Saturday of Week 11 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 6:24-34

Today we continue with Jesus’ teaching on our attitude to material and visible things. We have to make a choice between the vision of life that Jesus offers or a preoccupation with money and possessions. They are not compatible. They involve conflicting goals in life and different visions of what is most important in life. The truly materialistic person may have a veneer of Christian practice, but cannot be a really committed Christian and vice versa.

Jesus preaches what St Ignatius Loyola calls ‘indifference’ to material things. Obviously some material things—like food and clothing and shelter—are necessary to daily living. At different times other things will be necessary too.

The attitude of ‘indifference’ is not that one does not care; on the contrary, one cares very much. But one cares to have things and to use things only in so far as they are needed to love and serve God and others for his sake. Jesus urges us to liberate ourselves from worry and anxiety about our body and material things such as food and clothing.

To be concerned about food because right now I am very hungry and do not have any is very different from worrying whether I will have food next month; to be anxious about what is happening when I am in intensive care is very different from wondering how long my health will hold up in the coming years; to be fretting because I have no money to pay my rent with the landlord knocking at the door is very different from wondering whether I will ever be rich.

Worry and anxiety about the future are a waste of time and energy yet we indulge in them so much. We are invited to:

Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

Likewise, the flowers in the field—they do nothing except be themselves and God takes care of them. And how beautiful they are! When their time comes they pass away.

We are often so busy regretting the past or worrying about the future that we never get to enjoy life. Enjoyment and happiness are only in the present—nowhere else. If we keep looking forward or looking back we will never find happiness. And yet it is right here in our grasp at every moment of every day. As Jesuit Fr Tony de Mello has written:

“You have everything you need right now to be happy.”

How our lives would be transformed if only we could really believe that! Because happiness can only be in the now. Yesterday’s happiness is gone; tomorrow’s does not exist. If I am not happy now, I never will be.

So to follow the advice of Jesus today:

…do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

God is in the here and now and nowhere else. He is always available.

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Friday of Week 11 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 6:19-23

This short passage contains two related teachings. The first may be seen as a commentary on the petition in the Lord’s Prayer:

Give us this day our daily bread…

It is a teaching about the things which are really valuable, which really count. We live in a highly materialistic world where a very large number of people seem to believe that material wealth is the solution to every problem. There is nothing that money cannot buy—no problem it cannot solve. This belief prevails even though every day it is shown to be false.

Jesus urges us to put our trust and our security in something less perishable, something more lasting. To ‘store up treasure in heaven’ is not just to pile up a whole lot of ‘good works’ which will be to our credit in the next life. That credit too can be very quickly lost. It is much more a question of growing more and more into the kind of person who is steeped in the values and the outlook of the gospel. It is less a question of doing than of becoming. We also build treasure by what we give away, by sharing with others whatever gifts we have, especially those most in need.

Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me. (Matt 25:40)

And, as Jesus so wisely says:

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Obviously, the questions for me to ask today are: Where is my treasure? What do I value most in life? And how do I reveal that in the way I live?

And that brings us to the second part:

The eye is the lamp of the body.

It is that light which we need in order to have a clear vision of what is most valuable in our lives. The person who cannot see beyond money, status, power, or fame is truly in darkness. Life is not about getting these things. Life is about who we are; it is about love and relationships.

Let us pray today for vision and light to be able to discern what are the real treasures, the most precious things of human living. In that way, our life truly becomes a Christian life.

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Thursday of Week 11 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 6:7-15

Into yesterday’s passage on how we are to worship God through prayer, alms and fasting, Matthew places a related piece of teaching on how we ought to pray. This clearly seems to be an insertion, and today we deal with it separately.

Jesus tells his disciples not to pray like many of the Gentiles. They go in for long prayers, hoping that eventually God will hear them. That is quite unnecessary, Jesus says, because our Father already knows our needs before we ask. If that is the case, why then should we bother praying at all? We do not pray to tell God what he already knows—we pray so that we will realise more deeply our own needs and our total dependence on him.

Jesus then goes on and tells his disciples how they should pray. He teaches them, in effect, what we now call the Lord’s Prayer, or the ‘Our Father’. We have become accustomed to reciting this prayer very often—at every Mass, as well as whenever we say the Rosary and at many other times.

The prayer in this form (Luke has a shorter version) contains seven petitions. Seven is a favourite number for Matthew. In listing the genealogy of Jesus he divides it into three lists of seven (chapter 1 of his Gospel); there were probably seven Beatitudes in the original text (chap 5); there are seven parables of the Kingdom (chap 13); forgiveness is to be offered not seven times, but 77 times (chap 18); and there are seven ‘Woes’ when denouncing the Pharisees (chap 23). Finally, the Gospel itself is divided into seven main sections (Infancy, five discourses, Passion).

The text of the Lord’s Prayer should not be seen as just a formula for vocal recitation. It is, rather, a series of statements and petitions in which we affirm our relationship with God, with the people around us and with the world in general. It is a statement of faith and it is, as we shall see, a highly challenging and, therefore, even rather dangerous prayer.

Let us take a brief look at the petitions one by one.

Our Father
The challenge and the danger begin right in the first two words. We address God as Father, the source of life and of everything that we have; we have nothing purely of our own. But God is not just ‘Father’; he is ‘our‘ Father. And that ‘our’ includes every single person who lives or has ever lived on this earth; not a single person can be excluded.

In addressing God as ‘our Father’ we are acknowledging that every human person (every one of us) is a child of God, and therefore, that we all belong to one huge family where we are all, in a very real way, brothers and sisters to each other. There is no room here for rejection, or hatred, or prejudice or contempt of any kind based on race, nationality, colour of skin, gender, sexual orientation, social class, religion or anything else. If I am not prepared to accept every single person as a brother or sister, I will have problems even beginning to say this prayer.

May your name be revered as holy
Other forms are ‘Hallowed be thy name’ or ‘Holy be your name’. Of course, God’s name is holy no matter what we say or think. We make this prayer more for our sake rather than for his. Here we are praying that God’s name be held in the deepest respect by people everywhere. That is sadly not the case. Some people despise his name and others do not even know it. We pray that the whole world will know God’s name, which is to say, to know and recognise God as their God and Lord, their Creator and Conserver and the final end of their lives on this earth. It is, in fact, another form of the next petition.

Your Kingdom come
We have already spoken about the nature of the Kingdom. It might be more accurate to say, ‘Your kingship come’. In other words, we pray that every person in our world may put themselves consciously and willingly under the kingship and lordship and the love of God. We do this, above all, by our working together to make this world the kind of place that God wants it to be—a place of truth and love, of justice and peace, of sharing and caring. In one sense, of course, God is Lord irrespective of our relationship to him. But it is clearly his will that people, on their part, should accept that loving lordship as the centre of their lives. And that is the work of the Church and of every single Christian, indeed of every person anywhere—to help people recognise the kingship and lordship of God and to accept it as the key to their present and future happiness.

Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven
This, in a way, is simply another way of saying what we have already asked for in the previous two petitions—it is the will of God that people everywhere recognise the holiness of his name and submit themselves gladly to his kingship and lordship in our world. We do that most effectively by identifying totally with the mission and work of Jesus to bring life, healing and wholeness to our world. To do the will of God is not simply to throw aside what we want and accept God’s will even when it is totally contrary to our own. We are only fully doing God’s will when we can see clearly that what he wants is always what is the very best for us. And we are only fully doing his will when we fully want what he wants, when our will and his will are in perfect harmony. Then we do what he wants and we do what we want. We are praying here to reach that level of oneness.

Give us today our daily bread
While it does not look like it, this also is a highly dangerous prayer for us to make. First of all, we are only asking for what we need now. Later in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus will tell us not to be anxious about the future. We are asking for what we need today; tomorrow is another day. We take care of one day at a time.

But there is one little word here that is highly dangerous. It is the word ‘us’. Who is that ‘us’? Just me and my immediate family? Or my parish? Or my neighbourhood or my town or my country? Surely it is the same as that ‘our’ in the first petition—it includes every single person. I am praying, therefore, that every single person have bread to eat today. We know, of course, that there are millions of people (some of them in wealthy countries) who do not have enough to eat, or who suffer from malnutrition and poorly balanced diets. In praying that all of ‘us’ have our daily bread, are we expecting God to drop manna from the skies or are we not reminding ourselves that the feeding of brothers and sisters is our responsibility? If people are hungry or badly fed, it is not God’s doing. Human beings are directly responsible for this in most cases (outside of natural disasters).

This petition prayer can also include the Bread of the Eucharist. But in sharing that Bread together we are saying sacramentally that we are a sharing people and we will share our goods and blessings with others, especially those in need. Otherwise our Eucharist becomes a kind of sacrilege.

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors
Again, is this not another dangerous prayer to make? We are asking that God’s forgiveness to us be conditional on our readiness to forgive those we perceive to have hurt us in some way. That is a daring thing to do. And forgiveness does not simply mean uttering a few words. Forgiveness in the Scripture always includes an attempt at reconciliation between offender and offended. But even if reconciliation is not achieved, we can still forgive.

We can go even further and say that the fully Christian person is never offended—or even more, cannot be offended. The true Christian has a rock solid sense of their own security and their own inner worth which no other person can take away. When such a person is the recipient of some attack, be it verbal or physical, their first response is to reach out to the attacker with concern and sympathy. It is the attacker who has the problem, not the one attacked. Most of us have a long way to go to reach that level of inner peace. If what you say about me is true, I accept it; if it is false, then it is false. Why should I take offence?

And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one (or from evil)
In the end, we acknowledge our weaknesses and our total dependence on God’s help. We pray that we will not find ourselves in a situation where we fall seriously. We ask to be protected from the powers of evil with which we are surrounded.

Some texts conclude with:

For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen

This prayer is used by many Christian denominations and has now been included in the Catholic Eucharist after the Lord’s Prayer, but separated by a prayer for peace. It is believed that this conclusion, not found in most Bible manuscripts, was introduced for liturgical reasons.

Finally, in addition to simply reciting this prayer in the rapid way we normally do, we could sometimes take it very slowly, one petition at a time and let its meaning sink in. Or we could just take one petition which is particularly meaningful to us at any time and just stay with it until it really becomes part of us.

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Wednesday of Week 11 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 6:1-6,16-18

We move today to a different theme, namely, the way in which we are to pay our worship to God. Jesus’ teaching is based on the three basic acts of religion expected of a devout Jew—almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. In each case, Jesus warns his disciples not to indulge in any form of ostentation so as to attract the admiration of others.

He presents exaggerated images of how we should not do things in the way of ostentatious hypocrites. He speaks about people who blow trumpets in the streets to draw the attention of everyone when they give alms to the poor. He speaks about hypocrites who say their prayers in the most conspicuous places so that people will marvel at how holy they are. He speaks about people putting on gloomy and drawn looks so that everyone will know that they are fasting. In fact, Jews were only expected to fast on one day in the year—on the Day of Atonement, but the practice of regular fasting had become more common in Jesus’ time.

All this, Jesus says, is not worship of God, but a kind of self-advertisement. Such people, he says, get their reward, namely, the admiration of the onlooker, but it is not the reward that comes from acts of genuine worship.

When his disciples pray or fast or give alms they should do it in such a way that their actions will be directed entirely to God and not to themselves. We do remember earlier in the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus said people should be able to see the good works of his disciples, but then the purpose was not that they would be praised, but that people would be led to glorify God.

It should also be pointed out that Jesus’ recommendation that we pray in private where only God can see us shouldn’t be interpreted as meaning that it is not necessary for us to take part in forms of community prayer—which Jesus himself would have done whenever he attended the synagogue or went to the Temple. It would be a gross misreading of this text to argue, as people sometimes are heard to do, that it is not necessary to attend Sunday Mass because “I can pray equally well in the privacy of my home”. To speak in such a way is to misunderstand completely the essentially communal nature of the Eucharistic celebration.

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Tuesday of Week 11 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 5:43-48

We come to the last of the six examples that Jesus gave in his Sermon on the Mount as illustrations of how he brings the teaching of the Law to a higher and more perfect plane. In today’s Gospel, Jesus says to his disciples:

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’

This saying is not found as such in the Hebrew Testament. Rather we find in the book of Leviticus that it says:

You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself… (Lev 19:18)

The wording here would seem to condone, however, acts of revenge against strangers and outsiders. And in practice, as indeed is the case in many communities throughout the world, the saying of Jesus reflects the way many people feel is a justified way of acting. And as we saw earlier on where Jesus spoke about anger, at least limited revenge was condoned in the phrase “an eye for an eye”.

Again, Jesus turns things on their head with a saying which many people would find quite unrealistic, if not downright stupid. He tells us actually to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. How can we be asked to do such a thing?

Yet, if we would only reflect a little, the advice of Jesus makes a great deal of sense and, in fact, is really the only way to go for our own happiness and peace. Otherwise, as Jesus says, his listeners were no different from “tax collectors”, a group who, because they worked for the occupying power, were held in special contempt—or pagans, that is, people who lived godless lives.

To understand what Jesus is saying we need to clarify two words, ‘love’ and ‘enemies’. Who are our enemies? They can be either the people that we are hostile towards, or the people who are hostile to us.

The practising Christian who takes on board the teaching of Jesus will want to have positive attitudes to people in general, and will not marginalise anyone on the basis of race, nationality, colour, class, gender or other personal characteristics. Such a person will not want to act in a way to create hostility in others unnecessarily.

However, simply because we try to look and act positively towards others is no guarantee that they will act in the same way towards us. Through no objective fault of our own, we may become the object of their dislike, resentment, hatred, jealousy, anger and even violence. These are our enemies, and we are to love them.

But what does ‘love’ mean here? The word that the Gospel uses is a verb from the Greek noun agape. Agape is a unilateral way of loving by which, irrespective of the actions or attitudes of another person, I desire their well-being. It is the love which God extends to every one of his creatures, irrespective of how they respond to him. In this it is quite different from the love which involves sharing, intimacy, affection and a strong element of mutual giving.

We are not being asked to love our enemies with the love of affection—to be ‘in love’ with them, or even to be fond of them. That would not make sense and they would not want it. But we are asked to reach out and desire their well-being. This can be done when we focus our attention and our concern more on them than on ourselves.

When we are the objects of other people’s hostility we tend to go on the defensive and to generate negative attitudes towards the other. Our inner security (or insecurity) is under attack. Instead, Jesus is asking us to respond to the real situation rather than to react to spontaneous feelings.

When someone hates me, attacks me or is angry with me for no reason that I can think of, instead of feeling sorry for myself, I can choose to ask, “What is wrong with that person? Why is that person acting in that way? What is bothering that person? Is there any way I can help to dissolve this person’s negative behaviour, which is probably a sign of some inner self-hating or insecurity on their part?”

And certainly when I begin to think in this way, it becomes perfectly natural to pray for that person, to pray for their inner healing, for a restoration of peace and inner security. To hate someone who hates me, to be violent with someone who is violent with me, simply means that there are twice as many problems as there were at the beginning. By responding in the way that Jesus suggests, we end up with no problem at all!

And Jesus gives us another motive for acting in this way—it is the way God himself acts. He causes the hot, merciless sun to shine on the good as well as the bad; the cool, refreshing rain falls equally on the bad as well as the good. What Jesus is saying is that God’s love, his agape, reaches out indiscriminately to every single person, irrespective of their behaviour. The passage ends with Jesus saying:

Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Perfection here refers to that unconditional agape love that God extends to every single person. If we are to grow into the likeness of God and give witness to his presence in the world, we need to act in exactly the same way. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world if people followed Jesus’ advice? Far from being impractical, it is the only way to go.

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Monday of Week 11 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 5:38-42

We continue Jesus’ interpretations of some commands of the Mosaic Law as he pushes that law to a higher level of understanding. The saying from the Old Testament, “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” is not, as it may seem to be saying, an encouragement to take revenge. It is part of what is known as the lex talionis (the principle of reciprocal justice), by which punishment for an assault was to be restricted to not more than the suffering experienced. The passage in Exodus says:

If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. (Ex 21:23-25)

Jesus calls for a very different kind of response. He tells us to offer the “evildoer” no resistance. He makes the famous recommendation to turn the other cheek. As well:

…if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, give your coat as well, and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to the one who asks of you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.

It is unsurprising that even in Christian circles not a great deal of time is given to this text. Is it to be taken literally? Are we really to allow people to walk over us and offer no resistance at all?

I think the answer is both yes and no. For many in our modern world, turning the other cheek seems the ultimate in ‘wimpishness’ and cowardice. Turning the other cheek is certainly not the way of countless ‘heroes’ in our movies and on our TV screens.

But Jesus did. During his trial before the Sanhedrin:

…they spat in his face and struck him, and some slapped him, saying, “Prophesy to us, you Messiah! Who is it that struck you?” (Matt 26:67-68)

And Jesus’ response was silence. This was turning the other cheek. Was this weakness or was it strength? Which is easier to do under great provocation: to practise self-restraint and keep one’s dignity or to lash out in retaliation? By lashing out, one comes down to the same level as one’s attackers (of course, this is quite different from self-defence.)

In another account of Jesus’ trial, after having given an answer to a question:

…one of the police standing nearby struck Jesus on the face, saying, “Is that how you answer the high priest?”
(John 18:22-23)

Jesus replied:

If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong. But if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?

Here Jesus does respond to the attack but on a totally different level. The physical and unreasonable attack on an unarmed person is actively responded to on the basis of reason and non-violence. Jesus is not a victim here; rather, he is in control. And this is true of the whole experience of the Passion. His executioners behave in the most barbaric way, but Jesus never loses his calm and dignity right up through the very end. And that is why we worship him as our Lord and Master. He asks us to follow in his footsteps.

Revenge, in all its various forms, is the easier way, the more instinctive way, but it is not the better way. The way of ‘intentional’ non-violence (i.e. not passive) is, in the long run, far more productive, far more in keeping with human ideals and human dignity. We have more than enough evidence in our world of the bankruptcy of a never-ending cycle of violence and counter-violence. We see it all over. Yet violence does not pay and revenge is not sweet.

Turning the other cheek is not at all a sign of weakness. It requires great inner strength, self-respect and even respect for the dignity of one’s attacker. Jesus is calling us a long way forward and upward from “an eye for an eye”.

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Saturday of Week 11 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on 2 Chronicles 24:17-25

About this passage, the Vatican II Missal says:

“We turn today to Second Chronicles for a further unhappy episode in the history of Judah.  The zealous high priest Zechariah, son of the same Jehoiada who had saved King Joash, is murdered in the Temple area. Jesus referred to this sad story (see Matt 23:31).” 

Our reading is taken from the Second Book of Chronicles, but chronologically, it follows on the events of yesterday’s reading where we saw the young Joash, who had been rescued from certain death at the hands of his murderous grandmother, Athalia, and made king through the instrumentation of Jehoiada, the high priest.  Sadly however, as happens so often in these accounts, treachery again takes over.

When Jehoiada died, officials began to work on King Joash, who listened to what they had to say. As a result, the people of Judah began to abandon worship in the Temple and turned to various forms of idolatry. For this reason, “wrath [God’s anger] came upon Judah and Jerusalem”—the southern kingdom and its capital. The Hebrew word for ‘abandon’ or ‘forsake’ is repeated three times in the passage, indicating the reason for the divine punishment which follows. There are many similar examples in other parts of the Old Testament.

When prophets were sent to bring them back to their senses and to God’s ways, the people refused to listen.  Their rejection of these prophets was a rejection of Yahweh himself, thus sowing the seeds of the destruction to follow.

Then Zechariah, the son of the former high priest Jehoiada, was inspired to call the people back to the worship of Yahweh. He told them:

Because you have forsaken the Lord, he has also forsaken you.

But instead of listening to his appeals, they plotted against him and, at the orders of the king, stoned him to death right there in the Lord’s Temple—causing a terrible sacrilege to take place.

The blame is laid fairly and squarely on King Joash.  It was an extraordinary act of ingratitude to the son of the man who had rescued the king as a young child from the same fate.  As he died, Zechariah cried out:

May the Lord see and avenge!

The cry is a contrast to the words of Jesus on the cross and of Stephen before his martyrdom.  In the Old Testament, justice is often achieved through vengeance, and violence met with violence.  In the New Testament, violence is not the Way.

This cruel death is referred to indirectly by Jesus when, speaking to the Pharisees, he says:

Thus you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets.
(Matt 23:31)

The retribution was not long in coming.  A year later an army of Aramaeans attacked King Joash and executed his officials, perhaps those very ones who had led him and the people astray to the worship of idols.

Although the Aramaean forces were not large in number, they were, by God’s power, able to overcome the much larger army of Joash and the Judeans, defeated for deserting their God. Just as God had helped the small army of Judah against overwhelming odds when the king and people were faithful to him (2 Chron 14:8-9; 2 Chron 20:2,12), so now in their unfaithfulness they are defeated by a much smaller force of invaders.

Joash was treated, in the thinking of the time, as his royal status deserved, but they left him a very sick man.  Finally, his own officers, the ones perhaps who had helped Jehoiada engineer the coup against Athalia, moved to avenge the death of the high priest’s son Zechariah, and murdered the king in his bed.  He was buried in the citadel of David, but not in the tombs of the kings. 

Once again, sin does not pay.

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Friday of Week 11 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on 2 Kings 11:1-4,9-18,20

As stated in the Vatican II Missal:

“We read one of the most shameful episodes in the history of Judah.  Around 837 BC the wicked queen mother Athaliah seized power. The high priest Jehoiada led a revolution, put the young Davidic King Joash on the throne and renewed the covenant with God.”

If we thought Queen Jezebel was bad, we are hardly ready to read about Queen Athalia. She was a daughter of King Ahab, but Jezebel was probably not her mother.  Her influence on King Jehoram, her late husband, paralleled that of Jezebel on King Ahab.

When her son, King Ahaziah died at the young age of 22, she immediately moved to have all his children, that is, her grandchildren done away with so as to secure the throne of Judah (the southern kingdom) for herself. The royal family had already been reduced to a mere remnant. Jehoram, her late husband and the father of Ahaziah, had already killed all his brothers when he succeeded his father Jehoshaphat on the throne. King Jehu had slain another 42 members of the royal house of Judah, perhaps including many of the sons of Jehoram’s brothers. To top it all, the brothers of Ahaziah had been killed by raiding Arabs. 

In the eyes of the author, this attempt to completely destroy the house of David was an attack on God’s redemptive plan—a plan that centred on the Messiah, which the Davidic covenant had promised and which depended on the continuation of the Davidic line to become a reality.

However, as we are told today, a sister of King Ahaziah managed to save one of the princes, Joash, and hid him first in the servants’ sleeping quarters together with his nurse.  This would indicate that the child was not more than a year old and not yet weaned.  There he remained in hiding while Athalia took over as ruler of the kingdom.  This woman, Jehosheba, was the wife of Jehoiada the high priest, who will soon appear in the story, and it explains how she was able to keep Joash hidden in the Temple for six years.

Not surprisingly, Athalia in time became the object of a palace coup organised by the high priest Jehoiada.  It happened in the seventh year of her rule. He made a pact with the captains of the mercenary soldiers who served as the palace guard. The Carians were mercenary soldiers from Caria in southwest Asia Minor who served as royal bodyguards. After both those on and off duty had sworn their commitment, they are secretly shown the young prince. They are then given detailed instructions on how to protect him.

They got together their men and were given weapons which David had captured in a former battle. David had probably taken the spears and gold shields as plunder in his battle with Hadadezer and then dedicated them to the Lord (see 2 Sam 8:7-11).  This would explain why there were weapons in the Temple. They then surrounded the altar and the Temple.  Joash, the king’ son, was brought out, anointed as king by Jehoiada and given some of the royal insignia.  He was then acclaimed by the people gathered in the Temple for the Sabbath.  “Long live the king!” they cried.  This was clearly an act of rebellion and a coup d’etat.

Athalia discovered the rebellion too late.  She saw the new king “standing by the pillar”.  This was apparently one of the two bronze pillars of the portico of the Temple. With him were “all the people of the land”.   It is likely that Jehoiada had chosen to stage his coup on a Sabbath during one of the major religious festivals, when many from the kingdom who were loyal to the Lord would be in Jerusalem.  Athalia tore her garments and cried “Treason! Treason!”

Jehoiada then gave orders for her arrest.  Any of her supporters were to be killed and she was not to be executed within the sacred confines of the Temple. As was the custom, she was put to death outside the city confines, near the ‘horse gate’ of the royal palace.

Jehoiada then had a double covenant made between the Lord and his people and between the new king and the people.  It was a renewal of the Mosaic covenant declaring that Israel was Yahweh’s people and the king his vicegerent. The years of apostasy, involving both the royal house and the people of Judah, necessitated a renewal of allegiance to the Lord at the time of an important new beginning for the southern kingdom.

Finally, the temple to Baal, its altars and images were smashed and Mattan, the priest of Baal, was put to death. All the “people of the land”, that is, the country people, supported the return to the traditions of David and Yahweh.  The city was forced to accept the situation. Finally, right order had been restored between God and his people.

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Thursday of Week 11 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Sirach 48:1-15

About this passage, the Vatican II Missal states:

“Having read in the Book of Kings the story of the great Elijah, we now read Sirach’s poetic description and praise of this prophet.”

It is quite normal in our liturgical readings that, after we have been hearing about one of the great personalities of the Old Testament, there is a final encomium taken from the Book of Sirach (also known as Ecclesiasticus).  We had a similar reading after hearing about David’s life.  These testimonies are taken from a part of the book called “Praises of the Fathers”.  The book is listed among the so-called ‘apochryphal’ books which are not part of the recognised canon in either the Hebrew or Christian Scriptures of other denominations.

The author of Sirach here recalls the great exploits of Elijah, including his triumph over the priests of Baal and his bringing down fire from heaven when the Lord burnt up the sacrifice of Elijah, but not that of the priests of Baal.  He was also instrumental in the breaking of a long drought; he raised a dead child to life; and he brought about the destruction of kings (Ahab).

About Elijah, the passage states:

[You] heard rebuke at Sinai
and judgments of vengeance at Horeb…

This seems to refer to the time when Elijah went to the mountain at Horeb and learned that God was not in violence, but in the gentle breeze (“sheer silence” in the NRSVue translation).  This seemed to be a reproof from Yahweh that violent action was not the way Elijah’s enemies were to be dealt with.

Finally, he anointed kings who would do the Lord’s work, appointed Elisha as his successor and at the end was taken up to Yahweh in a fiery chariot, the transport of kings.

There is then a subtle reference to his future coming, heralding the arrival of the Messiah:

[You] who were prepared at the appointed time
to calm wrath before it breaks out in fury,
to turn the hearts of parents to their children
and to restore the tribes of Jacob.

The coming of the Messiah will see the inauguration of peace (“My peace I give you…” John 14:27). It will be a time of reconciliation and it will see the inauguration of a new family embracing not just the tribes of Jacob, but the peoples of the whole world.

And yes, says the author in a beautiful turn of phrase:

Happy are those who saw you
and were adorned in love!
For we also shall surely live.

Here there are intimations of immortality.  And for those who “were adorned in love”, the word “love” surely means the love of God. However, the Hebrew text is unclear and the sentence may apply to Elisha, whose praises immediately follow.

Elisha was filled with the spirit of Elijah.  He wrought many marvels and nothing was beyond his power—even:

…in death his deeds were marvelous…

This refers to a strange event in the Second Book of Kings which took place after Elisha’s death.  Just as a dead man was going to be buried, a raiding party was seen, so the mourners threw the dead body into the grave where Elisha was buried and fled.  But as soon as the man’s body touched Elisha’s bones, the man came to life and stood up (2 Kgs 13:20-21).

Shakespeare has one of his characters say rather cynically that “the evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones”.  Unfortunately that is often the case, but as Christians we might make a special point of remembering the good things that people did in their lifetime, as this reading does.

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Wednesday of Week 11 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on 2 Kings 2:1,6-14

Today we move on to the Second Book of Kings and we continue where we left off with the First Book. The division into two books is artificial and no such division is found in the earliest Hebrew bibles. The passage we are reading today acts as an introduction to the story of the prophet Elisha. Today we bring the story of Elijah to a conclusion and see Elisha taking over as his successor.

As Elijah is about to leave to go to the Jordan in obedience to the Lord’s call, he tells Elisha to remain behind. Whether this was said to test Elisha is not clear, but Elisha renewed his commitment as a disciple of Elijah and insisted on following him.

They are followed by fifty fellow-prophets who will be witnesses to what is about to happen by the banks of the Jordan, which the two prophets have now reached. Elijah then takes his cloak, rolls it up and strikes the waters of the river. As with Moses long ago crossing the Red Sea, the water of the river divides to right and left and the two prophets walk across on dry ground.

It is then that Elijah, about to go away, invites Elisha to make a final request. The younger prophet boldly asks to be given a double share of Elijah’s spirit. Elisha was not expressing a desire for a ministry twice as great as Elijah’s, but he was using terms derived from inheritance law to express his desire for a full sharing in Elijah’s ministry. In Jewish society it was normal for the elder son to inherit a double share of his father’s property. So, in making his request, Elisha is asking to be regarded as the genuine heir to Elijah’s prophetic powers and spirit.

Elijah replies that it is a difficult request to honour, for ultimately the giving of such a gift lies with God and not with Elijah. But he promises that there will be a sign given by which Elisha will know whether his request has been granted. And that will be the Lord’s doing and not Elijah’s. God indicates that the request is granted by allowing Elisha to see what is hidden from other human eyes, namely, Elijah’s being taken up to heaven.

All of a sudden, a chariot of fire with two fiery horses came between the two men and Elijah was taken up in a whirlwind. Elisha alone could see this—a sure sign that his request had been granted. By riding the chariot, a symbol of Israel’s strength, it is clear that Elijah, and not the king, is the Lord’s true representative among his people. And Elijah, like Enoch before him (Gen 5:24), was taken up to heaven bodily without experiencing death; like Moses (Deut 34:4-6), he was taken away outside the promised land.

It was generally believed by later generations that Elijah would return to die the natural death that is the fate of all. And his return was expected to herald the imminent coming of the Messiah. In the Gospels, John the Baptist is seen to fill that role.

Elisha then tore his own clothes in half, perhaps in grief at the loss of his master and perhaps as signifying the end of his former life. He picked up the cloak of Elijah which had fallen off as Elijah was carried away in the chariot, thereby symbolically taking on Elijah’s ministry and mission.

Once again Elisha went back to the River Jordan’s bank. As he had seen Elijah do earlier, he struck the water with Elijah’s cloak while he prayed:

Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah? Where is he?

When he struck the water, it divided to right and left and Elisha crossed over. The power was not in Elisha or in the cloak, but only in the Lord God, of whom the prophet is an agent, but it was also a clear indication that the prophet’s role and powers had been passed on to Elisha.

In crossing the Jordan as Joshua had before him, Elisha is shown to be Elijah’s ‘Joshua’ (Elisha and Joshua are very similar names, Elisha meaning “God saves” and Joshua, “The Lord saves”). Elisha would play the role of Joshua (who led the Israelites into the promised land) as Elijah played the role of Moses (who did not get to cross the Jordan).

In this story we can see:

• the loyalty of Elisha’s discipleship,
• his being called by God to carry on the mission of Elijah,
• his becoming, like Elijah, the instrument of God for his people.

In some way, this applies to each one of us in our relationship with Jesus.

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