Wednesday of Week 34 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 21:12-19

Jesus continues his warnings, but now mainly to his own disciples. He foretells experiences and happenings which will be soon realised in the Acts of the Apostles, not to mention in the subsequent history of the Church through the centuries, including our own. Jesus speaks of abuse and persecution:

…they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons…

The term ‘hand over’ is a refrain occurring again and again in the New Testament. John the Baptist was handed over to Herod who put him in prison and then executed him. Jesus himself is handed over first to the leaders of his own people and then into the hands of the Romans who would execute him. And now Jesus tells his disciples that they, too, can expect to be handed over and to be dragged before civil and religious courts “because of my name”.

Many of the early Christians came into conflict with Jewish communities and were handed over to synagogues. Synagogues were not only prayer halls and places to learn the Scriptures, but also were used for civil administration and as places of confinement while awaiting trial.

The charges may be civil or criminal, but the real reason will be that the accused are followers of Christ. For example, countries that practice religious persecution always insist people are arrested (or worse) because of their violation of civil and criminal laws, and not because of their religious affiliation. As such, Christians become objects of fear and hatred, their ideas seen as threatening and even subversive.

But says Jesus, his followers are not themselves to fear or be anxious. When the time comes, they will know what to do and what to say. He will tell them what to say and how to answer.

This promise has been vindicated again and again across time. The really sad thing is that those betraying them to the authorities will often be members of their own household—”parents and siblings…relatives and friends”. Again, this prophecy sadly has been realised all too often.

Jesus continues:

You will be hated by all because of my name.

This is strange and, in a way, makes no sense. Jesus—who preached truth, love, freedom, peace, justice and non-violence—becomes, in his followers, the object of lies, hatred, imprisonment and torture, division, injustice and the most terrible violence.

But not a hair of your head will perish.

This is not a phrase to be taken literally, because many suffer terribly in their bodies, but there is an inner integrity and wholeness that nothing can destroy.

By your endurance you will gain your souls.

That is, by going through all that our enemies can throw at us, we come out at the end people who are whole and complete and who can lift our heads up high. There are many examples even in our own recent past: Bishop Oscar Romero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, St Maximilian Kolbe, Edith Stein (St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross), to name a few. Their memories are treasured and become an inspiration to all of us.

Let us pray that we may have the courage to be true to our Christian values whatever the cost. Let us not be surprised that our faith and our religion can create such anger and such hostility.

At the same time, we reach out continually in truth and love to dissipate the unjustified fears that our beliefs can engender in others. We are a threat to false values, but we must try hard to help people see where real truth and goodness lie. And we do that by seeking for that in our own lives.

Read more

Wednesday of Week 34 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Revelation 15:1-4

In our reading today, John describes another of his visions:

Then I saw another portent in heaven, great and amazing: seven angels with seven plagues, which are the last, for with them the wrath of God is ended.

Later in the chapter, John will describe how:

…one of the four living creatures gave the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God…

These bowls are filled with God’s anger against the unrepentant wicked. Today’s reading consists of the introduction to the chapter, which precedes the vision of the seven bowls, and it contains a triumphant hymn of the good and righteous. In this way it sets up the context in which God’s anger and God’s punishment against the wicked are seen as entirely just and justified. These punishments are the last because “they exhaust the anger of God”—with them God’s anger is satisfied.

God’s anger is a theme that goes right through the New Testament. Paul, for instance, in the letter to the Romans says:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of those who by their injustice suppress the truth. (Rom 1:18)

And it is spoken about even more frequently in the Old Testament. We remember the many occasions when God was deeply disappointed with the thankless behaviour of his people whom he had delivered from the slavery of Egypt. Even earlier there is the punishment of the Flood, and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. In later times, one invasion followed another, kings were deposed or died terrible deaths, the people were taken away into exile, Jerusalem and the Temple were sacked and destroyed more than once—all the result of Israel’s sin.

However, we have to be careful when speaking of God’s anger not to equate it with the kind of anger we ourselves are prone to from time to time. Our anger is often a spontaneous and uncontrolled emotional reaction to a situation and is often quite out of proportion to what actually happened. God’s anger is measured and balanced. It is not really anger in our sense. Rather, it is the response he gives to those who totally reject his call to a life of truth and love and union with him. In fact, it is not God who rejects and punishes his people. Rather, it is they who reject him and find themselves in terrible isolation from the One for whom their whole being craves.

Our God is much more a God of love, who did not spare his only Son that we might be saved rather than condemned. God did with his Son what Abraham was ready to do, but did not have to. But still there are those who turn their backs on that love. What can God do except let them go and have their will?

In his vision John sees a “sea of glass mixed with fire”. It is thought that this is a heavenly counterpart to a basin in the Jerusalem Temple which was known as the “Sea”. Other symbols of the Temple which appear in Revelation are: the lamps, the altar, the altar of incense, and the Ark of the Covenant. The “sea of glass” represents the new heavenly Temple, where the elect gather and sing their praises to God.

The elect are those who have struggled victoriously against the Beast, his statue “and the number of its name”. This seems to refer to those especially who chose to die as martyrs, rather than worship the image of the emperor as a god. (One wonders whether the Romans really believed the divine attributes of their emperors, most of whom had glaring human weaknesses, and enforced bowing to the emperor’s image mainly as a test of loyalty to the regime. In any case, committed Christians were not prepared to compromise the absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ. They would not give to Caesar what belonged to God.)

The gathered assembly of the elect, each with a harp given to them by God, now sings the hymn of Moses and of the Lamb. The Hymn of Moses, found in Exodus, celebrated the triumph of the Israelites over Pharaoh. It begins with the words:

I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;
horse and rider he has thrown into the sea… (Ex 15:1)

We sing part of this hymn during the Easter Vigil liturgy. It is also a victory song and was sung on Sabbath evenings in the synagogue.

Here the elect also sing “the song of the Lamb”, who has triumphed over the forces of evil in bringing deliverance to all his followers. It is a hymn to “the Lord God the Almighty…the King of the nations”, who alone is holy and to whom all peoples eventually will come in adoration because his “judgments have been revealed”.

Let us pray that we too may one day come to sing this hymn of praise, adoration and thanksgiving in a face to face presence with our Lord. Let us not, through our own stupid choices, face the “anger” of our God and find ourselves hearing those terrible words:

Truly I tell you, I do not know you. (Matt 25:12)

Read more