were:
…rejoicing at all the wonderful things being done by him.
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Friday of Week 30 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Romans 9:1-5
In today’s reading, Paul now moves on to a theme which causes him great pain, namely, the rejection of Jesus as Messiah by the vast majority of his fellow-Jews.
We hear people making a wholesale condemnation of the Jewish people for their rejection of Christianity, but here as in most situations, generalisations are highly inaccurate. Jesus himself and his mother were Jews. All of Jesus’ early disciples were Jews, as were all of the first converts. Even after Gentiles began to be baptised, there were still Jews becoming Christians. However, the majority were not ready to accept Jesus as the expected Messiah and, in addition, they acted in some places very strongly against the Christians, whom they saw as renegade or heretical Jews.
Speaking of his own people Paul says that:
I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.
And he emphasises that these are not just empty words when he says:
…I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience confirms it by the Holy Spirit…
Perhaps some felt he was not sincere because elsewhere he has been extremely critical of the attitude and behaviour of some Jews—both Christians and non-Christians.
But he feels so strongly for the spiritual future of his people that he is ready to be cut off entirely from Christ if this would benefit the brothers and sisters who are his own flesh and blood. Literally, he is willing to be “accursed”—an anathema—to be someone condemned and put under a ban of exclusion. And we know how intense Paul’s feelings were for Christ when he says:
…it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.
(Gal 2:20)
In his letter to the Philippians his love for Christ is so great that he does not know whether he wants to live or die. In death, he would be with his beloved Christ forever; in life, he could continue his work of helping others to know the Christ he knows and loves (see Phil 1:18).
The “brothers and sisters” who are his “own flesh and blood” are his fellow-Jews, the actual descendants of Jacob (who was also called ‘Israel’). The name ‘Israel’ was then used of the entire nation, and later of the Northern Kingdom alone after the nation was divided, with the Southern Kingdom being called Judah.
During the period preceding and later in New Testament times, Palestinian Jews used the title to indicate that they were the chosen people of God. Its use here is especially relevant because Paul is about to show that, despite Israel’s unbelief and disobedience, God’s promises to her are still valid:
They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship [of God], and the promises…
Emanating from this ancestral link, Paul lists all the privileges that came with it: their adoption as God’s children, the glory of God at times clearly evident among his people, the covenants with Abraham, with Jacob-Israel, with Moses, the worship of the one true God, the Law which expresses God’s will, the messianic promises and, finally, their physical relationship with Christ, a son of David. They have a very special place in God’s plan and it is no wonder that Paul grieves over their rejection of Jesus.
…to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Christ, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.
From the Jews came the great patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and his twelve sons, after whom the tribes of Israel are named. But above all, it is from them that Christ is physically descended in his humanity. Jesus was a Jew born of a Jewish mother. All his family were Jews and he spent his whole life, with only one or two very brief exceptions, immersed in Jewish society. He went to the Temple and attended the synagogue. At the same time, Paul reminds us that Christ above all shares God’s divine nature in one of the clearest statements of the divinity of Jesus found in the entire New Testament.
Speaking of Christ’s origins and his relationship with the Father arising from the last sentence in the reading, the Jerusalem Bible comments:
Both the context and the internal development of the sentence imply that this doxology is addressed to Christ. Paul rarely gives Jesus the title ‘God’, though cf. Tit 2:13, or addresses a doxology to him, cf. Heb 13:21, but this is because he usually keeps this title for the Father and considers the divine persons not so much with an abstract appreciation of their nature as with a concrete appreciation of their functions in the process of salvation. Moreover, he has always in mind the historical Christ in his concrete reality as God made man. For this reason he presents Christ as subordinated to the Father, not only in the work of creation, but also in that of eschatological renewal. Nevertheless, the title ‘Lord’, Kyrios, received by Christ at his resurrection, is the title given by the Septuagint [the Greek translation of the Old Testament] to Yahweh in the Old Testament. For Paul, Jesus is essentially ‘the Son of God’, his ‘own Son’, ‘the son of his love’, who belongs to the sphere of the divine by right, the sphere from which he came, being sent by God. The title ‘Son of God’ became his in a new way with the resurrection, but it was not then he received it since he pre-existed not only as prefigured in the Old Testament, but ontologically. He is the Wisdom, and the Image, by which and in which all things were created, and have been re-created, because into his own person is gathered the fullness of the godhead and of the universe. In him God has devised the whole plan of salvation, and he, no less than the Father, is its accomplishment. As the Father raises to life and judges, so does the Son raise to life and judge. In short, he is one of the three Persons enumerated in the Trinitarian formulae. (edited, text references omitted)
This Jewish tradition of which Paul speaks is a tradition which we Christians acknowledge and recognise by our constant reading of the Old Testament. In fact, we cannot fully understand Christ and the New Testament without making the Old Testament part of our tradition.
Jesus, as Matthew points out again and again, was not a turning away from Judaism, but its fulfilment. Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount:
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.
(Matt 5:17)
While we regret that many Jews still distance themselves from our faith—often, it must be emphasised, in good conscience—we must never contribute in any way to the hatred or discrimination that has been directed towards them over the centuries, not least by many who called themselves Christians, leading ultimately to the horrors of the Holocaust.
There can be no doubt that many Jews are very close to God. They are our brothers and sisters and both communities should do all they can to come closer together and share their common heritage.
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Thursday of Week 30 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Romans 8:31-39
In recent readings, having moved from the powerful forces, which keep preventing us from doing the good, we went to the firm hope of a glorious future. Paul now moves another step in reminding us of the inalienable love that God has for each one of us.
It is put dramatically right in the first paragraph:
If God is for us, who is against us?
It is clearly a rhetorical question. The form of the condition makes it clear that there is no doubt about the answer. It is a question that requires no answer for it is clear that God is always for us—one hundred percent all the time. Of course, whether we are always for him is another matter altogether. Even then he reaches out to us in love. God is love; he cannot not love.
And, if we do have any doubts, then we just have to look at Jesus:
He who did not withhold his own Son but gave him up for all of us, how will he not with him also give us everything else?
If God could sacrifice the One closest to him, the One who shares his very nature, can there be any doubt that he will give us every other good thing? The cross is the guarantee of our preciousness in God’s eyes. And God will not want to see the work begun on the cross frustrated. It is important to remember all this, especially in times of trouble.
Paul continues:
Who will bring any charge against God’s elect?
The prophet Isaiah writes:
The Lord God helps me;
therefore I have not been disgraced;
therefore I have set my face like flint,
and I know that I shall not be put to shame;
he who vindicates me is near.
Who will contend with me?….Let them confront me.
(Isaiah 50:7-8)
How could anyone accuse us, when we have on our side Christ Jesus who died as a pledge of his love for us and, more than that, was raised from the dead and now sits at the Father’s right hand pleading on our behalf?
And then there comes another rhetorical question:
Who will separate us from the love of Christ?
And he is speaking of Christ’s love for us, not our love for him. No level of hardships or distress, persecutions, lack of food and clothing, or threats of violence can negate the reality of that love. We need to remember that at this time the Christians, not least in Rome, were being faced with violent opposition and persecution. It will soon be the age of martyrs, including Peter and Paul themselves. Apart from that, Paul could speak of the long list of hardships he himself experienced in this missionary work, some of which he tells us about in his Second Letter to the Christians at Corinth (see 2 Cor 11:16-33).
Paul wants to show his readers that suffering does not separate believers from Christ, nor is it a sign of his losing interest in them, but rather it can actually carry them along toward their ultimate goal. In the eyes of their persecutors it seems like their defeat. In the eyes of pagans it must have looked like failure. But it is the martyr who lives on in people’s memories.
And Paul quotes from the Psalms:
For your sake we are being killed all day long;
we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered. (Ps 44:11)
Suffering is nothing new to God’s people and, as long as we are faithful to the call of the gospel and are committed to sharing the message with others, there will be more to come. And it is precisely the love of Christ shown on the cross that enables us to come triumphantly through all kinds of hardships.
Then affirms Paul:
…in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us.
Just as Jesus conquered by his own death in shame and degradation, we also can do the same. In fact, as Hebrews says:
Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered, and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him… (Heb 5:8-9)
It was the conquest of love. For us it must be the same.
He concludes with a rallying cry for all those who may be suffering for their faith and indeed for every one of us:
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The ‘powers’, ‘heights’ and ‘depths’ are probably the mysterious cosmic forces which to the mind of antiquity were in general hostile to mankind. None of these powers nor any other created thing whatever can come between us and God’s loving reach. There is, in other words, absolutely no force, however powerful and no happening, however terrible, which can come between us and the overwhelming love of Jesus for us.
It is a re-saying of something Paul mentioned yesterday that absolutely everything that we experience is imprinted with the loving hand of God.:
…all things work together for good for those who love God… (Rom 8:28)
And the reason is because our love of God has its source in the love of God for us—from which all love originates.
Certainly, there are times when it is difficult for us to see that. It must have been difficult for many of the martyrs of the early Church in the midst of their sufferings, and yet it is now with praise and thanksgiving that we today celebrate their glorious memory.
If we can see the hand of God in what they did and were ready to suffer, it may help us to see his loving hand in our lives too.
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Friday of Week 30 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 14:1-6
Today we enter a series of four teachings from Jesus, all connected with meals. It begins with another example of a confrontation between Jesus and some religious leaders on a Sabbath. Altogether there are seven Sabbath healings recorded in the Gospels, of which Luke mentions five. The other two are in John—the healing of the paralysed man at the Sheep Gate (see John 5:10 and following) and the healing of the man born blind (John 9:14 and following).
Jesus had apparently been invited to have a meal in a Pharisee’s house on a Sabbath day. We have mentioned before that the word ‘Pharisee’ means ‘separated one’. They numbered about 6,000 and were found all over Palestine. They taught in synagogues, saw themselves as religious paragons, and were self-appointed guardians of the Law and its observance. They regarded their interpretations of traditions to be virtually as authoritative as Scripture (see Mark 7:8-13). The scribes studied, interpreted and taught the Law, both written and oral. Most of them were also Pharisees and hence they are often paired in the Gospel.
It certainly looks as if the invitation was what is known as a ‘set up’ because, we are told, “they were watching him closely”. And there right in front of him (what a coincidence!) was a man suffering from edema, an accumulation of fluid in the body caused by some other illness (this is the only place in the original Greek of the New Testament where the term Luke uses for this sickness is found).
Far from being put on the defensive, Jesus immediately throws down a challenge:
Is it lawful to cure people on the Sabbath or not?
Strictly speaking, according to the letter of the Law as interpreted by the scribes and Pharisees present, it was not lawful. Because ‘curing’ involved medical work and it could take time and energy. By asking them his question before the healing, Jesus made it difficult for them to protest afterwards. And in fact they dared not give him an answer. To say ‘yes’ could make them seem lax in their interpretation; to say ‘no’ would seem cruel to the man.
So Jesus took the man, healed him on the spot and sent him off. He then turns to his critics with another question:
If one of you has a child or an ox that has fallen into a well, will you not immediately pull it out on a Sabbath day?
They had no answer because no answer was necessary or possible. What Jesus had done was unlawful only according to rabbinic interpretations, but not according to the Mosaic Law itself.
Their mindset was revealed and it was not the mindset of Jesus. For them, people came second to legalities. For Jesus, the law was there for people. Jesus was moved by compassion and the well-being of people. Sometimes that meant the law had to be put aside—a principle which they also recognised as proved by the examples that Jesus gave.
How many times have we become the victim of our desire for human ‘respect’—of failiing to go to the help of a person because we were afraid of what people might say or how they might judge us? They may even throw Church ‘rules’ and ‘commandments’ in our face as criticism. But no one who acts out of genuine love for others can go far wrong. No truly loving act can be sinful.
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Wednesday of Week 30 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 13:22-30
The Gospel today speaks in terms of predestination, of those who will ultimately be saved.
Jesus is steadily making his way to Jerusalem, passing through many towns and villages. It seems that at this time he is in the region of Perea, on the east side of the Jordan, on his way to Jericho and Jerusalem. He is approached by a man who wants to know if only a few will be saved. One has the feeling that he expects the answer to be ‘Yes’ and that he regards himself as being among the chosen ones.
Jesus does not answer the question directly. Rather, he implies that those who are saved are not necessarily those who regard themselves as God’s chosen ones, but those who walk a certain path in life. That path, of course, is precisely what he is proposing through his own life and teaching. It is a “narrow door”, he says, which many will not be able to enter:
Once the [Master] of the house has got up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us,’ then in reply he will say to you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’
Those on the ‘outside’ will counter by saying:
We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.
But still the Master says:
I do not know where you come from; go away from me, all you evildoers!
Jesus was often accused of eating and drinking with sinners, but it did them no good unless, as a result of their contact with him, they changed their way of living.
It is clearly not enough to be just in Christ’s company or to have heard his teaching. For example, just being a baptised Catholic or routinely fulfilling a few religious obligations (like being physically present at Sunday Mass) is not the same as really being a part of what is going on. To go in the “narrow door” is to be actively committed to living the gospel in one’s daily life.
Jesus’ next words are directed to some of the Jews, but to Christians also:
There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrown out.
They will see them enter the Kingdom, not because of their status, but because of their commitment to serving God.
On the other hand, many of Jesus’ hearers will be rejected because they relied only on their ethnic and religious origins. But that is not enough. In the meantime:
…people will come from east and west, from north and south, and take their places at the banquet in the kingdom of God.
They will see these gentile outsiders from the four corners of the earth, people they rejected and despised, going ahead of them into the Kingdom, again because these people heard the call of God and entered by the “narrow door” that leads to life.
This was already being realised in the early Church as more and more Gentiles heard the gospel message, were baptised and many died as martyrs. Jesus even says, at the end of today’s reading:
Indeed, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.
It would be wrong for us to read this Gospel as of mere historic interest—it is addressed directly to each one of us. It is vital that we, as Catholics, do not think that, simply on the basis of our membership in our Church, we are somehow on an inside track and that, if the worst came to the worst, we could always get a confession or a final anointing to set things straight. That would be very presumptuous and very dangerous on our part. We could very well be in a position to hear those terrible words:
Truly I tell you, I do not know you. (Matt 25:12)
Each day and every day of our lives we have to walk through that narrow door, that door of faith and trust and love for Jesus and our brothers and sisters. Only then will we find ourselves joining the patriarchs, the prophets and all the saints in that life of unending happiness and union with our God for which we were made.
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Thursday of Week 30 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 13:31-35
Today Jesus is warned by some Pharisees to leave the area where he is teaching. The reason they give is that Herod is after him. This is Herod Antipas, a son of Herod the Great, whom we have already met. The region of Perea was part of his territory as tetrarch. The warning could, of course, have been just a ploy on the part of the Pharisees to get rid of Jesus by frightening him in this way.
At the same time, there could have been something in the threat because Herod had already executed John the Baptist, although there is no evidence that Jesus spoke against Herod in the same way that offended Herod’s second wife.
In any case, Jesus is not moved. He knows that his life is part of a larger plan. He will do his work, including the healing of people and their liberation from evil forces. When the time is ripe, and not before, he will face his passion and death. He will “finish [his] work”—a double meaning about both the end of his life on earth and his being brought to perfection through his suffering and death—an idea explicitly put in the letter to the Hebrews (10:36-38).
Further, it has been ordained that he will face his death in Jerusalem and nowhere else. Herod is not going to change any of that.
Then, Jesus goes on to pray for the city that will be the scene of his death. It is a city that has many times in the past mistreated and killed those sent by God to bring his message. Jesus speaks tenderly:
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings…
But they reject him, as they rejected so many prophets before.
He foretells something that must have seemed to his hearers both blasphemous and impossible:
…your house [the Temple] is left to you desolate.
Yet, just 40 years after Jesus’ death, the Temple will meet its destruction, never again to be rebuilt.
Finally, he tells them that:
…you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’
This could refer to his triumphal entry into Jerusalem at the beginning of Holy Week or to his final coming as Judge and Lord of all.
Our lives too are in God’s hands and nothing will happen to us which is in conflict with God’s wishes and God’s plans. Ultimately, everything is for our well-being. But, let us be on the alert to recognise the Lord coming into our lives often in very unexpected ways and through very unexpected people. Some of those we reject may be bringing—even unknown to themselves—a message from God that we need to hear and follow.
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Tuesday of Week 30 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Romans 8:18-25
Another wonderful outburst from Paul! He has just been describing the difficulties that we face from the negative forces of our lower nature. Now he looks forward in hope not only for Christians, but for the whole of the created world.
Today’s reading is an immediate continuation of yesterday’s. At the end of that reading, Paul had said we would be regarded as:
…joint heirs with Christ, if we in fact suffer with him…
(Rom 8:17)
He begins today’s reading by saying that no matter how much we may suffer in this life, it is as nothing compared to the future glory which will be made known to us. And this is true not only for Christians, because:
…creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God…
That revelation will take place at the Final Judgement when the true followers of Jesus (including, we might say, “anonymous Christians”) will be revealed and then the rest of creation will join them in glory.
Paul’s thinking is that the material world, originally created for Man, shares his destiny. After the sin in the Garden, the material world was also cursed. Yahweh said to the Man and the Woman:
…cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life… (Gen 3:17)
The material world is now deformed, impotent and decadent. However, like man’s body, it is destined one day to be redeemed, restored and glorified. It will share the same glorious freedom of the children of God.
For many of the Greek philosophers, too, matter was seen as evil and the human spirit must be delivered from it. Especially in the form of Gnosticism, it had great influence on Christian thinking. It was a movement which the early Christians had to resist. So Paul is saying that not only are those in Christ set free and destined to share in the glory of God, but that the whole of material creation will also have this experience. The whole mystery of the Incarnation is an affirmation of the inherent goodness of all created things:
And the Word became flesh… (John 1:14)
There were some Christians who were not happy with this and wanted to reduce Christ’s humanity to mere appearance.
This “frustration” imposed on creation did not arise from creation itself, but either as the result of man’s sinful behaviour or as part of the punishment which God imposed on Man. The natural abundance of the Garden is replaced by a world which made Man have to work very hard to make his living. But just as all creation suffered because of Man’s sin, so it will be freed from its slavery to corruption and decay and brought into the same glorious freedom as the children of God.
In fact, the whole of creation, like a mother-to-be:
…has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor, and not only the creation…
But not only creation, rather:
…we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.
Although Christians, as the “first-fruits of the Spirit”, are already beginning their new life of freedom in Christ, they are waiting for the final resurrection, the final stage of their adoption, the ultimate liberation when there will be no more tears, no more pain or suffering.
We, too, even though we are blessed with the gift of the Spirit through our incorporation by baptism in the Body of Christ, also await the final liberation of our bodies when there will be no more distress or suffering. As we pray in the Third Eucharistic Prayer:
Welcome into your Kingdom…all who have left this world in your friendship. There we hope to share in your glory, when every tear will be wiped away. On that day, we shall see you, our God, as you are. We shall become like you and praise you forever through Christ our Lord.
Our link with that future is hope:
For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what one already sees?
Hope is an integral part of faith. Faith and hope are based on what cannot yet be seen. But this faith-filled hope expresses an attitude of confidence that promises will be kept. It is not just a wait-and-see attitude. On the contrary, we live our lives on the basis that what we hope for in faith is true and real.
Hope is the basis of our faith. Hope here is not a desire that something may happen. It is a conviction, arising from our total trust in God’s love, that our final liberation and the liberation of all creation is a certainty. But, as Paul reminds us at the end of today’s passage:
But if we hope for what we do not see, [yet] we wait for it with patience.
We cannot speak of hoping for something which is already within our grasp.
We do not know the how or the when, but we live in this constant trust that God will not disappoint our deepest longings. At the same time, experience—our own and that of many other committed Christians—has shown that much of what we hope for is confirmed by our living the Gospel as faithfully as we can. The signs are a sense of inner joy, consolation and peace.
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Monday of Week 30 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Romans 8:12-17
Paul continues his comparison between being “in the flesh” and being “in Christ”. He focuses today especially on baptised Christians, to whom his letter is mainly addressed.
Paul begins by repeating what he has already said about the difference between living in the “flesh” and living in the Spirit. Now that we are in Christ, there is no obligation to be ruled by our lower human nature, our sensual selves. To live that way leads to self-destruction. On the other hand, if, by the power of the Spirit of God working in us, we can overcome the habits which originate from the body, then we will truly live. By the power of the Spirit, we can nullify the pull of our lower nature and experience life in its fullness—physical, moral, social and spiritual.
Because, he says:
…all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.
Actually, the Holy Spirit is much more than one who inwardly guides; he is the very principle of a truly divine life. As Paul said of himself:
…it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.
(Gal 2:20)
He emphasises elsewhere that the whole community is the Body of the Risen Christ, in whom Christ is really present.
In a general sense, of course, God is the Father of every single person, to whom he extends his love and providential care. That is what we mean when we pray ‘Our’ Father—and that ‘our’ cannot exclude a single person. But when we identify ourselves with Christ as Lord through faith and accept his gospel message as our Way, then we become children in a special sense. Then we are children not merely by accident of birth, but by faith, thus setting up a special positive relationship.
And, as children, we:
…do not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but…a spirit of adoption.
This enables us to cry out “Abba, Father!” These words seem partly addressed to those Jewish Christians who want to bring back the Law as their way of life. To live under a law in this way is a kind of slavery and it engenders fear, an ongoing anxiety that the law is not being perfectly observed.
On the contrary, through faith, we have been adopted into the family of Christ, who is our Brother, with God as our Father. Adoption was common among the Greeks and Romans, who granted the adopted son all the privileges of a natural son, including inheritance rights. We Christians are adopted children by grace; Christ himself, however, is God’s Son by nature.
It was in the garden on the Mount of Olives that Jesus called out:
Abba, Father, for you all things are possible… (Mark 14:36)
‘Abba’ is a universal term found all over the world for a child to address his or her father with intimacy, love and affection. In English, we might say, ‘Papa’ or ‘Daddy’. The Chinese term sounds almost exactly the same as Abba—”Ah Ba”. Now we, too, can address our God in the same words and with the same feelings. For the traditional Jew or Muslim this would be unthinkable, where the name of God is held in such respect that it can hardly be mentioned. Even Matthew, in many parts of his Gospel, goes out of his way to avoid directly using the name of God.
Furthermore, Paul says:
…it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God…
When it is clear from all our behaviour that we are filled with the Spirit of God and Christ, when our spirit and the Spirit of Christ merge as one in us, then we know that we are truly his adopted children.
From this, Paul draws another conclusion:
…and if children, then heirs: heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if we in fact suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
As adopted children of God, we share also in the inheritance that comes to Jesus. We are heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. The glory that is Jesus’ will also be ours, provided we share in his suffering.
It is presumed that we accept from God all the experiences, some of which may be very painful, that may come in living our faith openly, in publicly identifying with Christ and his Way and in giving witness to the Kingdom. We are not only heirs; we need to act like heirs, with our co-heir, Jesus, as our model.
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Tuesday of Week 30 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 13:18-21
At this point Luke inserts two short parables about the Kingdom of God which Jesus is inaugurating. Let us remind ourselves briefly what we mean by the ‘Kingdom of God’. The Greek word for ‘kingdom’ is basileia, which is more accurately translated ‘kingship’ or ‘reign’. So it is a network of relationships, rather than a place, that we are talking about. The basileia of God occurs wherever people are submitting themselves to that loving power of God in their lives and in their mutual relationships, working together to bring God’s love and justice to the world.
Jesus is the symbol, the very embodiment, of the Kingdom as, through him, God’s loving power breaks into people’s lives. And, insofar as they accept him and his message, the Kingdom is being realised. In the Lord’s Prayer, we ask God that the whole world may, in this sense, come under the reign of God when we say:
…your Kingdom come; your will be done on earth as in heaven.
So today, Jesus gives two parables or images of the Kingdom. First, he compares it to a mustard seed which a man planted in his garden. The tiny seed eventually grew into a bush, large enough that birds were able to make their nests in it.
When these words were written, the Church, the agent of Jesus’ mission, was still tiny, but it had already begun to grow considerably from its beginnings with a handful of Jesus’ disciples. There is an air of hope and confidence that it will continue to grow in spite of the persecutions and setbacks it is facing and will continue to face. How amazed would those Christians be to know that the seed has since grown, not into a shrub, but into a huge tree!
In our own time, we need to keep fresh the hope and confidence of this parable. In so far as we are dedicated to truth and love, we have nothing to fear; ultimately they will and must prevail.
The second parable compares the reign of God to a small measure of yeast that a woman kneads into a batch of dough as she makes bread. In time, under the influence of the small amount of yeast, the whole batch will begin to swell and rise. In Scripture, yeast, because it is a fermenting agent, usually symbolises what is evil and corrupt, but here the emphasis is on the goodness of its growth effect.
This is an image of how the reign of God spreads through the world. It does so by being totally inserted into that world. Externally it is not seen, but its influence is felt everywhere, bringing about gradual change. As Christians, we are called to be agents (though not the only agents) of the Kingdom. We can only do this by ourselves being fully inserted in our societies, not by separating ourselves from them.* At the same time, we must keep our distinctively Christian vision just as the yeast, though invisible, remains distinct from the dough it is transforming.
If this looks like infiltration, it is! But not all infiltration is bad, not if it is driven by God’s truth, goodness and beauty. Such infiltration does not undermine but builds up and transforms.
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*Notwithstanding this, there are cloistered and contemplative communities who, while physically separated from the ‘world’, devote their time and energy to pray for our world.