Friday of Week 32 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on 2 John 4-9

The three Letters of John all seem to have been written about the same time, by the same person and probably from Ephesus. The dates suggested vary from 85-100 AD. Today we have a reading of just six verses from the Second Letter, which is actually the shortest ‘book’ in the whole of the New Testament, not even taking up one page in most Bibles.

In the book’s first verse, the author calls himself “the Elder”, which indicates a level of authority over the community to which he is writing. Whether he is to be identified with John the Apostle is not certain, but also not very likely.

The Second Letter was written to a church under the jurisdiction of “the Elder”, which referred to in the reading as “the elect Lady”—’elect’ meaning chosen. This was in reply to people there who were publicly denying the truth of the Incarnation—that Jesus was truly God and Man.

Today’s reading is in two parts. In the first part, the author congratulates the church (now referred to as “dear lady”) for following the true teaching:

…walking in the truth, just as we have been commanded by the Father.

He is writing to them, not with a new commandment, but with one they have had since the beginning, that is, since the time of their conversion—namely, that they should love one another. Loving God and loving one’s neighbour was not a new commandment.

In the Gospel they had been taught, they were given love of God and love of neighbor as the most important of Jewish laws (as quoted in Deut 6:5 and Lev 19:18). But at the Last Supper, Jesus gave a “new commandment” which was:

…as I have loved you, you also should love one another.
(John 13:34)

Jesus will spell that out by saying:

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John 15:13)

Jesus called his disciples his “friends” and he gave his life for them. That is now to be the paradigm for our relationship with those around us.

In the Letter today, this commandment is simply being reemphasised. To love, says the Elder, is to live according to Jesus’ commandments, which can all be summed up in the one commandment:

And this is love…this is the commandment just as you have heard it from the beginning—you must walk in it.

Love, however, should not blind them to the truth. And that brings us to the second part of the reading. The author warns his church about those who are denying:

…that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh…

In other words, they are denying the true humanity of Jesus. The Gnostics taught that the Son of God did not become a human being, but that he temporarily came down upon the man Jesus between his baptism and his crucifixion.

They held this belief under the conviction that all material things were evil, and the good person should withdraw as far as possible from the material world. In this thinking, God could not have taken on a material body. He only had the temporary appearance of being linked to a human.

The teachers of this doctrine are called here the “Antichrist” because they deny the very essence of what we believe Jesus Christ to be. The Christians are warned that to follow this teaching could jeopardise their faith and their ultimate salvation.

The author assumed his readers knew that a great enemy of God and his people was expected to appear before Christ’s final return. That person is called “antichrist”, “the deceiver”, and in Revelation (13:1-10), “the beast”. But prior to him, there will be many other antichrists.

In the Letters of John, the antichrists have the following characteristics:

• they deny the incarnation and that Jesus is the divine Christ;
• they deny the Father;
• they do not have the Father;
• they are liars and deceivers;
• they are many;
• in John’s day, they left the church because they had nothing in common with believers.

The ‘antichrists’ referred to in John’s letter were the early Gnostics. The Elder warns that those who do not keep to the Church’s teaching about Christ, but go beyond it as the Gnostics claimed to do, cannot be with God. They went beyond the apostolic teaching by indulging in pure speculation and presenting that as the teaching and belief of the Church.

However, says the Elder, only those who remain faithful to the original teaching are in union with both the Father and the Son. Because, as Jesus had said:

Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. (John 14:9)

The passage highlights two contrasting attitudes we need to have as Christians. On the one hand, our lives are to be governed entirely by the law of love—loving each other to the same degree that Christ has loved and continues to love us. It must be the touchstone of all our living.

But loving does not mean turning a blind eye to what is against the true or the good. It does not mean absolute tolerance for any idea or any action. We do not love people by turning a blind eye to the harm they may do to themselves or others, by ideas they hold, or the behaviour they indulge in.

In another part of this letter, the Christians are told to avoid giving to false teachers the hospitality traditionally extended to travelling teachers. The Gospel speaks of expelling people from the community when their behaviour is quite out of keeping with the standards that the Church wishes to maintain to be a credible witness to the Gospel.

Yet, love remains the criterion. Expulsion lasts only as long as there has been no repentance or reconciliation. The Church, like its Master, wishes that people be saved and not condemned.

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Friday of Week 32 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 17:26-37

Jesus is coming to the end of his public life. His passion and death are going to be traumatic experiences for his followers, which will take them by surprise and fill them with shock and alarm.

Later still, but before Luke had put his Gospel together, a cataclysm had overtaken Jerusalem when the city was laid siege to and utterly destroyed—the magnificent Temple along with it. The disaster is commemorated in the arch in Rome erected to honour the Emperor Titus’ victory, where one can see bas reliefs of the treasures of the Temple being carried off as loot.

Last of all, there is the end of all things, when our world will be no more. The what or the how of that end is something we know nothing about. In a sense, all three endings are included in Jesus’ warning today. His main lesson is for us to be ready and not to think that we can postpone our preparations. When the end strikes, it will be already too late.

Jesus gives the example of the time of the Flood, when people ate and drank right up to the moment of disaster (and we know from our own media how unprepared people can be when sudden floods and other sudden disasters strike). Similarly in the days of Lot, people were leading their ordinary lives when fire and brimstone (perhaps an earthquake?) rained down on the wicked city of Sodom. Only Lot and his family, who had been previously warned, escaped. In our time, almost every day we see something in our own media of similar cataclysms.

When “the day that the Son of Man is revealed” arrives, that is, when he comes at the end of time, it will be too late to take emergency measures. One will either be ready or not. If one is resting on the roof of one’s house (as was common at that time), don’t think of going down to save something. One person will be taken away and a companion left behind. The words seem to echo what happened at the fall of Jerusalem, and are similar to all natural disasters where some are swept away and those next to them survive. In context, the implication is that one goes to God and one does not.

These texts are not intended to fill us with fear and foreboding of a capricious God. They are timely advice not to be caught napping, but to remain alert to meet the Lord. It is good advice, not just for the end of our lives, but for every day and every moment of every day. If I am always ready now, I will be ready then.

By living continuously and consciously in the presence of God, in that ‘divine milieu’ of the Kingdom mentioned above—in the ever-present now—we are not going to be caught by surprise. Far from being afraid, we will look forward to the day with anticipation, leaving totally in God’s hands the hour of his call. In practice, too, that final call will not coincide with the end of our planet, but with the moment when our individual life on this earth will come to its end. Of the inevitability of that end, there is no doubt.

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