Saturday of Week 10 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 5:33-37
Today’s third example from the Sermon on the Mount is of Jesus’ ‘filling out’ the meaning of the Law based on the instruction, saying:
You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.
In the Book of Numbers we read:
When a man makes a vow to the Lord or swears an oath to bind himself by a pledge, he shall not break his word; he shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth. (Num 30:2)
Jesus goes far beyond this requirement. He simply tells us to stop making oaths altogether. The true follower of Christ does not need to take oaths or to swear on anything—however sacred—to guarantee the truth of his words. Jesus says:
Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.
The Christian should be a person of known integrity. He can be taken at his word and no further guarantee is required. It is nice to be known as such a person. Truth should be our second name.
Sometimes, of course, people may not be entitled to the whole truth. In fact, honour may require us even to sacrifice our life rather than reveal something that might put another person in danger, but we should never be guilty of positively deceiving another.
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Saturday of Week 10 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on 1 Kings 19:19-21
Immediately following the passage describing Elijah’s meeting God at Horeb (Is 19:11-16) comes today’s short passage which is actually borrowed from the Elisha cycle or tradition. Elijah has basically finished the work God had given him to do and is getting ready to hand on to his successor, Elisha.
Coming from the mountain where he had met the Lord (in the “sound of sheer silence” or “a gentle breeze” in some translations), he comes upon Elisha ploughing behind twelve oxen yoked to ploughs. Elisha himself was following the last one. It seems the other eleven were being driven by Elisha’s servants.
That number of animals and assistants indicated that Elisha was a farmer of some means, perhaps even rich by the standards of his time and place. As Elijah passed by he threw his cloak over the shoulders of Elisha. The meaning was clear. He was passing over to Elisha the prophetic vocation which had been his. The cloak represented both the person and his authority. And, in Elijah’s case, the cloak had miraculous powers which were also being passed on. Elisha immediately accepted the call and ran after Elijah. He just made one petition, namely, to go back and say a final farewell to his parents. Elijah granted his request.
Elisha went off, but at the same time, he slaughtered his pair of oxen; used the wood of his plough as fuel to roast the meat; then shared the meat with his servants. The meaning was very clear. He was ‘burning his boats’ and committing himself totally and unreservedly to his calling as God’s prophet and spokesman. Elisha’s break with his past vocation was complete. He then went off and followed Elijah as his attendant. ‘Attendant’ is the same word in Hebrew to describe Joshua’s relationship with Moses.
The story is one of a calling being passed on and being generously accepted. Elisha’s request to go back and say goodbye to his family (whom he probably never saw again) and a relatively prosperous way of life reminds us of the man who wanted to say goodbye to his family before becoming a disciple of Jesus (see Luke 10:59). Jesus said that, for a disciple of his, even that should be set aside. As Peter would say:
Look, we have left everything and followed you.
(Mark 10:28)
And indeed they had.
But Elisha did show the level of his commitment by disposing of all his property and following the Lord and his teacher, Elijah, with only the clothes on his back.
We might ask what do we still cling to in our following of Jesus? What things would we find it most difficult to let go of if we were asked? What is the level of our commitment to following Jesus right now?
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Monday of Week 10 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 5:1-12
Today we begin reading from Matthew’s Gospel and will continue to do so for several weeks to come. We begin with chapter 5 and the Sermon on the Mount.
In reading Matthew’s Gospel, we need to remember that it was directed primarily at a readership with a Jewish background, and in this it differs greatly from Mark’s Gospel. One of Matthew’s aims is to present Jesus as the new Moses, transcending, but not putting aside the law given to the Israelites by the first Moses. And as the Law of Moses is contained in what we call the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible), the law or teaching of Jesus is presented uniquely in this Gospel by five long discourses.
The first of these is the Sermon on the Mount and it consists mainly of the qualities which are expected of a follower of the new Law, and the new Moses—Jesus. It begins with what we call the Eight Beatitudes. It could be said that these have been greatly under-rated in the life of the Christian churches, Catholic and otherwise. Most people tend to see the centre of Christian living in the Ten Commandments, and yet they really belong to the Hebrew (Old) Testament; they are part of that Law which the coming of Jesus did not nullify, but transcended. They are, of course, still valid as moral guidelines, but in many ways, they fall far short of the expectations presented by Jesus in the Beatitudes.
It would seem, in fact, that Matthew is presenting the Beatitudes as taking over the role of the Commandments, and this is indicated by the prominent place they have in forming the opening of the first discourse. They are, as it were, a manifesto of Jesus’ message and his call to see the world in his way. They express the necessary attitudes of those who belong to the Kingdom. Those who have these attitudes already have entered that Kingdom.
Perhaps a few words about the ‘Kingdom’ are in order. In many ways, Matthew’s Gospel can be called ‘a Gospel of the Kingdom’. The phrase that Matthew consistently uses, however, is ‘Kingdom of heaven’. For many people this can be misleading because it causes them to think that Jesus is talking about the next life, our life in ‘heaven’. As a result, the Beatitudes are sometimes interpreted as conditions to be observed by those who want to go to heaven after they die.
This may be a serious misreading of the text. Matthew uses the term ‘Kingdom of heaven’ because, mindful of the Jewish background of his readers, he does not like to mention the name of God directly. He uses other circumlocutions in the course of his Gospel to get around using God’s name, as when he has Jesus say:
…whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven…
(Matt 16:19)
By using passive voice in the second half of the statement, he avoids mentioning the Doer—God. The other Gospels have no hesitation in talking about the ‘Kingdom of God’, and it is important to understand that is also what Matthew means.
What is this Kingdom? It is not a place. The Greek word, basileia, is an abstract word which means ‘kingship’ or ‘reign’ rather than ‘kingdom’, which suggests a territory. ‘Kingship’ or ‘reign’, on the contrary, suggests power. To belong to the Kingdom or Kingship of God, then, is to put oneself fully, consciously and deliberately under the power of God—to experience that power and be empowered by it. That power is above all the power of agape-love.
When we say in the Lord’s Prayer, “your Kingdom come”, we are not talking about a future life after death, but praying that people everywhere put themselves under the loving power of God in the here and now. That is made clear by the petition immediately following: “your will be done on earth…” Our first call as Christians is to belong to, to enter that Kingdom, and not just to be a member of the Church.
The Church is, in so far as it is faithful to the call of Christ, part of the Kingdom, but the Kingdom extends far beyond the membership of the Church. The Church is, as it were, the sacrament or visible sign of the Kingdom. There are many examples in our present time of people, who are not even Christian, who are very much full of the spirit of the Kingdom, more so perhaps than many who are baptised. An example from the past is Mahatma Gandhi, who was particularly fond of the Beatitudes and identified with them.
Today’s text begins with Jesus seeing the crowds and going up a hill. Moses, too, delivered God’s law from an elevated place, Mount Sinai. In neither case can we identify the actual mountain or hill, although traditionally, of course, there is a hill near the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee that has been called the Mount of the Beatitudes.
In the traditional way of a teacher, Jesus sits down to teach. We see him doing the same in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4:20). He is joined by his disciples, and it is not clear whether they were the primary object of his teaching, or that the crowds were also included. The teaching, of course, is directed to followers and, in particular, to those reading the Gospel.
Jesus begins the discourse with the wonderful words of the Beatitudes. There are eight of them, each one beginning with the words, “Blessed are those…” ‘Blessed’ is also translated as ‘Happy’ and is from the Greek adjective makarios which includes not only the idea of happiness, but also of good fortune, of being specially blessed. So we can also translate it as “Happy are those…” or “Fortunate are those…” It is important to realise that being a follower of Christ is intended to be a source of deep happiness and a realisation that one is truly fortunate to have discovered this vision of life.
At a first reading, the Beatitudes seem to fly in the face of commonly accepted ideals of the good life. It takes a deeper reading to see their inner truth.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
The Gospel in general shows great concern for the poor, that is, all those people who are deprived of what they rightfully need to lead a life of decent dignity. Why should the poor be particularly blessed? As people living in deprivation, obviously they are not. But in terms of the Kingdom, they are blessed because in the Kingdom, where love, compassion and justice prevail, there is no place for such inequality. The Kingdom is an environment of interlocking relationships where people take care of each other, and where the resources of all are shared according to the needs of all. The Kingdom is a place of blessings and happiness for the poor because it spells the end of their poverty. The poor are the “little ones” that Jesus speaks about as qualification for entering the Kingdom. They are the “last” who will be first. And, while ‘poverty’ in a wider sense can be applied to all, Jesus is thinking especially of the material simplicity that he expects from his disciples, a poverty which he himself experienced with “nowhere to lay his head”. Wealth can only mean depriving the needy of what they should have.
Matthew is unique in using the term “poor in spirit”, and it is a significant addition. While the Gospel in speaking of the poor is mainly and rightly concerned with the materially poor, Matthew’s phrase can broaden the concept. Because in reality, there are many other ways in which people can be deprived and regarded as poor. We are more sensitive to this in our own day with our deeper insights into psychological and sociological factors. People can, although materially well-off, be literally poor in spirit. That is, they have little spirit, very little happiness, lives of full of stress and anxiety and anger and resentment. These are all the result of our highly competitive, each-person-for-himself society, which is everything that the Kingdom is not. Taken in that sense, the Beatitude applies to a very large number of people.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
The word “meek” is variously translated as ‘gentle’, ‘lowly’ or ‘humble’. The Greek word comes from the noun prautes. The beatitude is reminiscent of a phrase in Psalm 37:
But the meek shall inherit the land
and delight themselves in abundant prosperity. (Ps 37:11)
Perhaps ‘gentle’ is the better rendering. It suggests someone who is kind and caring and not particularly assertive and dominating. In our rough and tumble society, such people normally get pushed aside and can thus be classed among the ‘lowly’ and the ‘humble’. But they are not necessarily ‘meek’, which suggests people who allow themselves to be trampled on. Rather, they belong to those who subscribe to active non-violence. That is, they will never resort to any form of violent behaviour to achieve their goals, but they are active and pro-active, not passive—or meek. We might think of a historical figure like Martin Luther King, Jr. To be ‘gentle’ in this sense requires a great inner strength and, of course, in the Kingdom there is a very desirable need for such people. It is there that they will come into their own.
In some texts this Beatitude is interchanged with the following and sometimes it is presented as an addition to the first about the “poor in spirit”, where ‘gentle’ is understood as ‘lowly’. In this case there would only be seven Beatitudes, a more biblical number.
Blessed (Happy) are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Mourning and happiness would seem to be contradictory to each other. It does not say what the mourning might be about. It could be the death of a family member or a loved one, but it could be something quite different altogether.
Again we have to see the beatitude in the context of the Kingdom. There, those who mourn—for whatever reason—can be sure of experiencing the comfort and support of their brothers and sisters. That is something that they cannot be always sure of in a world where people are too busy taking care of their own immediate interests. Mourning by itself is never a happy experience, but it can become a blessing when surrounded by the right people as their love and concern are poured out.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
‘What is right’? ‘What is just’? Righteousness, meaning ‘being just’ or ‘being right’ (it is also synonymous with ‘justice’ in some translations) is when each person is accorded what ‘belongs’ to them. A just or righteous world is a world of right relationships; in the Kingdom, that is realised. And so, those who truly hunger and thirst to see justice done in our world for every single person will see their dreams and hopes come to fruition.
It is a hunger and thirst which everyone of us should pray to have. Only when we all have that hunger and thirst will justice be achieved and the Kingdom become a reality. We have made progress over the years, but we still have a long, long way to go.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
Mercy, compassion, the ability to forgive fully—the Kingdom is a world full of mercy and forgiveness. And just as we will be ready to forgive others, we will find that others will be ready to forgive us when we fail in our responsibilities towards others. In the Lord’s Prayer, which is a prayer of the Kingdom, this is what we ask for:
…forgive us our sins because we forgive the sins of those who have offended us.
In fact, it should be impossible for those who belong to the Kingdom to be offended, and forgiveness should come easily to them. That does not mean, of course, that we condone every wrong. The question of justice always remains. But condemning wrong does not exclude healing wounds caused by the hurt which wrongdoing causes. And mercy understood as compassion is a particularly desirable quality in a Kingdom person. Such a person not only experiences pity for those who suffer, but knows how to enter into and empathise with what they are going through. This was a quality found again and again in Jesus himself.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
‘Pure’ here is not referring primarily—or solely—to sexual purity, as is sometimes thought.* The pure in heart are those whose vision is totally free of any distortion or prejudice. They see things exactly as they are. As a result, they have little difficulty in recognising the presence and the action of God in the people and the environment around them. This purity of heart, this ability to be able to see with perfect clarity, is truly a gift. It requires a high level of integrity on our part, but the rewards are enormous.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Surely this is one of the most beautiful of the beatitudes and the one we would all love to have applied to ourselves. In a world so full of divisions and conflicts of all kinds, the role of the peacemaker is so much needed. It is something we can all do, starting in our own homes, then in our working places and the wider society. It is something we can do as individuals and in groups, as parishes and churches. And, how true that, as peacemakers, we can be called “children of God”! The Letter to the Ephesians speaks beautifully of Jesus as making peace and breaking down walls between people, by his death on the cross (see Eph 2:14).
Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Most people would hardly regard being persecuted, which could involve prison, torture and death, as a source of blessedness in the context of ‘happiness’. But it is not the persecution that triggers the happiness, it is the reason why it is willingly undergone.
Right from the beginnings of the Church, as described in the Acts of the Apostles, Christians rejoiced to be found worthy to suffer with and like their Lord in the proclamation of his message and way of life. That way of life was so precious to them, such a source of meaning, that they were more than willing to give their lives to defend it.
In prison, they sang songs and prayed, as did many civil rights leaders (most of them committed Christians) in the United States who would sing “We shall overcome” as they rode the paddy wagons to jail. It is a much more painful experience to compromise with our deepest convictions in order to avoid criticism or physical suffering. They are indeed, as Jesus says, the successors to the great prophets of the Hebrew Testament. Truly happy are those, who with integrity, can stand by their convictions whatever the cost.
Some people have seen in these Beatitudes a portrait of Jesus himself, and certainly The Beatitudes should be the portrait of every Christian and of every Kingdom person. They are the charter that people everywhere (and not just Christians) are called to follow. They go far beyond what is demanded of us in the Ten Commandments. The Commandments are not so difficult to follow and, in so far as several of them are expressed in the negative (‘Thou shalt not…’), they can be observed by doing nothing! There is no way, however, that people can ever say they observe any Beatitude to the fullest. They always call us to a further and higher level.
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*From the Catechism of the Catholic Church #2518: “Pure in heart” refers to those who have attuned their intellects and wills to the demands of God’s holiness, chiefly in three areas: charity; chastity or sexual rectitude; love of truth and orthodoxy of faith.”
Thursday of Week 10 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 5:20-26
In today’s reading continuing the Sermon on the Mount, what Jesus means by saying that he has not come to abolish the old Law but to transcend it is made clear by Jesus’ giving six examples of how a number of Old Testament sayings are to be understood by his followers. In fact, he says that if we wish to be his followers and do his work, we must move forward to the deeper level of understanding he proposes:
For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
It is clear from what we see of the scribes and Pharisees in the Gospels, that for them, religious virtue consisted in the most exact external observance of every detail of Jewish Law. The more perfect the observance of the letter of the Law, they argued, the closer one was to God. Jesus challenged that understanding and it led to serious confrontations with the religious leadership.
Of course, the way of the scribes and Pharisees has its attractions. It is a much easier way to measure one’s obedience to God. And one finds the same among other religions today. Among Christians (including Catholics), one finds that there are some people who are very anxious to know whether a certain action ‘is a sin’ or not. Such an approach leads in many cases to scrupulosity and fear, finding sin even in minutiae. God becomes a menacing shadow ready to strike at the smallest wrongdoing.
When speaking of the Jewish law, the first example Jesus gives is of the commandment:
You shall not murder [kill]. (Exodus 20:13)
Jesus’ understanding of this commandment goes far beyond the actual killing of another person. He extends it even to anger and abusive language. And anger can often be totally locked inside and invisible to an outsider. Jesus says:
But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment, and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council, and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.
In other words, Jesus excludes any kind of violent behaviour towards a brother or sister, either in action, or word, or even thought.
He also links our interpersonal behaviour to our relationship to God. It is no good, then, piously bringing our offering to the altar in the Temple and presenting it to God while we are—through our own fault—in conflict with a brother or sister. We cannot separate our relationship with God and with that of a brother or sister. This will be spelt out in other parts of the Gospel. Before we make our offering, we must first be reconciled with our offended brother or sister and only then, after the injury has been healed, make our offering. Jesus also recommends early reconciliation if only to avoid greater troubles later on. It is not worth going to jail simply out of hatred or anger towards another.
All this is very relevant to us. Whenever we celebrate the Eucharist, we should recall what Jesus says in this text and put it into practice. Before we make our offering of the bread and wine, we are invited, at the beginning of the Eucharist, to confess our sins to God and to the gathered community:
I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned…
How often do we really think about what we are saying at this time?
Again, before sharing with others in the Body and Blood of the Lord, we pray:
…forgive us our sins as we forgive those who offend us…
And we are also invited to make a sign of peace with all those around us. For how can we share in the Body and Blood of the Lord if we are at enmity with a brother or sister who is a member of that same Body? But again, so often this is just an empty gesture, with very little real meaning and, for the most part, made to someone we do not even know. Let us work to put the meaning back into what can so easily degenerate into a meaningless ritual.
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Thursday of Week 10 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on 1 Kings 18:41-46 (more…)
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Friday of Week 10 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 5:27-32
In today’s reading from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus takes two more texts from the Old Testament to continue illustrating his attitude to the Law and its meaning.
One of the Ten Commandments says: “You shall not commit adultery”. Adultery is here understood as a sexual relationship between two people, at least one of whom is already married to someone else. But, for Jesus, for a man even to look at another woman with lust (he does not say whether either of them is married) is already to have violated the spirit of the commandment and the kind of relationship that he expects between people. We would need to distinguish here between a man finding a woman particularly beautiful or attractive and, on the other hand, looking on her as an object for sexual gratification. Obviously, there is nothing wrong with the former. We might also add that what is said here of men applies equally to women. If women are not mentioned it is because in ancient society the initiative for sexual activity seldom was available to the woman.
This commandment, in fact, is not primarily about sexual acts; it is about the inviolable dignity of each person. It is about the deep respect that people ought to have for their own bodies and the bodies of others. Other people cannot be used simply for one’s personal pleasure or to satisfy one’s sexual appetites—not even in the secret recesses of one’s mind and heart.
Jesus puts the situation rather graphically. He says it would be better to go physically maimed through life rather than allow oneself be led into a situation where another person could be so dishonoured. In human beings, our sexual powers have a double purpose: to express a deep and genuine love between two people, and for the procreation of new life.
Related to this, Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy (24:1): “Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a writ.” The original text reads as follows:
Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her, so he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house;she then leaves his house and goes off to become another man’s wife.
The text goes on to say that if:
…the second man dislikes her, writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house (or the second man who married her dies): her first husband, who sent her away, is not permitted to take her again to be his wife after she has been defiled, for that would be abhorrent to the Lord… (Deut 24:14)
Two things seem clear in Jesus’ time: it was men who could initiate divorce and on the flimsiest of pretexts; it was the woman who was considered guilty of adultery by marrying another man, which is why she could not be received back by her first husband.
Jesus strongly challenges both of these traditions. The Jews accepted divorce but Jesus is ruling it out. The only exception for a marriage to be dissolved is on the basis of “sexual immorality” (Greek, porneia). There is much discussion on the meaning of this term, but it seems that it refers to a special situation in Matthew’s community. Certain types of marriage between Jews were regarded as incestuous, but were allowed in the case of a Jew marrying a Gentile. But Matthew is saying that in the case of a Gentile becoming a Christian (and marrying a Jewish convert), such exceptions would not be allowed and divorce should not take place. Jesus says further that a man who marries a woman who has been divorced commits adultery.
It is important to note that Jesus is first of all putting men and women morally on an absolutely equal level. He is making the marriage contract something to be taken very seriously with grave responsibilities on both sides. This issue will come up again later (in Matthew, chapter 19) and cause some dismay among Jesus’ disciples.
In our day, the whole question of marriage and the family is fraught with serious problems. Among them are divorce and adultery, although the problems here are somewhat different from that of Jesus’ time. The kind of divorce that Jesus speaks about is of a unilateral decision by a husband who wants to be rid of his wife, often for trivial reasons. In modern society, it is more often the result of the painful breakdown of a marriage relationship. While emphasising that nowadays each case must be treated with great pastoral sensitivity, we do need to remind ourselves of the fundamental values and attitudes that Jesus is underlining in this passage.
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Friday of Week 10 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on 1 Kings 19:9,11-16
In today’s reading we have one of the most beautiful images to be found in the Old Testament. When Jezebel heard of the slaughter of the priests of Baal (at the end of Wednesday’s reading), she vowed to submit Elijah to the same fate. Elijah then fled into the wilderness. He was ready to lie down and die, but God still had work for him to do and gave him the food he needed to carry out his commission.
Our reading today opens with Elijah going to the mountain of Horeb, sheltering and hiding in a cave. Moses had done the same and had been crouching in the “hollow of the rock” when Yahweh appeared to him. It is here that God speaks to Elijah. The Lord asks:
What are you doing here, Elijah?
Elijah replies that God’s people have deserted him and torn down their altars; Elijah is the only prophet left and his life is in danger.
It is then that he is told to go and stand on the mountain in the presence of his Lord. Traditionally the Lord is especially present on the tops of mountains. We remember Moses on Mount Sinai, the mountain where Jesus delivered his Sermon, and the mountain where Jesus in glory appeared to three of his disciples. We read, too, in the Old Testament how many centres of worship were put in high places.
On the mountain, Elijah is told to await the Lord passing by, and:
…there was a great wind…but the Lord was not in the wind, and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake, and after the earthquake a fire…
In ancient times, much more than in our own, the power of wind, earthquake and fire could fill people with terror and awe as pale signs of God’s own power. With all our technology today, we are still largely helpless when these elements rage out of control. Tsunamis are dramatic examples, but so are the earthquakes, typhoons, hurricanes, cyclones, floods and droughts, lightning strikes…
On Mount Sinai, too, when Moses and the Israelites encountered Yahweh there were storms, earthquakes and lightning proclaiming the presence of the almighty Yahweh, but with Elijah on that day on the mountain, God was not in any of these. They were only the remote signs of his deeper presence.
There came “a sound of sheer silence” (in other translations, “a gentle breeze”) And Elijah immediately recognised the presence of God. The whisper of a light breeze or the sound of silence signifies that God is a spirit and that he converses intimately with his prophets. The image of a gentle breeze reminds us of the gentle breath or wind of the Spirit which, as Jesus told Nicodemus, blows where it will. It speaks most eloquently of God as spirit and of the way he penetrates quietly into the most intimate corners of our life. It is why it is so necessary for us to be sensitive to God’s loving presence at all times.
In the symbolism of the phenomena on the mountain, the Lord appears to be telling Elijah that although his servant’s indictment of Israel was a call for God to judge his people with windstorm, earthquake and fire, it was not God’s will to do so now. Elijah must return to continue God’s mission to his people and Elisha is to carry it on for another generation.
Full of awe and fully aware of the closeness of Yahweh, Elijah hides his face with his cloak (in case he might come face to face with Yahweh) and emerges from the cave. Yahweh asks him:
What are you doing here, Elijah?
It is the same question asked earlier. Elijah now has an opportunity to give a different answer from the last time, but he gives exactly the same one as before. He is full of zeal for God’s glory as he sees his fellow-Israelites breaking down the altars of God and killing the prophets. He himself is the only one left. He intimates he is calling for divine vengeance.
He seems to have missed the point of the symbols he just experienced. The Lord is not to be looked for in violent behaviour, but in the quiet inspirations of his presence.
Elijah is now given a mission – his last as a prophet. He is to go first to the wilderness near Damascus. Apparently he is to go back by way of the road east of the Dead Sea and the Jordan. He will go back to the east side of the Jordan, from which he had originally come. He is also told to anoint two kings, Hazael for Aram and Jehu for Israel (Northern Kingdom), and also Elisha as his own successor.
Jehu was a military commander under King Ahab and Joram, Ahab’s son. He was anointed king over Israel by “a man from the company of the prophets” at the instruction of Elisha, with a mandate to destroy the house of Ahab. In general, anointing was reserved for kings (earlier we saw the anointings of Saul, David and Solomon). However, here it seems to mean no more than ‘designate as chosen by God’ because the actual anointings will be done by Elijah’s successor, Elisha.
Elisha’s name means ‘God is salvation’ or ‘God saves’ and it expresses the essence of his calling. His name evokes memory of Joshua (‘The Lord saves’). And Elijah is now being given someone to finish his work just as Moses was given Joshua. Elisha will channel the covenant blessings to Israel just as Joshua brought Israel into the promised land. In the New Testament, John the Baptist (identified as Elijah) was followed by Jesus (the same name as ‘Joshua’) to complete God’s saving work.
Elisha is the “son of Shaphat” which means ‘he judges’ and is also descriptive of his mission. And he is from Abel Meholah, like Elijah, from the east side of the Jordan. And that was where John the Baptist also carried out his mission.
Even though Israel would experience divine judgement through Hazael, Jehu and Elishah, God would continue to preserve a remnant faithful to himself among the people. Hazael subsequently became a serious threat to Israel during the reigns of Joram, Jehu and Jehoahaz.
Today’s reading reminds us of those people who, in Jesus’ time, asked him for spectacular signs to prove his identity and authority. There are people today too who look for striking miracles, the spiritual equivalent, one might say, of wind, earthquakes and fire, but the Lord comes much more subtly into our lives and does so every single day.
And when he comes, he may be giving us things to do, as he did with Elijah. Let us listen for “the sound of sheer silence” and be ready for his gentle voice to whisper into our ear today. Unfortunately, we are bombarded with so much noise, much of it of our own choosing, that God finds it hard to get a word in – not to mention a whisper!
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Wednesday of Week 10 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 5:17-19
We have said that Matthew’s Gospel is primarily directed at a readership with a Jewish background. It is clear that their Jewish background and traditions were things which were not easy for Christian converts to give up. Both Paul and Matthew go out of their way to assure Jewish converts that Christianity is not a rejection of Judaism, but its natural development. It is everything that Judaism is and more.
So, in today’s passage, which continues the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus solemnly assures his readers:
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.
Jesus has come not to terminate the Law, but to bring it to a higher level. In a very rough simile, it is like the upgrading of a computer by upgrading its operating system. It is still the same computer doing the same things, only better. The vision of Jesus helps us to see the Law in a new light.
So Jesus says that the Law is still to be observed. Of course, we will see very clearly in the following days exactly what Jesus means. He is not saying that every single injunction of the Law (some of which seem very strange to us) has to be literally observed, but rather that the spirit behind those injunctions is still in force. His words are meant to console, but they are also a challenge, as we shall see. The New Law does not mean simply the addition of new elements. There is what we would call now a ‘paradigm shift’ to a Way which goes beyond laws to the Law of Love.
In our Church, too, we need to be ready to move forward creatively to new ways of understanding our faith and living it out. The traditions of the past are still valid, but we must never get bogged down in them to the extent that we do not respond to the clear signs of the times. Tradition can be understood in two ways: either as a fundamental belief that has existed from the very beginning, or simply a way of doing or understanding things which has been around for a long time.
“When will the Church stop changing?” we hear some people ask. The answer is, hopefully never. The day we close ourselves to change is the day we die, as Paul warns us in the Second Letter to the Corinthians. To quote Cardinal John Newman:
To live is to change; to be perfect is to have changed often.
Cardinal Newman knew about change. He made radical changes in his own understanding of the Christian faith, changes which he saw as unavoidable although they involved great sacrifices on his part, and led him from the Anglican to the Catholic Church.
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Wednesday of Week 10 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on 1 Kings 18:20-39
Today we have the dramatic challenge that Elijah made to the worshippers of Baal and to his own idolatrous fellow-Israelites. It will give clinching proof of who the true God is and this will finally be confirmed by the ending of the drought (tomorrow’s Ordinary Time First Reading—1 Kings 18:41-46).
The scene is on Mount Carmel, a mountain in northern Palestine near the Mediterranean coast. King Ahab, in conformity with a request from Elijah, has ordered all the Israelites to gather there together with the 450 prophets of Baal.
Elijah throws down the challenge to his people by asking them how much longer they are going to continue hopping from one leg to the other, alternating between their worship of God and of Baal and of trying to have the best of both worlds. Elijah is speaking sarcastically. In her religious ambivalence between her worship of Yahweh and of Baal, Israel is but engaging in a wild and futile religious ‘dance’. Elijah tells them to make up their minds and choose one or the other; they cannot follow two antagonistic ways of worship. He draws a sharp contrast between the worship of the Lord and that of Baal and puts out of their minds that both deities can be worshipped in some combined rituals.
Elijah now throws down the challenge—himself against the 450 priests of Baal. He is the only true prophet in Israel to stand boldly and publicly against the king and the prophets of Baal. In fact, we are told earlier in the book that Elijah was on the run. Anyone who knew where he was hiding would be executed.
The elements of the challenge are straightforward. The 450 priests of Baal will prepare an altar with a dismembered bull and Elijah will do the same. Each side will call on the name of their divinity and the one who answers by consuming the animal with fire is the true God. To this all agree.
It is not merely a matter of deciding whether Yahweh or Baal is lord of the mountain or which is the stronger, but simply which is the one, true God. Both the Lord and Baal were said to ride the thunderstorm as their divine chariot:
The Lord also thundered in the heavens,
and the Most High uttered his voice.
And he sent out his arrows and scattered them;
he flashed forth lightnings and routed them. (Ps 18:13-14)
and
…you make the clouds your chariot;
you ride on the wings of the wind… (Ps 104:3)
Elijah’s challenge is direct. His own statement, his later prayer and the people’s acclamation at the end of the reading make it clear: the uniqueness of the God of Israel is at stake.
Because of their greater numbers, Elijah told the priests of Baal to proceed first. They set up their bull on the altar and from morning to midday they called on Baal to send down fire while they danced from leg to leg (echoing the jibe against the Israelites “limping” between God and Baal). The ecstatic cultic dance was part of the pagan ritual intended to arouse the deity to perform some desired action. But nothing happened.
Elijah mocks them satirically:
Cry aloud! Surely he is a god; either he is meditating, or he has wandered away, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.
In his mocking, Elijah also reveals he is aware of the myths surrounding Baal.
The priests shout even louder and, as is common in such religions, become wild and ecstatic, slashing themselves with knives and pouring blood. Self-inflicted wounds causing blood to flow were symbolic of self-sacrifice as an extreme method of arousing the deity to action, but such mutilation of the body was strictly forbidden in the Mosaic law. As the deadline of noon passed they continued with their ecstatic and trancelike raving in which their ritual reached its climax at the time of the evening sacrifice. But the god was silent and:
…there was no voice, no answer, and no response.
Their efforts had come to nothing; their god could do nothing to help them.
It is now Elijah’s turn. He calls on the people to gather round him. Using twelve stones to represent the 12 tribes of Israel he rebuilds the altar. It is possible it had originally been built by the people of the northern tribes after the division of the kingdom (Jerusalem and the Temple were in the southern kingdom), but had been destroyed by the agents of Jezebel and the worshippers of Baal. The 12 stones represented all the tribes of Israel as God’s one people despite the political division into two kingdoms. What is about to happen concerns the whole people and not just the 10 northern tribes. The Lord had said to the people of all the tribes, “Israel shall be your name”.
Around the altar, Elijah had an enormous trench dug large enough to hold two measures of grain. Wood was placed on top of the altar and the dismembered bull on top of that. He then gave instructions for four jars of water to be poured over the sacrificial victim and over the wood. This was done three times altogether. By drenching the whole structure with water, Elijah was making the subsequent happening all the more convincing.
Then Elijah prays. His prayer is in marked contrast to the frenzied actions of the Baal priests. He calls simply on the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, thus recalling the great covenants that had been made between God and his people. In plain language, he calls on God to answer his prayer so that people will know, not who is the more powerful, but who is the one and only God. And he appeals to Israel to remember all that the Lord has done for her since the days of her forefathers.
The coming manifestation will demonstrate:
- to the prophets of Baal and to Jezebel’s entourage of foreigners, that there is no place for them in Israel where Yahweh is God; and
- to the Israelites that Yahweh is the only God, the God who wins back wayward hearts.
In immediate response to Elijah’s prayer, the Lord’s fire comes down on the altar, consumes the holocaust offering (sodden though it is with water) and totally evaporates the water in the surrounding trench. The people’s reaction is to fall down in awe and worship, repeating over and over:
The Lord indeed is God; the Lord indeed is God.
The end of the story—not recorded in our reading—is that the priests of Baal were then seized and all of them executed by having their throats cut. Hopefully, we might think now of other less drastic ways of dealing with them.
Life with our God is, in the long run, a simple and straightforward affair. There are people who try to make religion very complicated. For many, superstition and idolatry are not far away. The idols today, from which people expect great returns, are those of the consumer society, of money, fame, power and ‘success’. The god of Mammon has taken over the lives of many, and many Christians, like the Israelites in the story, try to hop uncomfortably between the two. But Jesus said that we had to make a very clear choice—it has to be one or the other:
No one can serve two masters, for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.
(Matt 6:24)
The God of the gospel simply invites us to become closely united with him in prayer and love. That is the God of Elijah and should be ours too.
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Tuesday of Week 10 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 5:13-16
We may be totally filled with the spirit of the Beatitudes, but it will not do very much good unless their effects are clearly seen in our lives. To be a Christian, it is not enough to be good; we must be seen to be so. It is not enough to ‘have a spirituality’ that fills us with a feeling of peace and tranquillity. The spirituality of the gospel is outreaching. We have not only to be disciples of Christ but also need to proclaim him.
In today’s reading from the Sermon on the Mount immediately following the Beatitudes, Jesus presents us with a number of images expressing this. Jesus first says that his followers should be “the salt of the earth”. Salt is an essential ingredient in almost all cooked food (even sweet food) to provide taste. We all know what it is like to have soup that contains no salt; we know how much part salt plays in flavouring mass-produced fast foods.
We are to be like salt; we are to give taste and zest to our environment. We do that through the specific outlook on life which we have and which we invite others to share. At their best, Christians have been very effective in doing this, and have had a great impact on the values of many societies and in bringing about great changes.
To be tasteless salt is to be next to useless. Salt that has lost its taste is fit only to be thrown out. At the same time, in the West we sometimes, too, put some salt on the side of our plate. That salt, however tasty it may be, is still not doing any good unless it is put into the food. And this is an interesting feature of salt, namely, that it blends completely with food and disappears. It cannot be seen, but it can be tasted.
That reminds us that we as Christians, if we are to have the effect of giving taste, must be totally inserted in our societies. We have to resist any temptation, as Christians, to withdraw and separate ourselves from the world. It is a temptation we can easily fall into, and there are many places where the Church is absent nowadays. There is no salt there. For example, in our commercial districts, in our industrial areas, in our entertainment and media centres, where is the visible Christian presence?
Other images used by Jesus today include being the “light of the world” or being “a city built on a hill”. There is no way it can be hidden; it sticks out like a beacon. And what is the point of lighting a candle and then covering it over with a tub? You light a candle to give light so that people can see their way and will not fall. To be baptised and to go into virtual hiding is like lighting and then covering up a candle.
Finally, Jesus gives us the reason for making ourselves so visible—so that people may see our good works. Is it in order that we can bask in their admiration and wonder? No! Rather, it is so that people will be led through us to the God who made them, who loves them and wants to lead them to himself.
It is for us today to reflect on how visible our Christian faith is to others, as individuals, as families, as members of a Christian group, as parishioners and as a diocese. Are there people or places in our area where a Christian witness is for all intents and purposes absent? Can we do anything about that?
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