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Commentary on Matthew 22:1-14

In our readings we have jumped from chapter 20 to chapter 22 and read another Kingdom Parable, not unrelated to yesterday’s, about the workers in the vineyard.

Yesterday it was a question of resentment at God’s generosity to latecomers in his kingdom. Today it is rather sadness over the Jewish leaders’ refusal to accept Jesus as Messiah and Lord. The parable is a kind of potted history and is more like an allegory than a parable.

The king (God) gives a wedding banquet (the happiness of the Messianic age) for his son (Jesus the Messiah). But when he invites people (the Jews) to attend, they refuse to come and make all kinds of excuses. Others actually attack the king’s servants and messengers (the prophets and the early Christian evangelisers).

The king became angry and:

…sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city.

This is surely a reference to the Roman army under the emperor Titus which sacked and destroyed Jerusalem in AD 70. The Temple, the heart of Judaism, was also destroyed and plundered and has never since been rebuilt. Today an Islamic mosque stands on the site.

Because the invited guests will not come, the servants (the Jewish disciples of Jesus) are instructed to go out and bring in anyone they can find:

Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad, so the wedding hall was filled with guests.

All are called—both the good and sinful.

The climax of the story at first seems somewhat unfair. People have been pulled in from highways and byways, and now one is condemned for not wearing a wedding garment! But the parable has in fact moved to the final judgement. In fact, Matthew may be combining what were originally two original parables into one.

The wedding garment clearly stands for faith and baptism combined with a lived-out commitment to the Gospel, something necessary to be accepted into the eternal happiness of the Kingdom.

As Jesus says at the end:

For many are called, but few are chosen.

Many were called and invited to attend the banquet, but more than that was expected of them. They had to answer the call by saying an unqualified ‘Yes’ to Jesus. Being baptised and having the label ‘Christian’ or ‘Catholic’ is not enough. We have also to live out in our lives and relationships what we claim to believe in.

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Commentary on Ezekiel 37:1-14

Today’s First Reading is a kind of parable of the renewal of Israel—a theme not unlike that of yesterday’s reading. The prophet gives no indication as to when it was written, but it must be dated after 586 BC, the year following the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. God’s people are in exile in distant Babylon and see no brightness in their future.

In his vision, the prophet is set down by God in a valley full of bones. Such scenes must not have been unknown as the result of battles when the casualties were left behind by fleeing armies to die and rot. As we will see, these bones symbolise Israel’s apparently hopeless condition in exile. They are “very dry”, indicating that they are long dead and beyond hope of resuscitation. But Ezekiel is now going to receive a message of hope for the future.

Perhaps testing his faith, God asks Ezekiel if they can live again. “O Lord God, you know” the prophet replies. He is then told to prophesy to them:

O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.

Apart from addressing people, Ezekiel had also addressed inanimate things like mountains and forests, and now it is lifeless bones. Through him, Yahweh tells the bones he will bring spirit into them so that they may become living again. The Hebrew word ruah used here can mean spirit, breath or wind. They will once more have tendons, flesh, skin and breath. A listing of four items indicates wholeness and completeness.

As Ezekiel spoke the prophecy, there was a great rattling sound as the bones reformed into whole skeletons and grew sinews and flesh covered by skin. The sound could refer either to the bones coming together or to the active presence of God over them.

But there was as yet no breath, no life. This recalls the two steps by which the man was created in Genesis. He was first formed from the dust of the earth and then received the breath of life. Ezekiel then follows the Lord’s instructions:

Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain…

Then they all rose to their feet and formed a mighty army.

The Jerusalem Bible comments:

“God announces the messianic restoration of Israel after the sufferings of the Exile. But also, by the imagery chosen, he is already preparing minds for the idea of individual resurrection of the body, vaguely perceived in Job and explicitly stated in Daniel.” (edited)

Clearly, the risen bones are the restored House of Israel. In exile in Babylon, they had lost all hope and were in the depths of despair:

Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.

That was how they felt separated from their homeland.

Ezekiel is now to tell them that their graves will be opened and they will return to their homeland. This final part of the reading has switched from the image of a battlefield of dead bones to that of a cemetery of many graves.

As in yesterday’s reading, Yahweh promises to give them his spirit, a spirit of life:

I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act… (Ezek 37:14)

It is clear from the context that Yahweh is not speaking here of a resurrection from the dead, but of the restoration of Israel as a nation.

As we read this dramatic passage, we can transpose its images to our Christian situation. God, through Jesus, is for us, too, a source of new life. But through our infidelities that life can become effectively dead in us. Spiritually, we become as dry as dead bones.

Jesus said that he had come precisely to give us new life, life in greater abundance. He made this promise many times in the Gospel and proved it by the new life he gave to so many people by raising them from death, by healing them of incurable diseases or disabilities, by liberating them from the power of evil influences.

We too have been given new life in Baptism, but we need to be constantly renewed in heart and spirit. May the Lord never cease to pour his Spirit into our hearts.

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Commentary on Matthew 22:34-40

Matthew’s Gospel is building up to its climax. The continued confrontation between Jesus and the religious leaders is leading to the final showdown. It had been described symbolically in the parable we heard yesterday.

This parable is followed in Matthew by three encounters where Jesus’ opponents try to wrongfoot him by showing him to be in opposition to the Law. There is the famous scene where he is asked whether it is right to pay tribute to Caesar or not. The question is put in such a way that, no matter what answer he gives, he will say the wrong thing. This is followed by the Saduccees, who did not believe in the after life, bringing up what they thought was an insoluble problem for those who did believe in the resurrection of the dead.

In both cases, Jesus dealt expeditiously with his questioners and left them with no comeback.

Today we read of a third encounter. The Pharisees, who were very pleased that the Sadducees had been silenced by Jesus, now had their own challenge for him. They asked him:

Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?

This was a much-discussed question among the experts. There were more than 600 laws and it was common to ask which ones were of greater importance than others.

Jesus responds very quickly, not by using his own words, but by quoting from the Books of the Law themselves. And his answer contains not one, but two laws:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. (Deut 6:5)

You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Lev 19:18)

They both have the word ‘love’ in common. It is important to be aware that the word translated ‘love’ here is the verb agapeo, from which we get agape; it is not phileo. Agape can be described as an intense desire for the good or the well-being of the other. Philia, on the other hand, implies friendship and affection. We are not asked to have affection for each other, only to work for the good of the other, no matter what that person is like.

And, from the Gospel (see Matt 25) we know that not only are these two commandments similar, they are complementary and inseparable. In other words, it is not possible to love God and not love the neighbour and vice versa.

So Jesus is, strictly speaking, answering their question about the “greatest commandment” (singular). The greatest commandment is simultaneously to love God and neighbour. And, in Luke’s Gospel, the identity of the “neighbour” will be clearly shown, although it is also in fact clearly indicated later in Matthew’s Gospel:

I was hungry…thirsty…just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters…you did it to me. (Matt 25:35-40)

Jesus says:

On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.

In other words, the whole of the Old Testament teaching is linked to these two laws. The Law was contained in the Pentateuch, the first five books of our Bible; the Prophets included both the major prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel) and the twelve minor prophets, as well as the so-called ‘former’ prophets—Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. Also included were the Wisdom books.

Jesus is saying that as long as one is truly loving God and neighbour, the rest of the Law will take care of itself. There may even be times when such love will transcend and override the requirements of some laws. No truly loving act can ever be sinful.

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Commentary on Ezekiel 43:1-7 Read Saturday of Week 20 of Ordinary Time – First Reading »

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Commentary on Matthew 23:1-12 Read Saturday of Week 20 of Ordinary Time – Gospel »

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Commentary on Luke 13:18-21

At this point Luke inserts two short parables about the Kingdom of God which Jesus is inaugurating. Let us remind ourselves briefly what we mean by the ‘Kingdom of God’. The Greek word is basileia, which is more accurately translated ‘kingship’ or ‘reign’. So it is a network of relationships, rather than a place, that we are talking about. The basileia of God occurs wherever people are submitting themselves to that loving power of God in their lives and in their mutual relationships, working together to bring God’s love and justice to the world.

Jesus is the symbol, the very embodiment, of the Kingdom as, through him, God’s loving power breaks into people’s lives. And, insofar as they accept him and his message, the Kingdom is being realised. In the Lord’s Prayer, we ask God that the whole world may, in this sense, come under the reign of God when we say:

…your Kingdom come; your will be done on earth as in heaven.

So today, Jesus gives two parables or images of the Kingdom. First, he compares it to a mustard seed which a man planted in his garden. The tiny seed eventually grew into a bush, large enough that birds were able to make their nests in it.

When these words were written, the Church, the agent of Jesus’ mission, was still tiny, but it had already begun to grow considerably from its beginnings with a handful of Jesus’ disciples. There is an air of hope and confidence that it will continue to grow in spite of the persecutions and setbacks it is facing and will continue to face. How amazed would those Christians be to know that the seed has since grown, not into a shrub, but into a huge tree!

In our own time, we need to keep fresh the hope and confidence of this parable. In so far as we are dedicated to truth and love, we have nothing to fear; ultimately they will and must prevail.

The second parable compares the reign of God to a small measure of yeast that a woman kneads into a batch of dough as she makes bread. In time, under the influence of the small amount of yeast, the whole batch will begin to swell and rise. In Scripture, yeast, because it is a fermenting agent, usually symbolises what is evil and corrupt, but here the emphasis is on the goodness of its growth effect.

This is an image of how the reign of God spreads through the world. It does so by being totally inserted into that world. Externally it is not seen, but its influence is felt everywhere, bringing about gradual change. As Christians, we are called to be agents (though not the only agents) of the Kingdom. We can only do this by ourselves being fully inserted in our societies, not by separating ourselves from them.* At the same time, we must keep our distinctively Christian vision just as the yeast, though invisible, remains distinct from the dough it is transforming.

If this looks like infiltration, it is! But not all infiltration is bad, not if it is driven by God’s truth, goodness and beauty. Such infiltration does not undermine but builds up and transforms.

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*Notwithstanding this, there are cloistered and contemplative communities who, while physically separated from the ‘world’, devote their time and energy to pray for our world.

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Commentary on Ezekiel 28:1-10

The message of today’s reading is very clear and as relevant now as it was then. Tyre was a Phoenician city on the coast of the Mediterranean in what is now Lebanon. The Phoenicians were famous in ancient times as traders and for their skill in seafaring. It is not fully clear whether Ezekiel is personally attacking King Ittobaal, ruler of Tyre at the time, or the whole city for placing itself on the same level as God.

The city bases this claim on its collective wisdom. Says the prophet rather mockingly:

You are indeed wiser than Daniel…

This claimed wisdom was, as believed, the source of the city’s enormous wealth and power. Daniel, like Solomon, was a byword for wisdom in the Old Testament. This does not so much allude to the Daniel who is the hero of Daniel 1-12, but rather to the Daniel of chapter 13 (in many translations), who solved the case of the alleged adultery of Susanna (see Sus 1:47-64 in the NRSVue Bible).

However, the prophet says, with growing wealth and power has come increasing pride and arrogance, a sense of omnipotence. The empty base of this sense of security will soon be shattered when the city is attacked by foreigners who are even more powerful—referring to the Babylonians. They will bring death and destruction. Then, what will become of the claims to divine power?

Says God through his prophet:

…you are but a mortal and no god,
[helpless] in the hands of those who pierce you…

They will die the same death as the “uncircumcised”, the most uncivilised of barbarians. (Note that the Phoenicians, like the Israelites and the Egyptians, practised circumcision.)

Times and attitudes have not changed very much. There are still people in our own time and in our own society who believe that a high level of education, wealth and power give a kind of invincibility. It includes those who have such great such wealth and power and those who struggle all their lives to get some of it. With money, anything can be bought—everyone has his price.

Yet, the lives of all, rich and poor, educated and illiterate, powerful and marginalised, can be snuffed out in the twinkling of an eye. But our destiny is in other hands, and the sooner we realise that the better for our happiness and peace of mind.

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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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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 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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Commentary on Galatians 1:13-24

Paul takes up where he left off yesterday. He continues to answer the charge that, by waiving the need for Gentiles to be circumcised after their conversion, he was being ‘soft’ on them.

On the contrary, Paul reminds the Galatians, before his own conversion, he had been absolutely totally committed to Judaism. By this he meant the Jewish faith and way of life that had developed during the late period between the Old and New Testament times. The term is derived from Judah, the southern kingdom that came to an end in the sixth century BC with the exile into Babylonia. As a devout Jew and a Pharisee, Paul had been ruthless in trying to wipe out the “church of God”, the assembly (ecclesia) of God’s people which he now identifies with the Christian community—the New Testament counterpart of the Old Testament assembly.

In fact, so loyal was he to his Jewish traditions, that Paul stood out among his fellow Jews for the zeal with which he attacked the followers of Jesus. These traditions, also called in the Gospel the “tradition of the elders” (Matt 15:2), refer to traditions orally transmitted from generation to generation and are to be distinguished from the written law that came through Moses. According to the NIV Bible:

“After the Babylonian captivity, the Jewish rabbis began to make meticulous rules and regulations governing the daily life of the people. These were interpretations and applications of the law of Moses, handed down from generation to generation. In Jesus’ day, this ‘tradition of the elders’ was in oral form. It was not until about AD 200 that it was put into writing in the Mishnah.”

Paul, before his conversion, saw the ‘Christians’ (who were, of course, Jewish) as a dangerous deviation from the Jewish traditions and had to be stopped at all costs.

But then a great change came over Paul. Like some of the earlier prophets (Isaiah and Jeremiah), Paul had been chosen by God long before his birth for a very special mission. He was given the special grace and blessing of first having Jesus the Son revealed to him so that then he might share with Gentiles (i.e. foreigners or non-Jews) the Good News that Jesus brings.

As if to emphasise the direct nature of the revelation he received, he stresses that at this time, he did not discuss his experience with anyone, nor was he in contact with any of the Apostles still in Jerusalem—which was both the religious centre of Judaism and the birthplace of Christianity. He wants to emphasise that his change of heart was the result of the direct influence of God, and not due to persuasive arguments from human beings.

Instead Paul went off to “Arabia”. This probably indicates the desert kingdom of the Nabataean Arabs on the east side of the Jordan River which stretched from Damascus to Suez. Damascus was (and is) the capital of Syria and was, of course, also the scene of Paul’s (Saul’s) dramatic conversion.

We do not know how long Paul stayed in the desert, but three years later he tells us he was in Jerusalem and stayed with Peter (Cephas in Aramaic) for about two weeks. The word Cephas (or Kephas) comes from the Aramaic word for ‘stone’ or ‘rock’ (see Matt 16:18). In the Greek, Peter is petros and ‘rock’ is petra. The name designates a like quality in the bearer (see John 1:42). However, in the Gospels, Peter is anything but a rock; he is impulsive and unstable. But in Acts, he is a pillar of the early church and clearly its recognised leader. Jesus named him not for what he was, but for what, by God’s grace, he would become.

Except for James, who seems to have been the leading elder in the Jerusalem church at the time, Paul says he did not see anyone else. Clearly, the only effective influence on his new life at this time was Jesus himself.

After this visit, he went back to Syria and then on to Cilicia, a Roman province in southern Turkey. We know he actually went to Tarsus, the main city of Cilicia and Paul’s place of birth.

He was still relatively unknown to the Christians in the Jerusalem area. Paul writes that they only knew:

The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy. And they glorified God because of me.

But it is clear enough that Paul was not yet quite ready to become part of the Christian mission.

Let us reflect today on our calling for we, too, were chosen before our birth to be followers of Jesus. Why us and not others is a mystery we will never be able to answer. As we go through life we may receive other callings and I could ask myself today to what kind of service is Jesus calling me at this time in my life? Let us recall and give thanks to God also for the very many people who, directly or indirectly, have brought and continue to bring a deeper understanding of Christ into our lives.