Thursday of Week 31 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Philippians 3:3-8
Paul has already mentioned divisions and arguing among the Philippian community. Today he indicates one source of the problem, namely, the agitation of the Judaisers (those who believed that Levitical Law should be binding on Christians). We already saw this problem when reading the Letter to the Galatians. Clearly it was a fairly widespread phenomenon. Perhaps it was less expected in Philippi, where there were not many Jews and apparently, not even a synagogue (see Acts 16:13).
The first Christians were all Jews and in the beginning they naturally followed many of their traditional customs. But once non-Jews began to be accepted as full members of the Christian community, many of these traditions and the place of the Mosaic Law were seen in a different light. It gradually became clear that the teaching of Jesus transcended this Law. It was not that the Law was abolished, but rather that the demands of the Gospel included and went far beyond the Law. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is quoted as saying:
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.
(Matt 5:17)
One of the most basic marks of identity for the Jews was circumcision. The Jews were not the only people to practise it (Muslims did also), but for them it had a very special religious significance as God’s people. Soon after non-Jews, ‘pagans’, began to be admitted to baptism, it became clear that the custom of circumcision should not be extended to them. (It would have been a very painful operation for adults, who formed the bulk of converts, to undergo.)
However, in many places, especially in more outlying areas of the Jewish diaspora*, there were Jewish converts who felt that traditional Jewish customs should be preserved, in particular, the custom of male circumcision. As we saw, Paul has much to say about this in his letter to the Galatians.
But in Philippi, too, he was faced with this problem. After attacking his critics and referring to them contemptuously as “dogs” and “evil workers”, he claims that the Christians, both Jews and Gentiles, were the real people of the circumcision. ‘Dogs’ was a highly insulting term, often applied to Gentiles, because of their ritual uncleanness. As scavengers that would eat anything, dogs were regarded as very unclean. Even Jesus used the term about Gentiles, indicating their ‘uncleanness’ (Matt 15:26). Paul is suggesting that the Judaisers are also, in a sense, unclean.
He sees circumcision in a spiritual sense. The truly ‘circumcised’ are those who are inwardly united with God through his Spirit, not those who have had a physical operation on a part of their body. The cutting of the body by itself is no guarantee of true allegiance to God. (We might say the same of the purely external observance of a sacramental ritual, e.g. pouring water and saying some words in Baptism.)
In some translations of the Bible, Paul contemptuously calls his critics ‘cutters’. Paul is using a term (Greek, katatome, literally ‘cutting down’) as a contemptuous pun on ‘circumcision’ (peritome, literally ‘cutting around’). By doing so, he is implying a comparison between physical circumcision and the self-inflicted gashes in pagan cults, as described in the famous ‘competition’ between Elijah and the priests of Baal, who slashed themselves in their frenzy (see 1 Kings 18:28).
Instead, it is the Christians who “are the circumcision”. They are the ones who worship through the Spirit of God and whose boast is in Christ Jesus, and who do not put their confidence in the flesh—that is, merely outward observances of the Old Law, or weak human nature.
And Paul does not speak as a gentile ‘outsider’. On the contrary, Paul claims he is more qualified than most other Jews, especially those in the Greek-speaking diaspora. He then proceeds to present his Jewish credentials, credentials that probably none of his Judaising opponents could match:
- Even though born in Tarsus, Paul is a true Hebrew, belonging to the tribe of Benjamin. His Jewish roots are deep and unambiguous. Jerusalem, the Holy City, lay on the border of the tribal territory of Benjamin.
- Both his parents were Hebrew (unlike some of the diaspora Jews or those converted to Judaism) and Pharisees too, as he says elsewhere. We know also that, unlike Hellenist Jews who would have spoken Greek, Paul knew Aramaic (Acts 21:40).
- He was physically circumcised at eight days after his birth, as laid down by the Law (Gen 17:12).
When it came to observing the Mosaic Law, Paul was a Pharisee. Nothing more needed to be said about his orthodoxy. As we know from the Gospels, the Pharisees made a point of observing the Law in its tiniest details. As for working for his religion, Paul was one of the most zealous in persecuting the infant Church. If observing the Law could make a person perfect, then Paul was absolutely without fault.
But that all changed when Christ came into his life. All those things he formerly believed brought him closer to God, he saw now as barriers. The former advantages were seen now as grave disadvantages; the former profits seen now as losses. For him now, everything is outweighed by the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord. And this is not knowledge about Christ, but a personal, intimate, and mutual knowing which colours every facet of his life.
It is not that the Law is wrong; it is just not needed—it has been superseded. Union with God is now seen not as the external and perfect observation of laws, regulations and traditions, but the establishment of a close, personal relationship with God through Jesus. This relationship allows God to work in a person and bring about a complete transformation in one’s thinking and behaviour.
Unfortunately, there are still Christians today who measure the quality of Christian life by strictness in keeping rules and regulations, and these tend also to be very critical of those they see as less observant than themselves. Obviously, for the sake of good order, the Church, like any other society, needs a certain number of laws and regulations.
But we must never forget that, ultimately, we will be measured not by our keeping of these regulations, but by the depth of our relationship with God in Christ, and our living out of the Gospel in relationship with others. It is the level of our loving that will be the criterion:
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:35)
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*It is not unusual for ethnic or religious groups living overseas and surrounded by “outsiders” to be more conservative and more concerned with preserving traditional marks of identity than those who are at the centre.
Thursday of Week 31 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 15:1-10
The previous Gospel passage seemed to show Jesus at his most radical:
Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.
Today we see Jesus’ compassionate and understanding side. These two views are not contradictory.
The Gospel says that tax collectors and sinners were gathering round to listen to Jesus. To some of the Pharisees and scribes this was quite scandalous. They say: “This fellow [Greek, houtos; and one can hear the contempt in the phrase] welcomes sinners and eats with them.” As far as they were concerned, any God-fearing person, not to mention a rabbi (teacher), would have absolutely nothing to do with such people.
It was bad enough socialising with them, but to share their food was unthinkable. They were unclean, and one became unclean by sitting at the same table with them. To eat with people was a sign of recognition and acceptance. As far as the Pharisees were concerned, these were contemptible, unclean sinners. It only confirmed the opinion of the Pharisees and scribes that Jesus was a person to be removed.
In reply, Luke gives us three separate parables, each touching on the same theme. We have two of them today. The third and most famous—the Prodigal Son—appears elsewhere in the liturgical readings (24th Sunday in Year C). Each one is a picture of God’s attitude towards the sinner, and it is very different from that of the Pharisee.
The first is of a shepherd who has lost one of 100 sheep entrusted to his care. The theme of the sheep and the shepherd is common in the Old Testament. We think of the famous Psalm 23 (“The Lord is my shepherd…”) and a beautiful passage in Ezekiel (34:11-16). Without hesitation, the good shepherd leaves the 99 ‘good’ sheep and goes off looking for the stray. When he finds it, he puts it on his shoulders and comes back in jubilation, inviting all his friends and neighbours to celebrate:
Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost sheep.
Similarly, concludes Jesus, there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who sincerely repents and comes back to God than over many (self-) ‘righteous’ people who have no need to repent, or who think they have no need to repent. There seems to be an ironic and sarcastic tone here. Who does not need to repent of something at some time? Jesus presents a totally different attitude to the repentant sinner, and he gives it as God’s own attitude.
The second parable is similar. A housewife who has “10 silver coins” (drachmas)—probably the sum total of her wealth—has lost one of them. Will she not turn the whole house upside down looking for it? A house like this would typically have no windows and rough earthen floors (and, of course, no electricity!), making a search quite difficult. But when she does eventually find it, she will call in all her friends and neighbours to share her joy:
Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.
Jesus concludes:
…there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.
“In the presence of angels”, of course, means ‘with God’.
We need to remember that these stories were told as Jesus’ response to the criticism of some scribes and Pharisees. He had absolutely no reason to apologise for his mixing with tax collectors, sinners and other social and religious outcasts. He was like the shepherd or the housewife in the parables. He was looking for people who were lost so that he could bring them back.
He spent time in their company, not because he did not mind what they did; on the contrary, his whole purpose was to change them. But he could not do that at a distance.
The mind of the Pharisee was different. These people with whom Jesus was associating were sinful and unclean, and the ‘good’ person had to have no contact with them of any kind or they too would become unclean.
Notice the different motivation. The Pharisee was only thinking of his own spiritual and ritual purity. Jesus was thinking of the person who was lost and needed to be brought back to a world of truth and love. And so he reached out. He went to where the sinner was. A Pharisee thought he was spiritually and morally strong, yet his avoiding the sinner showed he was afraid of contamination. Jesus was not afraid of such contamination—he was the really strong one. He could be with the sinners without becoming one of them.
Much of this is highly relevant for our Christian life today. There is probably a lot more of the Pharisee in our Christian hearts than we are prepared to admit. ‘Good’ Catholics tend to keep away from ‘immoral’ situations and the people who are there. ‘Good’ Catholics do not like to be seen in certain places which do not have a ‘good’ reputation. They even call them “occasions of sin”.
We tend to live in enclosed enclaves (we may hardly be able to call them ‘communities’), taking care of our own spiritual welfare. But that is not the Church that Christ founded. We are called to proclaim the Gospel. We are called to reach out to the sinner. To do so, we have to welcome them and eat with them. Instead of living in sanitised suburbs, we should be down in the poor sections of our cities, in our pubs and clubs, in our ‘red light’ districts reaching out and listening and, where possible, bringing back a sheep that is lost and does not know where it is going.
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