Saturday of Week 27 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 11:27-28

Today’s short passage is linked to yesterday’s because it begins:

While he was saying this…

After Jesus has effectively silenced his opponents and their ridiculous accusations:

…a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!”

It was a beautiful tribute first to Jesus himself, but also to his mother (someone, presumably, totally unknown to the speaker). In more contemporary terms, we might rephrase it as, “May God bless the woman that produced such a fine son as you!” This woman is clearly one of the crowd that has been amazed at the work Jesus is doing—in contrast to the cynical unbelievers who want to destroy Jesus.

And indeed, we, on a very different level, do recognise the extraordinary privilege that was Mary’s to be the Mother of God’s only Son. We pray to Mary:

Blessed are you among women…

But Jesus turns the woman’s words around:

Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!

Greatness in God’s eyes lies not in gifts and privileges that have been granted, but in the response that is given to God.

The true source of Mary’s greatness was not in her being chosen to be Jesus’ mother, nor even in her preservation from original sin, but in that unconditional ‘Yes’ she gave to the angel at the Annunciation. This ‘Yes’ she faithfully honoured to the day she stood in grief at the foot of the cross. She heard the word and she kept it—to the very end.

Some of the people we saw Jesus arguing with yesterday were powerful and influential in their society; they were the ‘great’ ones of that society. But they neither heard, nor saw, nor kept the word of God, although they claimed to be experts in it.

And even Jesus himself was not great just because of his powers over demons or his ability to silence his accusers, but because he, too, heard the word of his Father and kept it. There was a total identity between what his Father wanted and what Jesus was saying and doing.

For us, too, it must be exactly the same. That is the only greatness that matters, the only greatness that we need be concerned about.

Read more

Saturday of Week 27 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Galatians 3:22-29

Today, Paul continues to compare the ineffectiveness of observing the Law with the effectiveness of faith in Christ:

We know that we are God’s children and that the whole world lies under the power of the evil one. (1 John 5:19)

Everyone is touched by sin and the Law does not help; if anything, it makes things worse by making us more aware of our shortcomings. One ‘Do not’ after another creates feelings of such negativity and is so depressing. Wherever one turns, one is in danger of putting a foot wrong and can hardly avoid doing so.

The only way to experience the promises made to his people by God is by faith—a total commitment to Jesus Christ and his gospel of truth, love and service. Only those who have such a faith can have this experience. Being made right with God is a free gift; it is not owed to us in any way and there is nothing we can do of ourselves to force God to give it to us. He is, and never can be, in debt to us.

Every ‘good’ act we do is simply evidence of God himself working through us. And so we read of the prostitute who burst into the house of Simon the Pharisee and covered the feet of Jesus with her tears and her kisses:

…her many sins have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. (Luke 7:47)

Her sins are not removed because she loves; she loves because the gift of forgiveness has been given.

Certainly, allowances have to be made for the huge number of people who have no opportunity of hearing the gospel proclamation. We leave that to God’s love and God’s providential care. Paul’s words today, however, have a crucial relevance for us who have been given the message.

Paul sees the Law as a temporary expedient, necessary until the message about faith in Christ was made known. Before the way of faith, we had no real freedom under the Law; we were, as it were, the Law’s prisoners. It acted as a kind of guardian or ‘baby-sitter’ imperfectly showing us the way to God—”don’t do that…don’t go there”. Paul uses the Greek word paidagogus (from which our word ‘pedagogue’ comes). The paidagogus was the slave who looked after and monitored the young free-born schoolboy in Greek culture. He accompanied the boy at all times and had some disciplinary authority over him.

It is not until we make the surrender of faith in Jesus as Lord that we can have full freedom. We do not need the guardianship of the Law any more because, through our faith commitment, we have become children of God—full adults and heirs in God’s family—in a way that was never possible only under the Law. We are now free. The only law we are under is the liberating law of love.

Addressing all the Galatian Christians, Jews and Gentiles alike, Paul tells them that, since they have all been baptised into Christ (the sacramental sign of their faith in him), they “have clothed” themselves in Christ (symbolised by the white garment they put on after emerging from the baptismal water). Each one is now another Christ and all the previous distinctions that divided them have fallen away. Now, there is neither Jew nor Greek—no ethnic distinctions; neither slave nor free—no social distinctions; neither male or female—no distinctions based on gender. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians:

For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. (1 Cor 12:13)

This is surely one of the greatest contributions of Christianity to the world’s cultures, but alas, one that has not yet been fully realised even in many Christian communities. (See The Secular City by theologian Harvey Cox, who claims that it was this thinking that paved the way for our contemporary trans-national and multi-cultural societies.)

Paul says that merely:

…if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

We are among the numberless heirs, more numerous than the stars in the heavens or the sands on the seashore, that were promised to him. This happens by our saying one, unconditional ‘Yes’ to Christ and all he stands for and committing ourselves unconditionally to his vision of life.

The underlying message for the Galatians is that there is now no need of the Law and they should ignore those who are trying to tell them otherwise. Belonging to Christ in faith is all that is needed. Everything else will flow from that.

Let us then today renew our commitment of faith, our unconditional surrender to God through Jesus and his gospel. Let our Christian life, too, be based on that faith, and let us not fall back into a legalistic mentality (always asking “Is it a sin?”). It is on this foundation of a total self-surrender to Christ’s Way that the Kingdom is built, that Kingdom that Jesus came to proclaim and establish.

Read more