Friday of Week 12 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on 2 Kings 25:1-12

Today we come to the end of the sad story of Israel’s degradation and humiliation—the second deportation. Yesterday we saw how Mattaniah, renamed Zedekiah, had been made a puppet or vassal king of Judah, the southern kingdom, by Nebuchadnezzar. He was no improvement on his predecessors. The passage which comes between yesterday’s and today’s readings is as follows:

Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he began to reign; he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem…He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, just as Jehoiakim had done. Indeed, Jerusalem and Judah so angered the Lord that he expelled them [the two kings] from his presence. Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon. (2 Kings 24:18-20)

Rebelling against the king was a bad mistake on his part…

It was in the ninth year of his reign that Nebuchadnezzar came to Jerusalem with his army and, for the second time, laid it under siege. Earlier, he had subdued all the fortified cities in Judah except Lachish and Azekah (see Jer 34:7). A number of Hebrew inscriptions on potsherds were found at Lachish in 1935 and 1938. The Lachish ostraca (i.e. letters) describe conditions at Lachish and Azekah during the Babylonian siege.

Jerusalem, built as it was on an outcrop of high rock with steep sides, was not an easy city to capture and was able to resist for more than one year, into the 11th year of Zedekiah’s reign. But eventually, with the people starving, the walls were finally breached. It is possible that some desperate citizens may have deliberately brought this about to end the siege—and their starvation.

However, the king and his soldiers escaped from the city by night. Because of the surrounding armies, they had no option but to head for the Arabah, a desolate area in the Jordan valley. But there was no escape and the hapless king was caught near Jericho and abandoned by his troops.

He was brought into Nebuchadnezzar’s presence where sentence was passed on him, as a rebellious vassal. His two sons (his potential successors as king) were killed before his eyes while Zedekiah himself then had his eyes put out and was brought to Babylon. Ezekiel (12:13) had prophesied that the king would be brought to Babylon, but would not see the city. Jeremiah had advised Zedekiah what to do to avoid his own punishment and the destruction of the city, but the king had not listened (see Jer 38:14-28).

Finally, Nabuzaradan, the captain of Nebuchadnezzar’s bodyguard, took control over Jerusalem. He proceeded to wipe out every vestige of its past by burning the Temple, the king’s palace and every large building in the city. In the previous siege, the vessels of the Temple had been taken away, but the building had remained. Lastly, the formidable walls which had protected the town were torn down.

The remainder of the population, those who had gone over to Babylon’s side, and the last of the artisans, were all carried off into bitter exile. Only the very poor were left behind to take care of the vineyards and the farms. They would form the remnant which would maintain the continuity of the city of David with the future.

It was an ignominious end of the kingdom originally established by Saul. With the outstanding exception of David—and even he had done some pretty bad things—the dynasty had a dismal record as vicegerents of Yahweh.

The lesson of the reading is very similar to that of previous days. God does not take vengeance as we humans do, but on the other hand, we do reap the natural consequences of immoral behaviour.

At the same time, even the most negative experiences can be turned round. A good example of this is to be found in Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, where he shows that those who survived best in the Nazi concentration camps were those who found positive meaning and something to live for even in the utter degradation of their surroundings. Frankl himself was a clear example of one such person.

Out of all this corruption and immorality will come David’s descendant, Jesus the Christ. God certainly does write straight with crooked lines.

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Thursday of Week 12 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on 2 Kings 24:8-17

The fate of the southern kingdom, including Jerusalem, was to be no better than that of the north. Today’s passage describes the first deportation of the Hebrews from Jerusalem into Babylon. However, the conquerors now are not the Assyrians, but the new ‘world power’ of the day, the Babylonian empire under King Nebuchadnezzar. We meet him again in the Book of Daniel where we read the famous stories of the hand writing on the wall and the dream of the statue with the feet of clay, the story of Daniel in the den of lions and the report of the three young men in the fiery furnace. Like all the emperors before and after him, Nebuchadnezzar’s empire was doomed to fall. But here, he is seen as an instrument of God in bringing punishment on the sinful and idol-worshipping people of Judah.

King Jehoiakim of Judah had unwisely rebelled against the Babylonians after being subjected to them for three years. This brought a wave of invasions and destruction from neighbouring peoples directed at sinful Judah (2 Kings 24:1-7).

Now his son, Jehoiachin, a mere 18 years old, had only been on the throne for three months. The young king, like his predecessors, did not follow the ways of the Lord, which means that he led a life of immorality and idolatry. It is just then that Jerusalem was besieged by the Babylonian forces. Less than 25 years had passed since the events of yesterday’s reading when Jehoiachin’s father, Josiah, had tried to turn the people of Judah back to God and observance of the covenant law.

During the siege, Nebuchadnezzar himself arrived. According to Babylonian records, the king “encamped against the city of Judah, [that is, Jerusalem] and on the second day of the month of Addaru [i.e. March 16, 597 BC] he seized the city and captured the king”, Jehoiachin. It was the eighth year, by Jewish reckoning, of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign. The city does not seem to have put up much of a fight, even though, built on a hill with steep sides, it was a formidable challenge to attacking forces, as Sennacherib found to his cost.

Jehoiachin, however, together with his mother and all his court, surrendered and were taken captive by the Babylonian king. Jehoiachin was to remain under his rule for 37 years, until the death of Nebuchadnezzar, under relatively comfortable circumstances. This fulfilled a prophecy of Jeremiah:

As I live, says the Lord, even if King Coniah [short for ‘Jeconiah’] son of Jehoiakim of Judah were the signet ring on my right hand, even from there I would tear you off and give you into the hands of those who seek your life, into the hands of those whom you fear, even into the hands of King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon and into the hands of the Chaldeans. I will hurl you and the mother who bore you into another country, where you were not born, and there you shall die. But they shall not return to the land to which they long to return. (Jer 22:24-27)

What was in a way even more shameful and sacrilegious, the treasures of the Temple and the royal palace were all carried away. Some of these included gold vessels which had been put in place by King Solomon when he built the Temple. It was in one way a terrible sacrilege, but with sacrifices no longer possible, there is even an implication that Yahweh is no longer present among his people.

Finally, practically the whole population of Jerusalem was carried off. This included the whole of the army, as well as craftsmen and artisans. All of these could be used by Nebuchadnezzar for his own building projects. Only the poorest of the poor were left behind. Altogether some 10,000 were reportedly taken away. There is likely to have been an overlap between soldiers and skilled craftsman, just as in Israel today all young men have to serve in the armed forces.

In Jehoiachin’s place, his uncle Mattaniah was installed as king and given the name Zedekiah. Mattaniah was a son of King Josiah, whom we saw in yesterday’s reading and the brother of Jehoiachin’s father, Jehoiakim. Mattaniah means ‘gift of Yahweh’ while Zedekiah means ‘Yahweh is my justice’. It has been suggested that Nebuchadnezzar wanted to imply that his actions against Jerusalem and Jehoiachin were just. There is even a hint that the king is simply an instrument of God’s justice in what took place. In any case, the name change signified subjection to Nebuchadnezzar.

Once again, we see God’s people pay for their infidelities in failing to keep the law of the Lord. And yet, it is likely that many of those who were carried off adjusted to their new circumstances, made the best of them, may even have done very well and came to regard their place of exile as home for them and their children. In our own times, we see Jewish communities in exile thriving, not to mention the millions of other peoples who have contributed to the ‘melting pot’ that is the United States, Australia and the European Union.

There was not much benefit in sitting and moping about one’s past and longing for old days, old ways and old places, although some did do that (as in Psalm 137, “By the rivers of Babylon…”). Nothing that happens to us is the end of possibilities. Every experience is a challenge to find God in a new situation, a new environment. Wherever life brings us, God is there close by. He is always to be found where we happen to be now, not where we would like to be.

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Saturday of Week 12 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 8:5-17

Today we read about the second of the ten miracles of Jesus described by Matthew after the Sermon on the Mount. It is a story also found in Luke and John, but strangely enough, not in Mark.

The significant element in this story is the fact that the person asking for help is a centurion, a soldier and presumably not a Jew. Yet he has this great faith in Jesus. It is a sign of the future role of Gentiles in the originally all-Jewish Christian community.

The centurion asks Jesus to cure a servant who has become paralysed. Jesus immediately responds that he will go and cure him. The centurion replies:

Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed.

These words should be very familiar to us from the paraphrase used in the prayers before sharing in Communion. And the centurion goes on to say that as an army officer, he just has to give commands and they are carried out on the spot. When it comes to healing, he knows that Jesus can do the same.

Jesus is astonished at the faith of this pagan:

Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith.

And he foretells that this is a sign of what is going to happen in the future when Gentiles from all over the world will enter the Kingdom while many of Jesus’ own people will be left outside. What is more, they will become God’s people sharing glory with the Jewish ancestors: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It is a sad theme running through the whole of this Gospel: the rejection of Jesus by so many of his own people and their self-chosen exclusion from the Kingdom.

The faith that Jesus expects is not an acceptance of religious doctrines. It is rather an act of total trust and surrender by which people commit themselves to the power of God—in this case, the power of God in Jesus.

Paraphrasing from the Jerusalem Bible:

Christ asks for this faith especially when he works his miracles, which are not so much acts of mercy as signs attesting his mission and witnessing to the kingdom; hence he cannot work miracles unless he finds the faith without which the miracles lose their true significance. (edited)

For this reason this faith was not easy to give, especially for many of Jesus’ hearers who could not see the presence of God in Jesus and hence could not commit themselves to him. Even the disciples were slow to believe. We see this especially in Mark’s Gospel. But once present, such a faith can bring about the transformation of a person’s life, as many converts to Christianity can attest.

Turning to the centurion, Jesus says,

Go; let it be done for you according to your faith.

And we are told:

…the servant was healed in that hour.

What is clear from this story and from many other healings by Jesus is the crucial element of faith in the one approaching Jesus. It is the only condition necessary—all other characteristics are irrelevant. Luke will tell us that Jesus was restricted in the help he could give to the people in his home town of Nazareth because they simply did not have faith in him.

Let us pray that we may never lose that gift of faith which has, in the mysterious ways of divine Providence, been given to us. And let us remember that, without that faith, God will be hampered in reaching out his healing love to us.

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Friday of Week 12 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 8:1-4

The two chapters (8 and 9) following the Sermon on the Mount include a long list of miracles (ten altogether) performed by Jesus. They are seen as a confirmation of his authority to teach because they are so obviously the work of God himself. The man who can do these things also has the right to be heard and followed.

The first story is the cure of a leper. It is told with the usual brevity and lack of detail characteristic of Matthew (compare with Mark’s version, 1:40-45). A leper begs to be healed. His faith and trust in Jesus is revealed by his saying:

Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.

Jesus replies:

I am willing.

And he cures him instantly. We may note the simplicity of Jesus’ act. In this, the healing miracles of Jesus contrast with the fantastic stories from the Hellenistic world and those sometimes attributed to Jewish rabbis.

But Jesus’ miracles also differ because of the spiritual and symbolic meaning attached to them. They often have the quality of a parable, and frequently the words that accompany the miracle are of greater significance. Such is true in this case, where the healing of the leper has wider ramifications as indicated below.

While compassion is many times the motive behind a miracle, most often they are seen as strengthening a person’s faith. Jesus, too, is very selective in the miracles he performs and often demands secrecy from the beneficiary. Jesus does not want to be the centre of any sensational wonder-working. It will be the miracle of his resurrection that will be the really determining factor of who he is.

Soon, we will see Jesus sending out his disciples to proclaim the Kingdom and giving them his own powers of healing. Their mandate will be to do the same work that Jesus has been doing. The 10 miracles recounted in chapters 8 and 9 will be the kind of thing that the missionary successors of Jesus will also do.

After the healing, Jesus then instructs the man, in accordance with the requirements of the law, to go to the Temple to get a certificate from the priests as proof of his return to health. Only with this official documentation will he be allowed to re-enter society.

The leper was a particularly unfortunate person in ancient society. It was known that through contact with a leprous person one could contract the disease, so they were kept isolated from the rest of society. There was, of course, no known cure and the person’s body just gradually rotted away.

What was probably more tragic was the fact that many people with other kinds of similar-looking skin diseases, which were not at all infectious, could be branded as lepers and condemned to the same policy of isolation. The healing of the leper by Jesus was then much more than a physical healing. It meant that the man could be fully re-integrated into normal society.

In our time, the leper can be a symbol for all those who are marginalised by our societies for one reason or another—foreigners; people of a different colour or culture, or gender, or religion; those with addictions—to drugs or alcohol, wealth or power, or pornography; victims of sexually transmitted diseases…the list could go on and on.

We Christians have a special responsibility to be agents of healing to re-integrate such people and accept them fully as brothers and sisters.

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Thursday of Week 12 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 7:21-29

We come today to the final reading from the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus spells out the essential quality of the true disciple. He or she is not to be measured merely by external activities. It is not enough, for instance, to keep saying “Lord, Lord…” That by itself will not bring a person under the kingship of God. It will not be enough either to be able to perform wonders like casting out demons or working other miracles, even in the name of Jesus.

The true disciple is someone who is totally united to God in heart, soul and mind. Such a person is one who listens to Jesus’ words and carries them out. As we have said elsewhere, listening here means a number of things:

• To pay attention to what Jesus is saying to us; to listen with attentiveness.
• To understand what is being said, as it is possible to listen without understanding.
• To accept fully and to assimilate into one’s being what one understands. It is possible to hear clearly, to understand clearly, but not to accept or assimilate. Children do that all the time!

When we have fully assimilated as part of our own thinking what we have heard and understood, we will naturally act accordingly. It is only when all this becomes a reality in our lives that we can say we are truly disciples of Jesus and, as he says, that is the only sure foundation on which to build our lives.

To live a Christian life only on the surface, that is, only with words and externally conforming behaviour, is like building a house on sand. Once we come under attack, we will collapse because we have no deep foundation inside. We see that happening frequently when people who have lived in an outwardly Christian environment move to a purely secular situation—and fall away very quickly.

So let us be like that sensible man who builds his house on rock, the firm foundation that is Christ, with the vision of Christ also the vision of our own life, a life built on truth and love. With this we come to the end of the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew clearly indicates the end by saying:

Now when Jesus had finished saying these words…

He adds that Jesus’ teaching made a deep impression on the people, mainly because he spoke with authority:

You have heard that it was said…But I say to you…
(Matt 5:38)

That is, he spoke in his own name, unlike the scribes who could only be interpreters of God’s Law.

As mentioned at the beginning, the Sermon on the Mount is the first of five major discourses. It deals mainly with the qualities that are to be found in the individual follower of Christ. Let us pray that those qualities may be found increasingly in each one of us.

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Saturday of Week 12 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Lamentations 2:2,10-14,18-19

Today’s reading is from the Book of Lamentations. We have come to the end of our readings about the history of the Kings, contained in the two books of Samuel, the two books of Kings and the books of Chronicles. We began with Saul and finished with Zedekiah, a puppet king installed by the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar.

According to the Vatican II Missal:

“The Book of Lamentations contains five poems of sorrow over the destroyed Jerusalem. Written probably by an eyewitness, these words express a poignant grief that the chants of Tenebrae [in Holy Week] put to music.”

Our reading today is taken from chapter 2 which speaks of the Lord’s anger against Zion, i.e. Jerusalem. In this chapter the author describes the wretched fate of kings, priests, prophets, elders and children. Then, addressing Zion, he reminds her how the false prophets have lied, and urges her to bewail her fate before God.

The passage reflects the bitterness and suffering of the people in Jerusalem who are undergoing the effects of a terrible siege. The buildings of the city have all been torn down. The king and his family have been humiliated and take into exile. The men of the city, in penitential sackcloth and ashes, sit in silent misery on the ground. The women:

…have bowed their heads to the ground.

The author is overcome with bitterness as he sees children and babies die of starvation. Piteously they ask their mothers for food. But there is none. Eventually they die in their helpless mothers’ arms.

There are harsh words for false prophets, the propagandists of their day. They denied the reality with idealistic and misleading or specious visions, instead of pointing to the real cause of the people’s sufferings—their infidelity to their God, to the true and the good. Jeremiah frequently denounces false prophets. The words ‘misleading’ or ‘specious’ in the Hebrew come from the same root as that underlying the words ‘to drive out’ (‘banish’ in some translations; see Jeremiah 27:10,15). In other words, the lies of false prophets mislead the people with “false and deceptive visions” and thus lead to banishment by the Lord—so they are ‘banishing’ in their effect.

There is a personification of Jerusalem and its inhabitants:

Cry aloud to the Lord!
O wall of daughter Zion!

The people indeed have much to weep for, both for their present miseries and the reason for them. Their only remedy is to turn to their God in prayer:

Arise, cry out in the night,
at the beginning of the watches!

There were three watches in every night, so the whole night could be spent profitably in prayer.

The passage continues:

Pour out your heart like water
before the presence of the Lord!

That is, let them pour out their hearts in prayer and petition. Let them lift up their hands in supplication, especially for the lives of their little ones, the victims of their parents’ wrongdoing.

It is a sober reflection that there are still so many places and times in our contemporary and supposedly technologically ‘sophisticated’ world where people are in similar and even worse circumstances, where children walk around naked and in a daze, so long deprived of food that they do not even know they are hungry.

And the causes are still the same: the sins of people, the sins of greed and neglect and a failure to see each other as brothers and sisters and to accept responsibility for them. Cain’s question is still being cynically asked:

…am I my brother’s [and sister’s] keeper? (Gen 4:9)

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Wednesday of Week 12 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on 2 Kings 22:8-13; 23:1-3

In today’s reading we have moved about 100 years on from yesterday. King Josiah is now on the throne of the southern kingdom of Judah.

Hilkiah, the high priest, tells Shaphan, an expert in the Scriptures, that he has found the “book of the law” in the Temple. The Jerusalem Bible comments:

“This ‘Book of the Law’ is certainly Deuteronomy or, to be precise, its legislative portion, the main statutes of which form the guiding principles of the subsequent reform. It was the sacred law of the Temple of Jerusalem, hidden or lost or at least completely forgotten during the reign of the impious Manasseh.”

However, other interpreters think it may refer to the entire Pentateuch (the books attributed to Moses, which are the first five books of the Old Testament).

Shaphan in turn brought the scroll to the king and read it out to him. When the king heard the contents, he tore his garments. He realised just how much the statutes of God’s law had been neglected and violated. He now understood how the misfortunes of the people were the signs of God’s anger:

…for great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us, because our ancestors did not obey the words of this book to do according to all that is written concerning us.

Perhaps the covenant curses of Leviticus chapter 26 and/or Deuteronomy chapter 28, climaxing with the threat of exile, were the statements that especially disturbed Josiah. We can contrast Josiah’s reaction with that of Jehoiakim to the words of the scroll written by Jeremiah (see Jer 36:24-25). On that occasion, Jehoiakim treated the text with contempt and burnt it passage by passage as it was read to him by the prophet Baruch.  Needless to say, he paid a high price for his arrogance.

Josiah then gave instructions to a number of important people to consult the Lord on what was laid down in these writings on behalf of himself, the people and all of Judah. Among them were Hilkiah, the priest already mentioned, Ahikam and Acbor. Ahikam was the father of Gedaliah and later appointed governor of Judah by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. He was also the protector of Jeremiah when his life was threatened during the reign of Jehoiakam (see Jer 26:24). Acbor’s son, Elnathan, is mentioned in chapter 24 of 2 Kings.

These people, together with some others, went to consult a prophetess in Jerusalem called Huldah. She confirmed that the terrible threats towards those who had broken the law and worshipped idols would be carried out as foretold. However, King Josiah would be spared this fate because, after hearing the contents of the document, he had expressed deep repentance and grief and rent his garments. He would go to his grave in peace and would not live to see the awful punishments that would be visited on Jerusalem (these particular details are from verses omitted in our reading).

The whole population, including priests and prophets, is then gathered together to have the whole “book of the covenant” read to them. This was another name for the book of Deuteronomy, which claimed to be the code of the covenant of the people with Yahweh (Deut 5:3; 29:1). Whatever else the scroll contained, it clearly included the covenant curses of Leviticus 26 and/or Deuteronomy 28.

The king then, as the Lord’s representative, renewed the covenant of God with his people, promising to observe “with all his heart and all his soul” all its requirements. As he did so, he stood “by the pillar”, that is, one of the two bronze pillars in the portico of the Temple. Josiah fulfilled the role of one mediating a covenant between God and his people just as Moses, Joshua, Samuel and King Jehoiada had done before him.

The people then pledged themselves to obey the covenant. It is likely that some sort of ratification rite was performed, in which the people participated and pledged by oath to be loyal to their covenant obligations. Whether this was done symbolically or verbally is not said.

It is good for us, too, regularly to go through the New Testament, and especially the Gospel, and renew the promises we made in our Baptism. We might ask ourselves, too, how much real attention we give to the Word of God proclaimed to us at every Eucharist in which we participate. And we might seriously consider spending some time each day reading and studying the Scripture. A careful reading of the Gospel will often reveal to us just how far we have strayed from the call of Jesus to be his disciples.

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Tuesday of Week 12 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 7:6,12-14

Today’s passage from the Sermon on the Mount contains three apparently unrelated teachings of Jesus. Verses 7-11 about prayer, which intervene, are omitted. We need to remind ourselves that the Sermon on the Mount is not a verbatim record of a ‘sermon’ preached by Jesus. It is a highly edited collection of sayings on the general theme of the qualities to be found in a true disciple of Jesus.

First, Jesus says:

Do not give what is holy to dogs…

That is, consecrated meat from animals sacrificed in the Temple should not be given as food for dogs. We need to remember that for the Jews (as for the Muslims) dogs are unclean animals, so that is an extra reason for not giving them meat consecrated for purposes of divine worship. We may remember the remark of Jesus to the Syro-Phoenician woman about not giving the food of children to dogs, a reference to Gentiles who were also thought to be unclean. Or the humiliation of Lazarus in Luke’s parable, who was so helpless that he could not prevent dogs licking his sores.

Similarly, as the passage continues, something as precious as pearls should not be given to pigs, another unclean animal. Again we remember in the parable of the Prodigal Son, how after hitting rock bottom, the only job he could find was to feed pigs and he was so hungry he would have eaten the pigs’ food.

In other words, Jesus is advising his followers not indiscriminately to expose their beliefs to all and sundry. While, in one sense, the Christian Way is for all, there are people who are not ready to hear it and will not just reject it, but subject it to ridicule. This would especially apply to certain Christian practices such as the celebration of the Eucharist or other sacraments. We do not accept people into the Catholic community except after a long period of formation and initiation. Faith in Christ is a gift and not everyone receives it at once.

The second saying in today’s Gospel is the famous ‘Golden Rule’, which is not exclusive to Christianity or the Gospel—it is known in other cultures. What might be emphasised here is its being expressed in positive terms. There is also a negative form which states, “Do not do to others what you would not like them to do to you”. There is a difference between the two. You can observe the negative maxim by doing nothing at all. The positive can only be observed by doing some good action to others and is therefore much more in line with the general teaching of Jesus.

In the third saying today, Jesus contrasts the narrow gate with the wide road. To follow the wide road is to do just about anything you feel like doing. It is to follow your likes and dislikes, your instincts and whims wherever they lead you. That is going to include following roads of greed and self-centredness, of lies and deceit, perhaps even of violence and hurt. It is clearly not a way of life.

The narrow gate is not to be narrow-minded. It is rather to be very clearly focused on certain very specific ways of thinking and acting, having one’s life guided by a clear set of truths, principles and values—those truths, principles and values which form the core of the Gospel’s teaching. In other words, the Way of Christ. It is a way that leads to life.

It is a hard road only in the sense that it requires discipline, and it is true that relatively few people find it. But in the long run, it is the easier way because it conforms more to the deepest needs and desires of the human person. The Way of Jesus is not an eccentric choice of lifestyle, one religion among many; rather it is in total harmony with all that human life is meant to be. But there is no doubt that the wide undisciplined road is the easier one to follow—even though in the long run it does not bring happiness.

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Tuesday of Week 12 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on 2 Kings 19:9-11,14-21,31-36

Having overcome the Northern Kingdom, the Assyrians now turn their attention to the Southern Kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem. What happens is almost the exact reverse of the passage read yesterday on Monday of Week 12 of Ordinary Time.

The famous Sennacherib, described by the poet Lord Byron as the one who “came down like a wolf on the fold”, is now the Assyrian king. He sends a letter to Hezekiah, king of the Southern Kingdom, demanding surrender. There is no use, says Sennacherib, for them to appeal to their God. All other countries have fallen before the Assyrian juggernaut—why should Judah be the exception?

Hezekiah has only one option, to pray to his God for help. He calls on his God who alone is God over all the kingdoms of the earth and has made them all. True, says the king, the Assyrians have carried all before them. They laid nations to waste and tossed their gods into the fire. They could do this for these gods who were just human artifacts of wood and stone.

But Hezekiah’s and Judah’s God is different. The king prayed:

So now, O Lord our God, save us, I pray you, from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, O Lord, are God alone.

At this point Isaiah, the prophet, intervenes with a long (vv 21-31) oracular message from God (and, except for its first and last verse, not included in today‘s reading). Part of it is addressed to Sennacherib and the second part to Judah. It is a mocking statement directed against the Assyrians and guaranteeing that, no matter what happens:

…from Jerusalem a remnant shall go out and from Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

Isaiah interprets this as saying that Sennacherib will not reach Jerusalem; he will not attack it nor be able to institute a siege against its walls:

By the way that he came, by the same he shall return; he shall not come into this city, says the Lord.

And the city will remain safe from attack:

For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.

And that very night 185,000 men of the Assyrian army were mysteriously struck down, and Sennacherib had no option but to return to his capital at Niniveh. What seems to have happened is that the Assyrian army was struck down by some virulent infection or plague which swept through it like a forest fire. Soon after his return, we are told in the following verse that, while worshipping in the temple of his god Nisroch, Sennacherib was assassinated by two of his sons who then fled into Ararat. Another son took over the throne—a further example of what happens to those who attack God’s people.

Here, as in the previous passage from 2 Kings, we see that things do not happen by accident. The destruction of the Assyrian army may be attributed to purely natural causes, but the eyes of faith see there God’s protecting hand for his people, and especially for the city of David, to which he had made so many promises. Nevertheless, Jerusalem will not remain unscathed. It will be, as Isaiah foretells today, not utterly destroyed, but reduced to a remnant. From that remnant will come a descendant of David.

Let us, too, see the hand of God operating in all the details of our lives—both the joyful and painful—and discern what he is trying to tell us.

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Monday of Week 12 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 7:1-5

We begin today the last chapter of the Sermon on the Mount. In the Gospel, Jesus says:

Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.

This means, of course, judged by God. This is a good example of Matthew’s using an impersonal passive voice to avoid mentioning the name of God, which is understood. Another example is where he has Jesus say:

…whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven [by God], and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven [by God]. (Matt 16:19)

Jesus today touches on an issue in which very few of us can claim innocence—passing judgment on others. Sometimes we call it gossip, which seems harmless enough, and very often it is relatively harmless. And yet at times we can spend a long time tearing other people apart, revealing to others information about people which they do not need to know. What Jesus says is so true. We focus on a tiny speck in someone else’s eye while there is a large plank in our own.

In fact, that is probably why we are so fond of indulging in this exercise. Our purpose is not so much to bring another person down as to bring ourselves up. Often those we judge are ‘higher placed’ than we are, or more gifted or more educated. To some extent unconsciously, we feel inferior. One way to even things up is to bring them down, to reveal their “feet of clay” (and this is made even worse in our time by the reach and impact of social media).

But as Jesus says, this is a kind of hypocrisy. Given our own faults, what right have we to sit in judgement on another? So often our judgements are based on the purely external or on incomplete evidence. We condemn acts while being quite ignorant of the motives behind the acts. Only God is in a position to make an accurate judgement of a person’s strengths or weaknesses.

Linked with all this is the fact that, nine times out of ten, we would never make our criticisms face to face. This, on the one hand, is a form of cowardice and, on the other, proves our hypocrisy because we make no effort to help the person make the changes we would like to see. It might be a good resolution for us to promise only to criticise people to their face and then in a non-judgmental fashion—and to give them an opportunity to express their side. Sometimes we will find that our criticisms are without real foundation, or we will find the person grateful for our having drawn attention to something of which they were unaware.

And removing that plank from our eye is another way of saying, that before we make any evaluation of another, we need to be sure that our view is totally free from any prejudice or bias. We do have a serious responsibility to draw attention to things that people do wrong, especially if others or they themselves are hurt, but it is a responsibility we often shirk. Gossiping behind their backs is so much easier, but it helps no one.

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