Saturday of Week 20 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Ezekiel 43:1-7

This is our last reading from Ezekiel and also brings to an end our series of readings from the prophets which we have been following since Week 13. On Monday of Week 21, we will return to readings in the New Testament.

The message is filled with hope as it describes how God comes back to his Temple after the Exile. It represents the high point of this whole section of Ezekiel. It was a moment for which the Temple had been prepared.

The glory of God is seen approaching from the east. It was from this direction that the prophet had seen God leave his city. In the book of Ezekiel, God’s glory is always active. The experience was both heard (“like the sound of mighty waters”) and seen (“the earth shone with his glory”). God’s visible glory is always described as being very bright. We remember the brightness surround the birth of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel as the angels sang “Glory to God in the highest!”

It reminds Ezekiel, too, of the vision he had seen when Yahweh came to destroy the city (under the agency of Nebuchadnezzar).

As God in his glory enters the city from the east, Ezekiel is lifted up by the Spirit and brought to the inner court of the Temple. With God being nearer, the function of the guiding angel is taken over by the Spirit of God. Ezekiel is transported into the inner court, but not into the Temple.

And now the Temple is filled with the glory of the Lord as it was when consecrated by Solomon (1 Kings 8:11). Then “Someone” is heard speaking to Ezekiel from the Temple. This “Someone” is Yahweh, but out of reverence not named here, preserving an air of awe and mystery.

Yahweh addresses his prophet:

…this is the place of my throne and the place for the soles of my feet, where I will reside among the people of Israel forever.

Once again, the covenant promise is renewed; but it is never God who breaks it. His compassion and love are indicated by his readiness to renew it again and again. The final renewal will be the New Covenant made through God’s own Son, pouring out his blood in sacrifice for love of us all.

The glory of the Lord is always ready to enter our lives and make our hearts the temple of his presence. Is he there now? Is he palpably present in our community? Or have we driven him away? But we know that, no matter how often we fail, he still stands at the door and knocks. Will I welcome him in—not just for now, but for always?

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Saturday of Week 20 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 23:1-12

We begin today chapter 23 of Matthew which consists of a severe indictment of the Pharisees and scribes by Jesus. This is not to be taken as a blanket condemnation of every individual Pharisee and scribe, because we know that many of them were good people. One outstanding example is Gamaliel who appears in the Acts of the Apostles as a man of justice and integrity. As well, Nicodemus, “who had at first come to Jesus by night” (see John 3), and Joseph of Arimathea who asked Pilate to allow him to take down the body of Jesus for burial (see John 19:38), were also both Pharisees.

The passage certainly reflects some of the conflicts which arose between the early Christians (especially those who were Jews themselves) and those Jews who were opposed to the Christian Way, who saw it as a heresy and who often subjected the Christians to verbal and even physical attacks and harassment.

What Jesus is attacking is not so much a particular people as certain attitudes of mind. And these attitudes can be found just as easily within the Christian community of that time and every period since then. We should listen to Jesus’ words, then, directed not so much to abstract Pharisees and scribes, but to ourselves. It is for our benefit and reflection that they have been included in the Gospels. The Gospels are written for us and to us; they are not historical diatribes against certain people in the past.

Jesus first of all emphasises that as people in authority and experts on the subject, the scribes and Pharisees should be listened to with respect and they should be obeyed when they teach. But Jesus says that their behaviour—their example—should not be followed:

They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others, but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.

They have no hesitation in drawing up rules which are difficult for people to carry out, but they do absolutely nothing to help in their implementation. The Church has not always been without guilt in this kind of thing, even in our own day. Nor have civil legislators or other people in authority, including parents of families or teachers in schools, been without fault. This is the double standard, where people set the rules which they themselves do not keep: “Do as I say, not as I do” or “Do it because I tell you to do it.”

Secondly, the Pharisees are attacked because everything they do is to attract attention to themselves. But it is all on the outside. What we call today ‘image’. Their phylacteries were bigger than others’ and their tassels huge. The phylactery was a small box containing some of the central words of the Law. It was worn on the arm or the forehead, a literal interpretation of the exhortation in Exodus:

[The law] shall serve for you as a sign on your hand and as a reminder on your forehead, so that the teaching of the Lord may be on your lips, for with a strong hand the Lord brought you out of Egypt. (Ex 13:9)

There were four tassels, sewn at each corner of one’s cloak.

The message given is clear: “We are better; we are holier.” But it is a sham because it is all on the outside. That said, when it comes to ‘image’, our contemporary world has nothing to learn from the past.

They also expect special attention to be given to them: the first row in the synagogue, places of honour at banquets, special honorific titles. Sad to say, we have seen this not infrequently among church clerics in our own lifetime. We see it daily among our politicians, business leaders, our media personalities. They are not only given these things, they expect them as a right. It is the VIP syndrome and often it is really ‘over the top’: the private jet, the executive lounge in the airport, the special table in the restaurant, the limousine from the hotel and other such luxuries.

Even ordinary people may become slaves of an image based on externalities: the brand label prominently visible on the clothes they wear, the places where they live, the cars they drive, and all the other consumer baubles with which they surround themselves. None of these things, says Jesus, makes a person great.

The greatest is the one who serves, that is, the person who uses his or her gifts for the benefit of others, whose whole life is dedicated to making this world a better place for others to live in. That is the type of person to whom such trappings are totally irrelevant.

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