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Commentary on Jeremiah 17:5-10

The theme of today’s Mass concerns priorities and is about our responsibilities to those around us. It deals with Cain’s question: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” and the story of the beggar (Lazarus) and the rich man.

In the First Reading, Jeremiah makes a strong contrast between two kinds of people:

• those who think they are self-sufficient, who are immersed in the material world and ignore the place of God in their lives. They feel they ‘have it made’; and
• those who put all their trust in God and in the way of life that God suggests.

The lives of the first type are basically arid and empty:

They shall be like a shrub in the desert…

They have no eye for what is really good. Surrounded by luxuries and pleasures, they unwittingly live in a desert. They measure their lives by what they have—not by what they themselves are, and even less by what they are in their relationships with others.

The second group of people are:

…like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
in the year of drought it is not anxious,
and it does not cease to bear fruit.

Such people may lead lives of great material simplicity, but are in touch with a deeper source of wealth: God’s truth, wisdom and love.

Finally, there is the warning about our ‘gift’ for self-deception. Verse 11, not quoted (for some reason) in today’s reading, is very appropriate:

Like the partridge hatching what it did not lay,
so are all who amass wealth unjustly;
in midlife it will leave them,
and at their end they will prove to be fools.

You can’t take it with you and, while you have it, you need to share it with those who are genuinely deprived. This is clearly the message of today’s Gospel as well.

It is very easy to be persuaded that happiness lies in having things, having status, having power. But God is not interested in things that impress externally; he only judges what goes on in the depths of the heart. Where do I stand in all this? Where do I put my trust? In what are my values?

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Commentary on Tobit 6:10-11; 7:1, 9-14; 8:4-9 Read Thursday of Week 9 of Ordinary Time – First Reading »

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Commentary on Genesis 17:1, 9-10, 15-22 Read Friday of Week 12 of Ordinary Time – First Reading »

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Commentary on Romans 2:1-11

Paul now turns his attention to his fellow-Jews, although he does not mention them by name. In this section, Paul sets forth principles that govern God’s judgment.  God judges:

1. according to truth,
2. according to deeds,
3. according to the light a person has.

Paul writes:

…whoever you are, when you judge others…in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.

Paul himself is aware, as he condemns others, that he is condemning himself if he behaves in the way they do:

We know that God’s judgment on those who do such things is in accordance with truth.

Nothing can take the place of personal virtue—not the Law, not circumcision, not even the Scriptures.  The Jew and the Gentile will be judged individually by God, since all are equally liable to sin. 

Paul’s teaching about judging is the same as that of Jesus, who did not condemn judging as such, but hypocritical judging or doing so behind people’s backs in a condemnatory way. Paul’s warning had special relevance for Jews, who were inclined to look down on Gentiles because of their ignorance of God’s revelation in the Old Testament and because of their immoral lives.

In fact, as we Christians need also to remember, greater knowledge brings greater responsibility and liability:

Do you imagine, whoever you are, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgment of God?

Jesus also had said:

Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. (Luke 6:37)

He spoke about seeing the speck of dust in a brother’s eye while ignoring the large piece of wood in one’s own.  (Isn’t it like that most of the time with us too?) Instead, Paul asks:

…do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

Awareness would lead them to ask forgiveness for their own sins.  The Jews sometimes had misconstrued God’s patience to be a lack of intent to pass judgement.  Their refusal to repent of their own sins is only piling up punishment for themselves on the “Day of Retribution”, when God’s just verdict will be given. For “he will repay everyone as their deeds deserve.” 

On this sentence the Jerusalem Bible expands:

“The prophecy of ‘a day of Yahweh’ which will be a day of anger and salvation, will be fulfilled eschatologically in the ‘day of the Lord’ when Christ returns in glory.  On this ‘day of judgment’ the dead man will rise again and the whole human race will be judged in God’s court and in Christ’s.  This trial is inescapable and impartial; it is conducted by God.  Through Christ God will judge ‘the living and the dead’.  He examines the heart and his trial is by fire; he will treat everyone according to his works.  What has sown will be reaped.  Angrily he will destroy evil powers and evil people.  But for the chosen, i.e. those who have been good, there will be freedom, rest, reward, salvation, honour, praise, and glory.” (Text references omitted.)

Therefore:

He will repay according to each one’s deeds: to those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life, while for those who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth but injustice, there will be wrath and fury.

This “doing good”, of course, presumes that all we do is done with the power of God in us.  There is nothing we can do by ourselves to ‘earn’ salvation.  Our good actions are the result of our saying ‘Yes’ to God in faith. On the other hand:

There will be affliction and distress for everyone who does evil, both the Jew first and the Greek…

With spiritual privilege and insight comes greater spiritual responsibility.  Similarly:

…glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, both the Jew first and the Greek.

In short:

…God shows no partiality.

These words are both a consolation and a warning to us also.  A warning because, as Christians, we cannot expect to get special treatment when we misbehave.  On the contrary, given all the help we have received and continue to receive, even more is expected of us.  (We should remember what happened to the man who hid his ‘talent’ in the ground.) 

This is a consolation because we know that God treats every single person with absolute impartiality and justice.  He reaches out exactly the same love to every single person. We also know that he is a God rich in compassion and slow to anger.  As a first step, it is important then for us to have some of that quality in ourselves and be less hasty in passing judgment on others, especially ‘outsiders’.

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Commentary on Luke 12:35-38

In today’s Gospel, we have more advice from Jesus about readiness. It is an echo of the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids (Matt 25:1-13).

We are to be ready, with our belts fastened and our lamps burning, like servants waiting for the groom to return from the wedding. If we prepare in this way, when the master comes and knocks, we will be ready to admit him without delay.

There is a reward, a surprising reward, for servants thus prepared. When the master comes back and finds his servants awake and ready, he will seat them at table and himself wait on them:

Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them.

Jesus had said of himself:

…just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. (Matt 20:28)

He is the one who, as Master and Lord, washes the feet of his disciples. And if the master comes in the middle of the night or before dawn, blessed are those servants who are ready for his return.

This need for readiness is not a reason to be anxious nor a reason to be afraid. Reason and experience tells us again and again that the Lord’s call comes at the most unexpected times. The only solution is to be ready here and now and leave the future to take care of itself.

In our relationship with God, it is always the present which counts. The prepared servant lives constantly in the present and seeks and finds God there. A life so lived takes care of itself—and its future.

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Commentary on Luke 14:15-24

Today we have the last of four teachings of Jesus linked with meals. It was prompted by the remark of a guest at table who said:

Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!

It was very common to associate the future Messianic Kingdom with a banquet. Jesus responds with a parable which is a warning to his complacent listeners, many of whom probably smugly presumed that they would be among the small minority chosen to eat in the Kingdom.

A man threw a large dinner party with many guests invited. But when the time came and the guests were reminded, one after another they gave excuses why they were not able to come. One had just bought a piece of land and had to inspect it; another had just bought some oxen and had to try them out; a third had just been married.

It seems that the original invitation had been accepted, but when the final invitation came, excuses were made. In fact, none of the excuses has much validity. One would not buy a field and only then look at it, nor would one buy oxen without having tried them out before the purchase.

On hearing this, the master got very angry and ordered his servants to:

Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.

After this, the servants reported that there was still room, so they were given orders to scour the roads and bring in as many as they could find. Said the host:

Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled.

The parable is a clear message from Jesus to his Jewish listeners. Many of them, especially the religious leaders steeped in complacency and presumption, had rejected the invitation to follow Jesus and enter the Kingdom. Some of them would actually conspire to bring about his death. Their place would be given to those formerly seen as outcasts, both Jews and Gentiles, people aware of their needs, i.e. the “poor in spirit”. There would be a special place for the poor and the disabled, people often seen by traditional Jews as people abandoned by God and buried in sin.

To go back to the beginning of the passage, blessed indeed are those who eat together in the Kingdom, but it is clear that only those who respond to the invitation will enjoy the privilege.

We have no more right to presumption than those Jews who rejected Christ. We too are being invited to go into the Lord’s banquet hall, but it is important that we respond to the call. We do that by our totally accepting and living out the teaching of Jesus our Lord. And part of that teaching is that we, too, invite and welcome into our community those who are poor, crippled (in some way), the blind and the lame—taking these words in their broadest sense. No more than those fellow diners of Jesus, our presence at the Kingdom banquet is never to be taken for granted.

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Commentary on Luke 6:6-11

Immediately following the incident of Jesus’ disciples plucking the grains in the cornfield, we have another confrontation with religious leaders also on a Sabbath day. This one is even more sinister as it involves what is called in some police movies a ‘set up’ or ‘entrapment’.

Jesus had gone into the local synagogue, as was his practice on the Sabbath, and began to teach. Right in front of him was a man “whose right hand was withered”—no doubt a condition he was born with. There were scribes and Pharisees in the congregation and, we are told, they “were watching him” to see whether he would heal the man on a Sabbath day so that they could accuse him of breaking the Law.

Medical work was forbidden on the Sabbath because it normally took time. Jesus, of course, healed with just a word, but even if he did not, could one say that healing was against the spirit of the Sabbath? At the same time, it is also worth noting that the man was suffering from a chronic and probably non-painful disability. There was no need for him to be cured on the spot; it could easily have waited until the next day.

That gives further point to Jesus’ argument. The poor man had clearly been ‘planted’ by the religious authorities. He was being used as bait for their malicious ends. For the Pharisees and their co-conspirators, the man and his plight were secondary. Their goal was to prove their point and the man was seen as a useful tool.

Jesus, of course, is fully aware of what is going on. He speaks directly to the man with the withered hand:

Come and stand in the middle.

In some translations, the word “come” is stated as “Rise up” and is used as an indication of what is going to take place; the man is going to be given new life. Nor is there any secrecy. What Jesus is going to do will be seen by all.

But first he puts a question to the whole congregation, scribes and Pharisees included:

I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?

There is really no question because the answer is so obvious. But it was not the way these Pharisees were thinking.

Their question would be very different: “Is it right to obey the Law or to violate it?” For them the Law—every letter of the Law—was paramount. There is an irony in Jesus’ question because Jesus is planning to bring healing into a man’s life, while they were preparing to bring about his destruction. Who was really breaking the Sabbath?

In contrast to the Pharisees’ perspective, for Jesus the Law was relative to the true and the good. No implementation of a law can offend the true and the good. And sometimes the following of the true and the good may have to go against the letter of the law. What is legal is not always moral. It can be immoral, that is, evil, to obey a law in certain circumstances. What is moral sometimes transcends the law and may even contradict the law.

Jesus, hearing no dissenting answer, and:

After looking around at all of them…said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was restored.

The scribes and Pharisees:

…were filled with fury and began discussing with one another what they might do to Jesus.

Their plans had been brought to nought. They showed no pleasure that a crippled man had been made whole. Their interpretation of the Law had been shown to be wanting and they had to get back at Jesus.

Such situations are by no means unknown in our Christian life and in our Church. We will run into situations where doing good may be in conflict with traditional regulations and legal formulae.

We will find ourselves in situations where contemporary Pharisees will try to put the Church into a straitjacket of narrow-mindedness and fundamentalism whether it involves our understanding of the Scripture or the liturgy or morality or something else. These are people who put the letter of the laws, regulations and rubrics before love. For them it is more important to observe the externals of rules than to be a loving person. Let us pray that we are not such people.

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Commentary on Matthew 7:21,24-27

Today’s Gospel reading reminds us of what true discipleship means. People often confess that they have not said their morning and evening prayers or that they have not been to Mass. Perhaps they should remember the words of today’s Gospel:

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven…

On the other hand, those of us who always do say our morning and evening prayers, and never miss a Mass, also need to remember those same words. Something more is needed than just being a ‘pray-er’. What is needed is that we:

…do the will of [the] Father in heaven.

What is that will? It is that we be filled with the spirit of the Kingdom and work to make that Kingdom a reality in our world. It involves constant outreach beyond ourselves. We have to go to God by finding him present in the world around us and helping others to be aware of that loving presence also. We will not do that by piously calling on God’s name while ignoring the needs of our brothers and sisters. To do that is to build our house on sand.

That is not to say that prayer is not important. We cannot effectively do God’s work unless we spend time listening to and responding to his Word in times of undisturbed quiet. But our prayer is only genuine when it becomes the spur for us to go out and bring something of God’s love and compassion into our world.

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Commentary on 1 John 3:22—4:6

Today we have a passage very rich in meaning and deserving of a lot of reflection and prayer. The reading is in two parts. The first part (3:22-24) speaks briefly of what is needed to be a true follower of Christ; the second set of verses (4:1-6) warns us against being deceived by false prophets into following misleading paths.

John begins by assuring us that whatever we ask, we will receive from God. And how do we know that?

Because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.

And what are these commandments? He immediately tells us that they are just two in number:

…that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.

Beyond these two commandments, we need absolutely nothing else. All the rest that we have been taught may be called the icing on the cake. It is not that other elements of our Christian life are not important, but without these two fundamentals, the rest is nothing.

And it is not surprising that, when we live our lives with this faith and love, our prayers will be heard, because what we ask will be wholly in harmony with being closer to Jesus in commitment, love and service. As John says:

All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them.

It is a kind of symbiotic relationship which colours all ‘whole’ lives.

In the second part of today’s reading, we begin to consider what the writer says is the third condition to love as God’s “children”, and that is to be on guard against “false prophets” (antichrists) and against the world. It is a matter of distinguishing between the good spirit, the Spirit of Christ, and other spirits which can mislead us. It is through the Spirit of the Father and Jesus that we know we are in Christ, and that he is in us.

But John warns us that not all “spirits” come from God. We need to:

…test the spirits to see whether they are from God…

This is what we now sometimes refer to as ‘discernment of spirits’. There are many influences in our lives coming from various sources—all will come under the guise of good, but some are in fact leading us astray.

We need to examine these influences. Following the good spirit will bring ‘consolation’, a sense of rightness and peace. A wrong spirit will bring ‘desolation’, a sense of unease and restlessness. These are not at all to be confused with pleasure or pain. To choose a more painful way may well bring consolation, and we know we have made the right choice.

For John, the good spirit will lead us to recognise that Jesus, in his human body, is a revelation of God. It was precisely this that the Gnostics, and especially Cerinthus, denied, as for them all matter and flesh were evil. In God’s creation, we believe that everything he has made is good and is a reflection of his own Goodness. And our acknowledgement of Jesus Incarnate is not simply something intellectual—even the demons knew that God was in Jesus—but something that we confess publicly through our living.

To deny this is to be led by the antichrist, epitomised in the teaching of the Gnostics, who are the false prophets mentioned. They speak under the influence of evil spirits who are alienated from God. In the Gospel Jesus, too, warned about such false prophets (e.g. Matt 7:15; 24:11). So, too, did Paul (e.g. 1 Tim 4:1).

As long as we are of God and in Christ, we have nothing to fear. We do not belong any more to the ‘world’, the world of sin, the world of hate and greed, the world of corruption, deceit and violence. Those who know God will listen not only to him, but to those who are clearly his spokespersons. And each one of us is called by our Baptism to be a spokesperson, an evangeliser for the message of Christ.

We have to learn how to distinguish clearly where and in whom is the Spirit of truth, and where and in whom the spirit of falsehood resides. We can all be torn between these two ‘worlds’—the world of Christ’s Spirit, and the spirit of the ‘world’. Of course, much of the time we try to have our cake and eat it. We realise that we would like to be fully in Christ, but know that we have not quite gotten there yet.

Let us ask Jesus today to help us keep those two great commandments of faith (trust) and love, and to help us to be able to recognise his Spirit in our lives and reject all those false influences which lead us astray.

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Commentary on Genesis 6:5-8; 7:1-5,10

Today we have the story of the Great Flood. Is there some deep memory behind this story and then reading into it a religious meaning?  What was the cause of the Flood?  Or was it pure myth?  Was it some overflowing of the rivers going through the region that is now Iraq?  Was it the result of a tsunami caused by a mighty earthquake in the Mediterranean?  In any case, it is another ‘Fall’ story.

 The New American Bible introduces the story in this way:

The story of the great flood is a composite narrative based on two separate sources interwoven into an intricate patchwork. To the Yahwist source, with some later editorial additions, are usually assigned 6:5-8; 7:1-5, 7-10, 12, 16, 17, 22-23; 8:2-3, 6-12, 13, 20-22.  The other sections come from the “Priestly document”.  The combination of the two sources produced certain duplications; also certain inconsistencies, such as the number of the various animals taken into the ark and the timetable of the flood.  Both biblical sources go back ultimately to an ancient Mesopotamian story of a great flood, preserved in the eleventh tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic.  The latter account, in some respects remarkably similar to the biblical account, is in others very different from it. (edited)

 The New Jerusalem Bible also comments:

There are also several Babylonian stories of the Flood which show similarities to the biblical narrative. This last does not derive from them, but draws on the same source, namely, on the memory of one or more disastrous floods in the valley of the Euphrates and Tigris which tradition had enlarged to the dimensions of a worldwide catastrophe.  But there is this fundamental difference: the author has used this tradition as a vehicle for teaching eternal truths—that God is just and merciful, that human beings are perverse, that God saves his faithful ones (see Heb 11:7). The Flood is a divine judgement which foreshadows that of the latter days (see Matt 24:37-39; Luke 17:26-28), just as Noah’s salvation prefigures the saving waters of baptism (1 Pet 3:20-21). (edited)

The setting is that mankind has become steeped in sin and immorality.  As the reading opens, we are told that:

The Lord saw that the wickedness of humans was great in the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.

There was moral corruption everywhere.  (And, because human nature did not change after the Flood, the situation did not greatly improve.)  At this time, too, there is as yet no distinction between Israel and everyone else.

God, described in very human terms, “is sorry” not only for the creation of human beings, but also for all the:

…animals and creeping things and birds of the air…

Though morally innocent, the animal world, as creatures under human corrupted rule, shared in being judged.  The heavenly bodies and the plants were excluded (because they would not have been wiped out by a flood).

Saying that God “is sorry” is a human way of expressing the fact that tolerance of sin is totally incompatible with his sanctity (1 Sam 15:29 reminds us that God, unlike humanity, never has to repent).  In a far greater number of passages the expression means that God’s anger has been appeased and his threat withdrawn as soon as his people change their ways (see Jer 26:3-6).

There is one human exception to the universal corruption.  Noah was a good man, who “had found favour in the sight of the Lord”. The destruction to come will, through him, become a reconstruction.  Noah and his family will become a righteous remnant which will survive and regenerate, paving the way for the appearance of God’s people in the person of Abraham.

Much of the full story is left out in our readings.

Before the rains come, Noah and all his family are to go aboard the ark.  The actual building of the ark according to instructions given by God is omitted in our reading.  The English word ‘ark’ comes from the Latin translation arca, meaning a ‘box’ or a ‘chest’. (Consider also the ‘Ark of the Covenant’—it was a kind of wooden chest.)

Noah is told to bring with him and his family, seven each (male and female) of “clean animals” and “a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and its mate” and seven “pairs of the birds of the air”. (For an explanation of the number ‘seven’, see the reading from Wednesday of Week 6 of Ordinary Time.) The ceremonially ‘unclean’ animals would only have to reproduce themselves after the Flood, but greater numbers of ceremonially clean animals would be needed also for the burnt offerings that Noah would sacrifice and for food.  One might have thought that God would have got rid of all the ‘unclean’ animals altogether, but their continuing presence after the flood had to be accounted for.

We need to remember that we are not dealing here with a historical event, but with a myth.  Myths play a very important role in human life and culture.  A myth is basically a story which expresses a deep truth that cannot really be expressed in any other way.  It is a way, too, of presenting deep truths to people who are uneducated and illiterate (but by no means unintelligent).  Much of the Old Testament takes the form of myth, but we should not be concerned about this.  In fact, it is this realisation that opens up to us the full meaning of passages. Fundamentalism and literalism have the opposite effect.

Seven days after they went aboard, God said he would send rain on the earth for 40 days and 40 nights and every living thing on the earth would be wiped out.  This period of time is often used to indicate a significant period in salvation history (see Deut 9:11 and Matt 4:1-11—the temptation of Jesus in the desert). Noah did everything that God had told him to do and seven days later the rains began.

The message is clear: God protects the virtuous and punishes the wicked.  However, we might modify our way of saying that now.  Based on many other passages both in the Old and New Testaments, it is difficult for us to accept a God who takes vengeance on those who go against the way of life he proposes to us.  It contradicts the teaching that Jesus, the Son of God, gave us, especially in his sacrificial death for us sinners.  As Paul tells us, it is easy to understand a person’s dying for a good person, but not for a wicked one (see Rom 5:7).  That is exactly what Jesus, with the full approval of his Father, did for us.

There is indeed punishment for sin but it flows out of the sinful acts themselves.  Evil is destructive; good is nurturing and growth-inducing.  Evil brings division; goodness brings peace and harmony.