Monday of Week 27 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Galatians 1:6-12
We begin today reading Paul’s Letter to the Galatians and will stay with it until Wednesday of next week. Galatia was a province of the Roman Empire in what is now central Turkey. Its name implies that it was originally settled by people of Celtic origin. There is some dispute as to whether Paul is addressing Christians in the area that was, strictly speaking Galatian (the north), or the whole of the Roman province of Galatia which, in the south, included parts which were not strictly speaking Galatian. This is not an important issue for us in our understanding of the contents of his message.
The letter has been called the Magna Carta of Christian liberty. It deals with the question whether a Gentile has to become a Jew before becoming a Christian. Some teachers had entered the Galatian Christian communities and told them that, in addition to following Christ, they had to observe the Law of Moses. Paul counters this by saying that it is through faith in Jesus Christ that a person comes right with God and not by the observance of external laws and ritual observances. The Letter of James will complement this teaching by saying that works not inspired by faith are dead, but that a faith which does not express itself in loving works for others is also dead.
As stated in the New American Bible:
“The importance of this brief letter is hard to overestimate. Written perhaps about 55 AD during Paul’s third missionary journey, it gives many autobiographical details of the Apostle’s earlier life and evangelistic activity. Here are set forth, with impassioned eloquence, the true function of the Mosaic law and its relation to God’s grace manifested in Christ. The declaration of the principles reiterated in these six chapters made Christianity a world religion instead of a Jewish sect.”
It is a very contentious letter in which Paul attacks unknown missionaries who have been telling the baptised gentile Galatians that they must adopt some of the traditional Jewish customs, especially that of circumcision, as a mark of the their Christian identity. Paul disagrees vigorously with this teaching. In the process, he says many other things of great significance for our Christian lives.
Today’s reading consists of a warning expressed in rather strong language. It takes the place of the usual introductory thanksgiving for the graces experienced by the local church with which Paul’s letters typically begin. In fact, at no time in the letter does Paul have words of praise for the Galatian Christians.
Paul is deeply concerned with what he regards as a rather hasty and sudden change in the Galatians’ beliefs so soon after their conversion. They have, in fact, turned away from the One who called them. He accuses them of following a different gospel and in so doing of basically turning away from the gospel that Jesus gave and from the call they received from Jesus Christ.
This, Paul says, is the work of:
…some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.
In the course of the letter we will see that these ‘troublemakers’ are ‘Judaisers’. He is referring to Jews who had converted to Christianity and who want even the gentile (non-Jewish) Christians to incorporate Jewish customs, especially circumcision, as an integral part of their Christian living.
Paul asserts that there is only one gospel of Christ and that is the one they heard from him. And anyone who preaches a different gospel is “anathema” (“accursed” in some translations), i.e. to be condemned. The Greek word anathema originally referred to an offering made in a pagan temple for a vow. Later it came to represent a curse.
In fact, says Paul, if anyone were to preach a different gospel from the one originally proclaimed to them, whether it be an angel of God or even Paul himself, that person is to be condemned and rejected.
It is clear that some of the Judaising people were accusing Paul of “seeking human approval”, that is, trying to make conversion easier for Gentiles by not insisting on Jewish customs, especially circumcision (which, in those times, would have been quite a painful, and even dangerous operation, for adult males). While, on other occasions, Paul showed himself sensitive to the weaknesses of Gentiles, he strongly affirms that that is not the case here.
Paul rejects that accusation. If he really wanted these customs to be preserved, he would have remained what he formerly was—a devout Pharisee. But now he is a “servant of Christ” and he follows the Way of Christ whether that wins people’s approval or not, because only there does he find salvation and true liberation.
Finally, he emphasises that the gospel he preaches is not a human invention, but that he “received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” In so saying, he is not asserting that everything he knows about the gospel of Christ comes through direct revelation. Much of what he believed came through the disciples of Jesus who instructed him. And the key to salvation is faith and trust in the message of Jesus, and not in external observance of a Law. That will be a central point in this whole letter.
For us, too, the same is true. It is possible for the Christian to get hung up on various external acts and obligations which are identified with Christianity (or Catholicism). We may never miss Sunday Mass, we may even keep observing abstinence on Fridays and yet many things in our lives may be far removed from the spirit of the gospel. We need to reflect on just what makes a ‘good Catholic’.
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Monday of Week 27 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 10:25-37
As we accompany Jesus firmly on his way to Jerusalem we come across this beautiful incident which is only to be found in Luke. Imagine our loss if this Gospel had not been handed down to us. What other treasures of Jesus have we in fact lost over the centuries?
We are told that a scribe approached Jesus with the intention of putting him on the defensive and perhaps making him contradict the teaching of the Law. It is not clear whether this was just a single attack or part of a conspiracy. The question sounded simple, the kind that anyone would put to a religious teacher:
What must I do to inherit eternal life?
As so often happens, Jesus throws the question back at his interrogator. In fact, as a scribe, the man should already know the answer and Jesus asks him his opinion.
He replies as a scribe might be expected to, not in his own words, but quoting two passages from the Pentateuch, from the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus which say we are to love God with all our heart and soul and our neighbour as ourselves. Jesus says in response:
You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.
However, the man is not satisfied:
…wanting to vindicate himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor”?
For him “neighbor” meant, of course, only other Jews like himself, but did it include every Jew, even those who did not follow the Law? Was he supposed to love them also?
The answer Jesus gave must have come as a surprise, not to say a shock. And it came in the form of a kind of parable. It is the story we know as the parable of the Good Samaritan. In the eyes of most Jews of the time, such a term would be a contradiction because it was about someone from Samaria. It would be like saying someone is a ‘good terrorist’.
It is most likely (for the story to have meaning) that the man who was set upon by robbers and left half dead on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho was a Jew. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho was a distance of about 30 km and involved a drop from about 800 metres above sea level to about 150 metres below sea level. It ran through rocky and desert country providing ample opportunity for hidden robbers to waylay unwitting travellers.
In the story, three people saw the injured man there. Two of them were religious people, people expected to be lovers of God and neighbour. Yet both carefully passed by on the other side. It is most likely that they were going in the opposite direction, that is, they were on their way from Jericho to Jerusalem and the Temple. The injured man would have been covered in blood. No one intending to go to pray in the Temple would dare to become contaminated and made ritually unclean by coming in contact with blood. In other words, they ignored the man for religious reasons.
But then a Samaritan came by. He was, in the eyes of the Jews, an alien and a heretic. There was strong hostility between the two neighbouring peoples on historical, geographical, racial and religious grounds. The Samaritan was regarded as a ‘half-breed’ both physically and spiritually. They were ethnically related and shared some of the Jewish beliefs, but were seen as heretics, ‘half-Jews’. We remember how surprised the Samaritan woman by the well of Jacob was when she was spoken to by Jesus, who would have been expected to ignore her.
This despised outsider, presumed to have nothing of the spirit of God’s mercy and compassion, gives the Jew lying on the ground the attention that the two other religious-minded men refuse to give. In fact, the Samaritan went to extraordinary lengths to take care of the injured man, sparing no expense. Two silver coins may not seem very much, but it represented two days’ wages and would have been enough to keep someone for up to two months in a wayside inn.
It is difficult for us, now in our time, to understand the impact that such a story would have had on the traditional Jewish listener, not to mention a scribe. In our world today, it would be something like a Palestinian fighter coming to the help of an Israeli soldier or vice versa. Perhaps you can think of examples closer to home.
The question of Jesus is interesting:
Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?
The answer of the scribe is equally interesting:
The one who showed him mercy.
The answer then to the question, “Who is my neighbour?” is not, as we learnt in our catechism, “Everybody”, though that is true. The answer of Jesus is: A neighbour is someone who shows compassion to another in need—irrespective of who the helper or the person in need may be. It is less a question of seeing every other person as my neighbour, but much more importantly, of my being actively a neighbour to others, not on the basis of their race, nationality, occupation, gender, skin colour, or beliefs, but on the basis of need. And who does not need love and compassion?
Finally, in answer to an academic, theological question, “Who is my neighbour?” Jesus tells the scribe not what or who is his neighbour, but to:
Go and do likewise.
In other words, to go and be a neighbour.
The story has a secondary lesson for us about stereotyping. For the Jews there was the negative stereotype of the Samaritan (which was probably reciprocated). Our world today is full of stereotypes. We have stereotypes of practically every race and ethnic group and skin colour, every gender and political persuasion, and they can influence our attitudes deeply and often unconsciously.
With regard to race, certainly each race can have recognisable characteristics—Jews, Italians, Irish, Germans, French, Chinese, Indians, Japanese, Africans—arising from language and traditions, but it is an irrational jump to attribute to every member of a group generalised characteristics. We can never say that “Irish are…”, or “Chinese are…”, or “Africans are…” There are too many exceptions.
Every single person has to be approached individually and there are good, bad and indifferent people to be found in every group, including our own. But they all have one thing in common: they should be confident of being helped by good neighbours in their time of need.
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