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Commentary on Tobit 1:1 – 2; 2:1 – 8 Read Monday of Week 9 of Ordinary Time – First Reading »

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Commentary on 2 Corinthians 11:18,21-30

Paul continues to defend his credentials against those ‘super apostles’ he felt were misleading the Christians of Corinth. Apparently they were boasting of their qualifications, so Paul feels he must do the same and he is confident their record is no match for his own.

He begins by pointing to his own impeccable Jewish credentials. It looks as if that was just what the ‘super apostles’ were trying to do at Paul’s expense. On several occasions in his letters, Paul appealed to his Jewish past.

But he can certainly match their credentials—and even more. Like them he is a Hebrew, an Israelite, and a son of Abraham. Elsewhere he tells that he was even a Pharisee. In other places, Paul distinguishes authentic from inauthentic heirs of Abraham. Here he allows his opponents to claim descent from Abraham, but only to emphasise the claim that immediately follows. He even allows them to call themselves ministers and servants of Christ, because he has further credentials which they cannot come near matching.

He goes on to describe what his ministry of Christ has involved. The long list of trials and hardships are what he has been prepared to undergo in the service of his humiliated and crucified Lord. There is no way his opponents can match this level of service and dedication.

For the sake of Christ and for the preaching of the Gospel he has been through far more than any of them—far greater labours, far more imprisonments, far worse beatings and numerous brushes with death. There follows a long list of hardships, sufferings and dangers—all the result of his unstinting efforts to get the message of Christ through to people. Apart from what Paul enumerates here, there is no other record of these hardships in the New Testament.

He mentions the following:

• Five times receiving 39 lashes (the legal limit) from the Jews
• Three times beaten with rods
• Stoned once
• Three times shipwrecked
• A night and a day waiting to be rescued at sea
• Frequent journeys with dangers from rivers, from robbers, from his own people, from Gentiles
• Dangers in cities and in the wilderness
• Dangers at sea
• Dangers among brothers who proved treacherous
• Toil and hardship
• Sleepless nights
• Hunger and thirst
• Frequent fastings, which may have been voluntary or involuntary
• Experiencing cold and exposure

On top of all that, there were his concerns about the well-being of the churches. He has always totally identified with their problems:

Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I am not indignant?

Finally however, if he really must boast, he will boast of his weakness. We will see more about that weakness in our final reading tomorrow.

He knows his rivals cannot match this record of dedication and self-sacrifice and his total commitment to the needs of his people. He can match them on every other level, but they can come nowhere near him in what he has been prepared to suffer for the sake of the gospel. He offers this as proof of the genuineness of his apostleship over what he sees as preachers of novelty.

Paul’s list is highly impressive and very few of us have been called or will be called to make anything like the same sacrifices for the living and sharing of our Christian life. But perhaps we could do more than we have done so far and be more ready to undergo some inconveniences for the sake of Christ and those who are hungering for his Word.

We can ask ourselves the threefold question:

What have I done for Christ?
What am I doing for Christ?
What will I do for Christ?

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Commentary on Matthew 8:23-27

In the previous verses to today’s reading, Jesus tells his disciples to get into a boat and cross to the other side of the Sea of Gallilee (also know as the Lake of Tiberias). As they crossed the lake, a storm suddenly blew up. It seems this is a common feature of the Sea of Galilee.

The word that Matthew uses for ‘storm’ should actually be translated ‘earthquake’. It was a word commonly used in apocalyptic literature for the shaking of the old world as God brings in his Kingdom. The Synoptic Gospels use the word in describing the events leading up to the final coming of Jesus. It indicates that there is more to this story than just a narrative.

While waves crashed into the boat, Jesus remained fast asleep. In great fear, the disciples woke up him:

Lord, save us! We are perishing!

Jesus was not very sympathetic:

Why are you afraid, you of little faith?

Then he stood up and rebuked the wind and sea. There immediately followed a complete calm.

The disciples were awestruck and, in a way, were more afraid than ever. A storm they could understand, but not what they saw Jesus doing.

What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?

In their book, only one person could have this kind of power—God himself. Their question contained its own answer. It was a further step in their realising just who Jesus their Master really was.

We can, however, read another meaning into this story. We can understand it as a kind of parable about the early Church, the Church for which Matthew is writing. It was a Church consisting of many, small scattered communities or churches. They were surrounded by large, pagan and often very hostile peoples. Each little church community must have felt like those disciples in the boat with Jesus surrounded by a large expanse of water. Sometimes that water got very angry and threatened to engulf their boat.

At the same time, Jesus their Lord seemed to be very far away; he seemed to be asleep, unaware and uncaring of their plight. The fact that in the Gospel today they address him as “Lord” would indicate that the story points more to their present situation as isolated communities in a very uncertain world. Then they would come to realise that Jesus really was with them and that he did care a lot. And peace would come back to them again. But the peace would be in their hearts; the sea around them might be just as stormy as ever.

This is something for us to learn. Most of the time we can do very little to change the world around us or change the people who bother us. Maybe we have no right to make them change. But we can change; we can learn to see things in a different way; we can learn to be proactive instead of reactive. Above all, we can learn to be aware that God is close to us at all times, that he does know, that he does care, and that, instead of taking problems and crises away, he helps us to go through them and keep our peace.

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Commentary on Matthew 9:32-37

We come today to the end of the section recounting ten miracles of Jesus (chaps 8-9). The last miracle described is that of a man whose deafness arises from his being possessed by a demon. It follows immediately the cure of two blind men, a story which we did not read and which is told again by Matthew in chapter 20. It seems to correspond to the healing of the blind man Bartimaeus in Mark (chap 10), although there are significant differences.

The man is brought to Jesus by the people. Jesus drives out the demon and the man immediately is able to speak. There is a double reaction. The people are astounded:

Never has anything like this been seen in Israel.

The implications of Jesus’ divine origins are very clear. On the other hand, Pharisees were saying:

By the ruler of the demons he casts out the demons.

Elsewhere Jesus will show the absurd illogicality of that charge.

Stories of the blind, deaf, and mute in the Gospels always have a deeper meaning. Far more serious than physical blindness, deafness and an inability to speak are being spiritually blind, deaf and mute. The Pharisees in the Gospels represent such people, and we see it happening in this story. They are blind because they cannot see or do not want to see God at work in Jesus. They are deaf because they do not hear or do not want to understand what he says. And they are also mute because they cannot speak the words of life that Jesus gives them.

The very same can happen to each one of us. Let us pray today to be able to see clearly, to understand what God says to us and to be able to share it with others.

This section of Matthew concludes with a general description or summary of what Jesus was doing. He was going through all the towns and villages of Galilee; he was teaching in synagogues; he was proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom; and he was healing all kinds of diseases and sickness.

But behind all that he does, is his deep compassion for the needs of the people. He sees them harassed and dejected, wandering and aimless, like sheep without a guiding shepherd—a familiar image in the Old Testament (see Ezekiel 34). Then, looking at his disciples, he says:

The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few…

Jesus cannot do it all on his own. In fact, he will hardly step outside the boundaries of Palestine. He needs many helpers.

Today, the situation has not changed. The harvest is as big as ever; people are as lost and rudderless as they have ever been in spite of the great strides in knowledge we have made. Where are the labourers? They are not just the bishops, the priests or the religious brothers and sisters. That is a very narrow concept of labourers.

Every single baptised person is called, in some way, to be a harvester, to help people find and experience the truth and love that God gives in Jesus. Every single person, in that sense (and it is a very real sense) has a vocation, a call to serve and to build the Kingdom. What and where and with whom is my vocation?

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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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Commentary on 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8

Although Paul in yesterday’s reading praised the Thessalonians for the depth of their faith whose reputation had spread far and wide, he recalls today some of the difficulties he faced at first in bringing the gospel message to the city. 

Paul had experienced such great opposition in Thessalonica that he and Silas had to be secretly escorted from the city (Acts 17:1-10).  This came on top of the humiliating experiences he had in Philippi where he and Silas were, as a result of false accusations, arrested, flogged and thrown into prison (from which they were rescued by an earthquake!). It is probably the memory of these experiences which underlies his words today recalling his selflessness in preaching the gospel to them, his affection for them, and the pleasant relationships he has with them now.

He begins by saying that they themselves know his visit to the Thessalonians has not been without effect. The local church could refute accusations of insincerity which seem to have been levelled against Paul by certain hostile elements. In spite of the terrible abuse, including imprisonment, which he and Silas endured at Philippi, God still gave them the courage to preach the gospel fearlessly to the Thessalonians, even though they met with opposition there also.

When they first arrived, Paul made some converts among the Jews and a larger number among the Greeks, but his activities aroused the anger and indignation of many Jews, who did not like Paul presenting Jesus as the Messiah.  These stirred up a riot in the city.  The result was that Jason, a supporter of Paul, and his family were seized, while Paul and his companion Silas had to be hurriedly taken away to another town.

Paul now assures the Thessalonians that his exhortations do not come from any deceit or impure motives or trickery.  The Greek word for ‘trickery’ was originally used of bait for catching fish and came to be used of any sort of cunning used for personal gain.

On the contrary, Paul and companions have God’s approval to be entrusted with the proclamation of the gospel and that is the basis of their preaching—to please God and not human beings.  For it is God who “tests our hearts”. In fact, they have never been motivated either by a desire to be flattered or for personal gain.  They have never sought any special honours either from the Thessalonians or anyone else, even though they could have insisted on their own dignity and prestige as apostles and messengers of Christ, or that materially they could have expected to have been fed and kept at the Thessalonians’ expense.  Although Paul strongly believed that those preaching the gospel had the right to be supported by the communities they visited, he himself preferred to be self-supporting.

On the contrary, he says that they live a simple life and their concern is only those they serve:

So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.

At the same time, he and his co-workers are treating the Thessalonians with the greatest gentleness:

But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children.

What is always so striking is how Paul can see the hand of Christ in all that happens to him and his sheer unstoppable enthusiasm in sharing the gospel message with others, whatever the obstacles.  This was because the message was not just something he was handing on; it had entered the very fibre of his being.  As he will say elsewhere:

…it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. (Galatians 2:20)

Would that each one of us could say the same!  We cannot be preachers of the gospel until it is fully absorbed into our very selves.  It cannot be just a set of doctrines which we hold to be true.  We need the burning enthusiasm of Paul.

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Commentary on Matthew 8:1-4

The two chapters (8 and 9) following the Sermon on the Mount include a long list of miracles (ten altogether) performed by Jesus. They are seen as a confirmation of his authority to teach because they are so obviously the work of God himself. The man who can do these things also has the right to be heard and followed.

The first story is the cure of a leper. It is told with the usual brevity and lack of detail characteristic of Matthew (compare with Mark’s version, 1:40-45). A leper begs to be healed. His faith and trust in Jesus is revealed by his saying:

Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.

Jesus replies:

I am willing.

And he cures him instantly. We may note the simplicity of Jesus’ act. In this, the healing miracles of Jesus contrast with the fantastic stories from the Hellenistic world and those sometimes attributed to Jewish rabbis.

But Jesus’ miracles also differ because of the spiritual and symbolic meaning attached to them. They often have the quality of a parable, and frequently the words that accompany the miracle are of greater significance. Such is true in this case, where the healing of the leper has wider ramifications as indicated below.

While compassion is many times the motive behind a miracle, most often they are seen as strengthening a person’s faith. Jesus, too, is very selective in the miracles he performs and often demands secrecy from the beneficiary. Jesus does not want to be the centre of any sensational wonder-working. It will be the miracle of his resurrection that will be the really determining factor of who he is.

Soon, we will see Jesus sending out his disciples to proclaim the Kingdom and giving them his own powers of healing. Their mandate will be to do the same work that Jesus has been doing. The 10 miracles recounted in chapters 8 and 9 will be the kind of thing that the missionary successors of Jesus will also do.

After the healing, Jesus then instructs the man, in accordance with the requirements of the law, to go to the Temple to get a certificate from the priests as proof of his return to health. Only with this official documentation will he be allowed to re-enter society.

The leper was a particularly unfortunate person in ancient society. It was known that through contact with a leprous person one could contract the disease, so they were kept isolated from the rest of society. There was, of course, no known cure and the person’s body just gradually rotted away.

What was probably more tragic was the fact that many people with other kinds of similar-looking skin diseases, which were not at all infectious, could be branded as lepers and condemned to the same policy of isolation. The healing of the leper by Jesus was then much more than a physical healing. It meant that the man could be fully re-integrated into normal society.

In our time, the leper can be a symbol for all those who are marginalised by our societies for one reason or another—foreigners; people of a different colour or culture, or gender, or religion; those with addictions—to drugs or alcohol, wealth or power, or pornography; victims of sexually transmitted diseases…the list could go on and on.

We Christians have a special responsibility to be agents of healing to re-integrate such people and accept them fully as brothers and sisters.

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Commentary on Matthew 8:5-11

The Gospel describes the story of the centurion who came to Jesus, asking that his servant be healed. When presented with the unexpected level of faith this gentile soldier had:

Jesus…was amazed and said to those who followed him, “Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and will take their places at the banquet with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven…”

The Kingdom which Jesus comes to proclaim is for all peoples everywhere. It is the central message of Christmas. This is not just a time for celebration and for parties. The birth of the Prince of Peace in the poverty of the stable is a challenge to us to carry on his work among God’s children everywhere.

Jesus has not failed. It is we who have done so little to carry on what he began. Advent is a time for us to reflect on the real meaning of God’s coming to live and work among us, and on the responsibility of his followers to carry on the work of making the Kingdom a reality for all.

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Commentary on Joshua 3:7-11,13-17

We move on now to the next phase in the history of Israel. We begin reading the book of Joshua. It is the first of the so-called historical books which include Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings. They are also known as the ‘Early Prophets’.

The book of Joshua falls into three parts:

1. the conquest of the promised land (chaps 1-12);
2. the partition of the territory among the tribes (chaps 13-21);
3. the last days of Joshua, especially his last discourse and the assembly at Shechem (chaps 22-24).

Joshua is the link with the previous five books and takes up where Deuteronomy left off. He was the leader, chosen by Moses and accepted by the people, to lead the Israelites into the Promised Land.

Today’s reading comes from chapter 3, which describes the miraculous crossing of the Jordan into the Promised Land. It is reminiscent of the crossing of the Sea of Reeds when the Israelites escaped from Egypt. Then it was the command of Moses which drove back the sea. Here it is the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant in which were the tables of the Law, representing the presence and power of God, which stop the river in its flow and allowed all the Israelites to cross in safety.

As the reading opens we hear Yahweh speak to Joshua:

This day I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, so that they may know that I will be with you as I was with Moses.

Joshua will be made great in the eyes of the people so that they will know that, as with Moses in the past, God is with Joshua now. A major purpose for God’s intervening wondrously in the crossing of the Jordan was to validate the leadership of Joshua. With a miraculous event so much like that of the Sea of Reeds crossing, Joshua’s position as the Lord’s servant would be shown to be comparable to that of Moses.

Joshua is then told to give an order to the priests who were carrying the Ark of the Covenant. When they reached the banks of the Jordan, they were to stop in the river itself. Speaking to the Israelites, he told them to gather together and listen to the words of Yahweh their God. There was going to be a sign by which they would know that the living God was with them and that he was going to drive out the Canaanites before them (as well as the Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites and Jebusites).

The manner by which God is about to bring Israel across the Jordan River, the watery boundary of the Promised Land, will bring assurance that the one true God is with them and that he will surely dislodge the present inhabitants of Canaan. Two fundamental issues are at stake:

1. Who is the true and mighty God—the God of Israel or the god on whom the Canaanites depend (Baal, who was believed to reign as king among the gods because he had triumphed over the sea-god)? By opening the way through the flooded Jordan, the Lord would show both Israel and the Canaanites that he is Lord over the waters (as he was at the “Red Sea”, at the Flood and at Creation) and that he is able to establish his own order in the world.
2. Who has the rightful claim to the land—the Lord or the Canaanites? By passing safely through the Jordan at the head of his army, the Lord showed the rightness of his claim on the land. In the ancient Near East a common way for obtaining the judicial verdict of the gods was by compelling the accused to submit to trial by water ordeal. Usually this involved casting him into a river (if the accused drowned, the gods had found him guilty; if not, the gods had declared him innocent).

In Israel, however, another form of water ordeal was practiced. Significantly, the Lord would enter the Jordan first (in the Ark with the priests) and then remain there until his whole army had crossed safely over. Thus his claim to the land was vindicated before the eyes of all who heard about it. And it was Yahweh’s claim, not Israel’s. The Israelites came through the Jordan only with him and as his army, “baptised” to his service. It was a message intended not only for the Israelites, but for the residents of Canaan as well and they would understand the symbols very well.

Now Joshua tells the people:

…the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth is going to pass before you into the Jordan.

As the people left their tents to cross the river, the priests with the Ark went ahead of them. As soon as the priests carrying the Ark put their feet into the waters of the Jordan:

…the waters flowing from above stood still, rising up in a single heap far off at Adam, the city that is beside Zarethan, while those flowing toward the sea of the Arabah, the Dead Sea, were wholly cut off.

What Joshua foretold immediately took place. Zarethan was also near the entrance of the River Jabbok, which flows into the Jordan on its east bank.

And this happened even though at that time of the year, the harvest season, the river was in spate. The harvest season in the lower Jordan valley was towards the end of March and the beginning of April, when the grain and other crops that grew during the rainy season of winter were reaped. The crossing took place “on the 10th day of the first month” of the Hebrew year, which began with the first new moon after the spring equinox. At this time of the year the Jordan would be swollen as a result of the winter rains and the melting snow from Mount Hermon.

The Hebrew for ‘heap’ twice used here can also be found in the poetic accounts of the Sea of Reeds crossing. The sudden damming of the river could have been caused by a landslide, as has happened on other occasions. According to an Arab historian, something similar happened in AD 1267; landslides dammed the river in this area (Adama-Damieh) for several hours. And, as recently as 1927, a blockage of the water in this area was recorded that lasted over 20 hours.

Nevertheless, the miraculous element of the event is not diminished, because God, who foretold it (Jos 3:13), also caused it to take place at precisely the right moment (Jos 3:15), whether or not he used natural forces to accomplish his will. Similarly, the drying up of the Sea of Reeds has been attributed to the effects of an earthquake in the Mediterranean, perhaps accompanied by a tsunami. Meanwhile, the lower reaches of the river flowing into the Sea of Arabah, the Salt Sea, and the Dead Sea were completely cut off from the upper waters.

The people now crossed the river near to Jericho. As they did so, the priests carrying the Ark stood on dry ground in the middle of the river bed, while the whole of Israel crossed on dry ground until every single person had completed the crossing. The priests stood firm on dry land, signifying that the Lord himself remained in the place of danger until all Israel had crossed the Jordan.

This whole operation has the approval and protection of Yahweh. It is the fulfilment of the solemn promise he made to provide a home for a wandering people. It brings to closure the epic saga which began with the crossing of the Sea of Reeds and the Hebrew people escaping to freedom and now ends with another water crossing and the entry into the long-awaited Promised Land.

The Jerusalem Bible shows the links between the two events:

“There is a deliberate parallelism between the narratives of the crossing of the Jordan and entry into Canaan and the narrative of the Exodus from Egypt. The editor himself calls attention to it (3:7): Yahweh halts the Jordan just as he dried up the Sea of Reeds; the Ark of Yahweh leads the Israelites as did the pillar of cloud or of fire; Joshua plays the part that Moses played in the Exodus; and just as the adults of the Exodus period were circumcised, so in their turn are their desert-born children; the manna that had served Israel in the desert ceases as soon as the Israelites enter Canaan and the Passover is celebrated in Gilgal after the second ‘crossing’ as it had been celebrated in Egypt before the first. The parallelism between the events at the beginning and the end of the Exodus produces at the departure from Egypt a water miracle analogous to the water miracles at the crossing of the Jordan. As the Passion and Resurrection of Christ spiritually renew the events of the Exodus, so Joshua, who gave the events of the Exodus their physical fulfilment, was regarded by some Fathers as an ante-type of Jesus, who has the same name (Joshua is another form of the name Jesus and means ‘God saves’)”.

In the liturgy of the Catholic and other Christian churches, these water crossings are seen as anticipatory symbols of the saving waters of Baptism. They are recalled especially during the liturgy of the Easter Vigil when the baptismal water is blessed. Let us remember today our own Baptism and how its meaning is symbolised in our daily life as a follower of Christ.

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Commentary on Matthew 9:14-17

Today’s reading follows on yesterday’s challenge of Jesus by some Pharisees. On that occasion they asked why Jesus was eating with sinners and outcasts. Now they go one step further and ask why he is eating at all. They put forward the example of John the Baptist and his disciples who used to fast regularly. Jews were only required to fast one day in the year, on the feast of the Atonement. However, like the Pharisees, it seems that John’s disciples used to observe fasts which were not prescribed by the Law in the hope that their extra devotion would bring about an early coming of the Kingdom.

Jesus answers their question in two ways. First he says that people do not fast when they are in the company of the bridegroom. That is a time for celebration. By implication, of course, Jesus is the groom. As long as he is around, it would be inappropriate for his disciples to fast. However, he says a time will come when the groom is no longer with them, and then there will be reasons to fast.

His second answer is more profound and takes the form of two examples. It does not make sense to repair an old piece of clothing with a patch of new cloth. The new cloth, being much tougher, will, under stress, only cause the older cloth to tear. In the second example, he says that it is not wise to put new wine into old wineskins. Wine was kept in containers made of leather. Because new wine was still fermenting and expanding, it needed to be put in new leather bags which were still elastic and could expand with the wine. The old bags would be already stretched, and new wine would only cause them to burst. Then both the wine would be lost and the bags ruined.

What did Jesus mean by these images? He was giving a clear message to his critics. Jesus’ ideas were like new wine or new cloth. They could not be fitted into old containers. People like the Pharisees were trying to fit Jesus’ teaching and his ideas into their ways of thinking, but that would not work.

Clearly, the old garment and the old wineskins represent the elements of Mosaic Law that were to be reinterpreted and “fulfilled” by Jesus’ new teachings. The new cloth and the new wine, then, are the spirit of the Kingdom as proclaimed by Jesus—the new order that Jesus was initiating—what we would now call a paradigm shift, a radically new understanding of how God was to be loved and served.

So John’s disciples wanted to know, for example, why Jesus was not fasting—because in their book, a Jew fasted, and a pious Jew fasted more often. But Jesus did not measure religion by external actions like fasting or keeping other requirements of the Law (such as washing hands before eating). For him, religion was a matter of the inner spirit, as we saw in his deeper interpretations of the Law during the Sermon on the Mount.

Over the centuries the Church has moved its position in many areas as it reaches a deeper understanding of the faith and how it is to be lived in a changing world. Such a movement took place with the Second Vatican Council. It involved much more than external changes (like having the Mass in the vernacular instead of Latin). It involved a whole new way of seeing our faith and our place as Christians in the world.

Even today, there are still people who try to live in the post-Vatican II Church with a pre-Vatican II mentality. It is like trying to squeeze new wine into old wineskins. It is a source of much friction and misunderstanding in many Christian communities. We all have an obligation both to enter fully into the mind of Christ as presented in the New Testament, and to enter into the mind of the Church in this post-Vatican II era.