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Commentary on Genesis 18:1-15

Another stage in the fulfilling of God’s promise to Abraham. The reading begins by our being told that the Lord visited Abraham by the terebinth (turpentine tree) of Mamre, which was the site of his home, as he sat at the entrance to his tent. For all his wealth and prosperity, Abraham still lives a nomadic life, as does Lot.

In fact, he sees three men standing before him. And the text seems uncertain in its use of singular or plural for the visitors. A more primitive tradition seems to speak of only three men and leaves their identity mysterious. Abraham in speaking uses the singular, but it is not clear whether he is speaking to all three in the singular, or to one of them. Many of the Fathers saw a foreshadowing here of the doctrine of the Trinity, a doctrine that was revealed only in the New Testament. As later on, two of the men are described as ‘angels’, the third is taken by some to be Yahweh himself. Whatever interpretation is chosen, they clearly represent a special presence of God himself.

Abraham ran forward to greet them and bowed profoundly before them. Speaking in the singular (“My Lord”), he immediately asks them to accept the hospitality of his tent. At this stage his bowing to the ground is not religious adoration, but simply a mark of respect to guests. At first, Abraham sees his guests as mere human beings and welcomes them warmly; their superhuman character is only gradually revealed.

He offers them water to wash their hot and dusty feet and suggests they take some rest under the shade of a tree. He also invites them to have some food and refresh themselves before continuing their journey. They accept his invitation.

The picture is one of typical Near Eastern hospitality which includes:

Abraham immediately tells his wife Sarah to bake bread, and he orders that a steer be prepared for eating. When all was ready, he offered his guests the meat of the steer with curds and milk, and waited on them as they ate under the tree. The curds were a type of soft cheese or yogurt.

The men then asked for Sarah. On being told that she was in the tent (women did not appear in the presence of men as they ate), one of them said that he would return in about one year’s time when Sarah would have a child. ‘One of them’ would indicate the speaker as being Yahweh himself, something Abraham begins to realise when he hears the prediction of a miraculous birth. “About this time next year” is literally “when the time becomes alive”, i.e. at the time when birth is due after the period of gestation; the conception is understood as taking place soon after the prediction.

Sarah, who was inside at the entrance to the tent, heard all this being said. She and Abraham were very old, and Sarah had long before had her menopause. She “laughed to herself” at the thought of being a mother:

After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I be fruitful?

We will subsequently see her future son named “Isaac”, a name that means ‘God has smiled’.

But the Lord (in the person of the three men) asked Abraham why Sarah had laughed at the idea of becoming pregnant:

Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?

Mary will hear similar words from Gabriel at the Annunciation. Again the Lord promises to return in a year’s time when Sarah will bear a son. Sarah then became afraid (she has begun to realise who the speaker is) and denies having laughed. But the Lord chides:

Yes, you did laugh.

That is the end of our reading. Immediately after this, the three men left and continued their journey to Sodom. Abraham, with true courtesy, accompanied them part of the way. This coming Monday will find us in Sodom. The reading is a lesson in courtesy and hospitality to the stranger, and one to be taken aboard by every Christian. One never knows when God is present in a caller to the door. In fact, one can take it that he is present, one way or another, in every caller and should be treated as such.

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Commentary on Exodus 16:1-5,9-15

After crossing the Sea of Reeds in safety, the Israelites begin their long, meandering journey to the promised land. In spite of all that God had done for them, they began complaining first of all about their water situation. There was water, but it was too bitter to drink. They discovered it could be made drinkable by throwing a certain kind of wood into it. God also told them that if they acted properly and observed the Lord’s precepts, they would not experience any of the problems which had afflicted the Egyptians. They reached an oasis called Elim, an oasis with twelve water springs and 70 palm trees. There they had an abundance of water and shelter.

Then, as we see in today’s reading, they set off again and arrived in the desert of Sin, which lay about halfway between Elim and Sinai and was clearly not a very hospitable terrain. They were following a route close to the eastern shore of the sea they had crossed earlier. It was the 15th day of the second month, just one month since they had escaped from Egypt. They had eaten the Passover meal and left Egypt on the 15th day of the first month, Abib, later known as Nisan.

Once again the grumbling started. They spoke with nostalgia of the “pots of meat” of Egypt and the abundance of food they had when they lived there. Apparently, all the hardships from which they were so anxious to escape were now all forgotten. And, once again, they laid all the blame on Moses for bringing them to a place where they could only die of starvation.

A patient God heard their complaint and told Moses of his plan to rain down ‘bread’ from heaven on them every day. As a gift from God, the manna was said to come from the sky. It may, in fact, have been something similar to a natural substance still found in small quantities on the Sinai peninsula, but here it is, at least in part, clearly miraculous. 

However, there were some rules to test their obedience to God’s law. Each day they were to pick just what they needed and no more; and, on the day before the sabbath, they were to pick a double portion. Clearly, there was to be no gathering of manna on the sabbath.

This message was passed on by Moses to Aaron who announced it to the people. And, just then:

…the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud.

This was the cloud which was accompanying them on their journey, the pledge of God’s closeness to them. What form this manifestation took we do not know, but the message was clearly understood by the Israelites and was intended to put a stop to their grumbling.

Once again the Lord spoke with Moses. He was to tell the people that, from now on, in the evening they would have their fill of meat and in the morning their fill of ‘bread’. Sure enough, that evening a flock of quail came and covered the camp and, in the morning, they saw what looked like hoarfrost all over the ground.

When they first saw it, they asked: “What is that?” and were told by Moses,

It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.

“What is that?” is represented in Hebrew as man hu and is taken to be the origin of the word ‘manna’.

We are told that quail are common in the Sinai and that, as mentioned, the manna was possibly the juice of some local shrub. However, the narrative intends some special intervention under natural forms by which God fed his people. 

The Psalms and the Book of Wisdom gratefully recall the gift of manna which, in Christian tradition (as early as John 6:26-58), is a figure of the Eucharist, the spiritual food of the Church, the new Israel, on her earthly journey to the Promised Land. Jesus will refer to the manna as a type of the Bread that he will give (see John 6:32,49-52).

We have since taken over phrases like, “I will now rain down bread from heaven on you” and “This is the bread which the Lord has given you to eat” and given them Eucharistic significance.

What is made clear in the story is that the source of the food (and indeed of all we have and receive) is a compassionate and caring God, one who is largely deaf to his people’s constant complaints, their short memories of former help and protection and their weak faith.

We too so often suffer from the same weaknesses. It is so easy to be aware of our grievances and to forget the wonderful blessings we have received in life. Let us count our blessings today and say a big Thank You to our God and Lord.

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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 3:9-15,20; Ephesians 1:3-6,11-12; Luke 1:26-38

The Immaculate Conception means that Mary from the first moment of her existence was totally free from the influence of that universal sinfulness which touches us all from the time we are born. The reason behind this belief (which is not explicitly contained in Scripture, and was only infallibly defined in 1854 by Pope Pius IX in the papal bull Ineffabilis Deus) is that only a totally sinless environment was fitting for the Son of God in his becoming a human being. It has a very long history in the Church (dating back as far as the 2nd century).

The First Reading reminds us that it was a woman (Eve) who was instrumental in bringing pain and suffering, the result of sin, to the whole world. It will also be a woman (Mary) who will be instrumental in bringing to the world its salvation and healing.

The Second Reading tells us that all of us have been called by God to share his love and blessings long before we even existed. This is even more true of Mary, who was singled out from eternity by God to be the Mother of his Son.

Today’s Gospel speaks, not of Mary’s conception, but that of Jesus. It begins the moment Mary says that ‘Yes’. The angel greets her saying:

Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you…

In our Hail Mary prayer, “favored one” is translated as “full of grace”. Mary is filled with God’s love and God’s favour and especially singled out for this moment. “Full of grace” has always been interpreted as indicating Mary’s total freedom from any taint of sin in her role as ‘Ark of the Covenant’. It was believed that the Incarnate Word should begin his human existence in an environment untouched by sin.

We can apply each of the readings to our own lives. We have been often the cause of sin and pain in other people’s lives. Let us rather be people who bring wholeness and healing.

As well, let us be deeply aware that, long before we were born, every single one of us has been called by God to know, love and serve him. We have been the constant recipients of his blessings. How will we respond? Unlike Mary, we were born touched by a sinful world. But we also can become filled with grace if, like her, we say a resounding and unconditional ‘Yes!’ to all that God wants from us. Let us ask Mary today to help us to love Jesus as she did, right through the pain of the Cross to the joy of the Resurrection.

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Commentary on Matthew 6:24-34

Today we continue with Jesus’ teaching on our attitude to material and visible things. We have to make a choice between the vision of life that Jesus offers or a preoccupation with money and possessions. They are not compatible. They involve conflicting goals in life and different visions of what is most important in life. The truly materialistic person may have a veneer of Christian practice, but cannot be a really committed Christian and vice versa.

Jesus preaches what St Ignatius Loyola calls ‘indifference’ to material things. Obviously some material things—like food and clothing and shelter—are necessary to daily living. At different times other things will be necessary too.

The attitude of ‘indifference’ is not that one does not care; on the contrary, one cares very much. But one cares to have things and to use things only in so far as they are needed to love and serve God and others for his sake. Jesus urges us to liberate ourselves from worry and anxiety about our body and material things such as food and clothing.

To be concerned about food because right now I am very hungry and do not have any is very different from worrying whether I will have food next month; to be anxious about what is happening when I am in intensive care is very different from wondering how long my health will hold up in the coming years; to be fretting because I have no money to pay my rent with the landlord knocking at the door is very different from wondering whether I will ever be rich.

Worry and anxiety about the future are a waste of time and energy yet we indulge in them so much. We are invited to:

Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

Likewise, the flowers in the field—they do nothing except be themselves and God takes care of them. And how beautiful they are! When their time comes they pass away.

We are often so busy regretting the past or worrying about the future that we never get to enjoy life. Enjoyment and happiness are only in the present—nowhere else. If we keep looking forward or looking back we will never find happiness. And yet it is right here in our grasp at every moment of every day. As Jesuit Fr Tony de Mello has written:

“You have everything you need right now to be happy.”

How our lives would be transformed if only we could really believe that! Because happiness can only be in the now. Yesterday’s happiness is gone; tomorrow’s does not exist. If I am not happy now, I never will be.

So to follow the advice of Jesus today:

…do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

God is in the here and now and nowhere else. He is always available.

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Commentary on Luke 14:12-14

After giving the scribes and Pharisees advice on how (not) to choose a place at a banquet, Jesus goes on to teach his host what to do when he holds a dinner. He should not invite family members, relatives, friends and the influential rich from whom he can expect to get similar invitations in return.

Rather he should go out of his way to:

…invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind…you will be blessed because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.

This will be a proof of the genuineness of his generosity. Sharing meals with friends is a lovely thing, but Jesus is making the point that our mutual entertainment should not be at the expense of those who do not have enough to eat. It will be a real act of love, and not be a form of self-seeking and self-aggrandisement or mutual back scratching in a never-ending entertainment circus.

It reminds us of what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount about loving those who love us:

Do not even the gentiles do the same? (Matt 5:47)

There is no real virtue in this. In fact, it can be a way of using people to our own advantage. It also reminds us of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. In such circumstances, uncaring self-indulgence can in no way be justified.

We might remark here, of course, that there is no such thing as pure altruism, that is, an action that is done purely for others with absolutely nothing for self. Everything we do, we do ultimately for ourselves. We have no choice but to seek our own good—to act otherwise would be quite silly and even wrong. It all depends on how and why we do it.

A person can seek self by using, manipulating, and exploiting others for one’s own gain. But a person can use all their energies for the good of others, and in doing so, there is a feeling of satisfaction in doing the right thing. Even one’s life can be sacrificed as the only way of satisfying self. For instance, a mother may not hesitate to sacrifice her life to save a child in danger. Not to do so would lead to a situation she might find difficult to live with for the rest of her life.

We do have to seek our own interests. We can do that at the expense of others, or we can realise that it is by sharing what we have with others in need that we become enriched in a very special way.

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Commentary on Heb 8:6-13 Read Friday of Week 2 – First Reading »

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Commentary on Mark 3:7-12

This is a summary text indicating the tremendous drawing power of Jesus with ordinary people. It is in stark contrast with the preceding passages of conflict with the religious leaders who were out to destroy him. People were coming not only from Galilee, where Jesus was living and working, but from Jerusalem and Judea in the south, from across the river Jordan and even from gentile regions like Tyre and Sidon. They came because of all they had heard about what he was doing.

So great were the crowds that Jesus had to ask his disciples to get a boat so that he would not be crushed. Huge numbers of people who had heard of his healing powers wanted to touch him. They felt that was enough to be healed.

Some, possessed by “unclean spirits”, fell down before him and called out:

You are the Son of God!

And Jesus:

…sternly ordered them not to make him known.

As mentioned before, this call by those possessed by “unclean spirits” was not a confession of faith, but an attempt to turn aside the threatening power of Jesus by using the exact name of the opposing ‘spirit’. Jesus knew that the people were not yet ready for this revelation of his identity. Their attitudes were still largely superficial. They were coming for their own immediate needs and not as true followers. They came to get, not to give or share.

Nevertheless, Jesus would not turn them away. He knew that they had great needs which only he could satisfy. He was full of compassion for them and anxious to bring healing into their lives. And now, more than 2000 years later, he has the same compassion and desire to bring healing to us as well.