More

Commentary on Revelation 20:1-4,11—21:2

Today we have a reading about judgement and the New Jerusalem. It is a powerful vision of the end time described in highly symbolic language, which is not to be taken literally. Here we need to be very careful to go to the central meaning of what is being said and not get carried away (either positively or negatively) by the vivid images.

We can divide the passage into five sections. In the first section, John sees an angel come down from heaven, that is, God’s dwelling place (which, of course, is not a place, as God is everywhere). In his hand, the angel carries the key of the Abyss and a huge chain. The Abyss was conceived as an underground place where the armies of demons lived. The Greek word abussos means “very deep” or “bottomless” and is used in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) to translate the Hebrew word for the primeval deep (mentioned in Genesis at the beginning of the Creation story).

The dragon, the “ancient serpent”, the one who tempted our first parents, Satan himself, is overpowered by the angel and chained in the Abyss for a thousand years. Normally in the Old Testament, dragons symbolise the enemies of God and his people. They feature regularly in the mythology of many ancient peoples (yet not always in the negative; in the case of Asian culture, they tend to have a positive image of power).

Satan is “bound up” by the angel in the Abyss for a millennium, one thousand years. The 1,000 years is not to be taken literally; it simply means a long and indefinite period of time.* At the end of that time, Satan will be released again for a short while. Such is the tenacity of Satan that he can become active again. It is a message of warning that no one can feel complacent about being ever totally free from his wiles.

In the second section, the scene now shifts to the elect. There are thrones on which sit those who have the power to judge. Are they the 24 elders mentioned earlier or the 12 Apostles, whom Jesus foretold would be judges? In the teaching following the failure of the rich man to become a disciple, Jesus had said to his disciples:

Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. (Matt 19:28)

Also present are:

…those who had been beheaded for their testimony to Jesus…

These are those who had died the death of a martyr for their witness to the faith and for proclaiming the Gospel message. It is said that those of a higher social status were executed by beheading while more brutal forms of execution (e.g. crucifixion) were reserved for those lower in the social hierarchy.  

Among the elect are also those who:

…had not worshiped the beast [the emperor] or its image and had not received its brand on their foreheads or their hands.

In other words, they were no slaves of Satan (i.e. the emperor); they did not belong to him. It is possible that Christians who had agreed to pay obeisance to the emperor’s image were marked with a brand to free them from further persecution. If so, such a brand would have been a mark of shame in the eyes of faithful Christians.

Instead, because of their martyr’s death:

They came to [new] life and reigned with Christ a thousand years.

In the subsequent verse (not part of our reading) the rest of the dead did not rise until the 1,000 years were ended.

The Jerusalem Bible makes the following comment here:

“One interpretation makes this ‘resurrection’ of the martyrs symbolise the recovery of the Church after the Roman persecution; the ‘reign of a thousand years’ is then the period of the kingdom of Christ on earth from the end of persecution (the fall of Rome) to the Last Judgement. According to Augustine and others who follow him, the ‘reign of a thousand years’ is to be reckoned from Christ’s resurrection and the ‘first resurrection’ is baptism.   A literal interpretation of this verse was widespread in the early Church: after the first resurrection of the martyrs, Christ was to return to reign on earth with his faithful for a thousand years. This literal millenarianism was censured.”

(For further comment on the ‘millennium’ see the footnote* at the end of this reflection.)

In the third section, we now move to the judgement of all the dead. God is seen sitting on his great white throne, the seat of judgement. Earth and sky have vanished—in the presence of God’s awesome majesty they become as nothing. The dead from every stratum of society are gathered there in front of the throne. The records of their lives, by which they are judged, are opened. There is more than one book, suggesting one for the righteous and another for the wicked.

As well, there is the book of life. Such a record is first mentioned in Exodus. It was a list of all citizens in the kingdom community. To have one’s name removed from the book indicated loss of citizenship. So the book of life here lists the elect, those who really belong to the Kingdom. And they will be judged on how they have responded to the call of the Gospel (see Rom 2:2-9; 1 Pet 1:17).

In the fourth section, all of the dead are present. They come from the two traditional abodes of the dead: one is the sea and the other is “Death and Hades”, which were understood to be under the earth (remember, at the time, the earth is conceived as flat, not round as we know it). Hades is the Greek name for the place of the dead and more or less corresponds to the Hebrew sheol.

These places of the dead are now emptied and as they appear before their God:

…all were judged according to what they had done.

In other words, they were judged according to the way they lived. We need to qualify this statement to avoid misunderstandings. It does not mean that our activities have a value all their own so that we, so to speak, earn our salvation or our entry into God’s Kingdom and that God is obliged to ‘reward’ us.
 
Scripture makes it very clear that all the good we do does not originate from us, but is God working in and through us. If our lives are full of good works, it is because we have opened our hearts to God and taken him into our hearts so that we become transformed through his love working in and through us. In the Eucharistic liturgy, Weekday Preface IV reads:

You have no need of our praise, yet our desire to thank you is itself your gift. Our prayer of thanksgiving adds nothing to your greatness, but makes us grow in your grace through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Paul emphasises this very strongly, especially in his letter to the Romans.

It would also be wrong to imagine God keeping a credit and debit ledger of our lives and that, provided we end up with a plus rather than a minus, we will ‘go to heaven’. God is not an accountant; there is not a ledger with some entries in black and others in red. It is clear from the Gospel that God does not work like that. A life lived for many years away from God can be turned round at any time, even at the very end. God sees us as we are at the moment he calls us to him. A bad life can end very well; similarly, a good life can end very badly (see the parable of the Lost Son—Luke 15:11-32, or the “good thief” on the cross beside Jesus—Luke 23:39-43).

Then:

…Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.

Punishment by fire is common in ancient Jewish writings. Although the designation gehenna is not used here, it seems it is that to which John is referring (see Matt 5:22). ‘Gehenna’ originally was the site of a cultic shrine where human sacrifices were offered. It was a deep ravine south of Jerusalem (the ‘Valley of [the Sons of] Hinnom’). During the reign of the wicked kings Ahaz and Manasseh, human sacrifices to the Ammonite god Molech were offered there. Josiah desecrated the valley because of the pagan worship. It subsequently became a sort of perpetually burning city dump and later became to be equated with the “hell” of final judgement in apocalyptic literature.

The meaning of the phrase then is that, after the judgement, death loses all its power. Also into this lake of fire go all those whose names are not found in the book of life. By their own choice, they do not belong to the Kingdom.

Finally, in the fifth section (21:1-2), John sees “a new heaven and a new earth”. This is a way of describing the new way of life we will experience face to face with God and Jesus Christ. It is an existence, as Paul tells us, where we are totally free from decay and corruption and are renewed and transformed in the presence of God’s glory. The whole of creation will one day be freed from the dominance of corruption, renewed and transformed by the glory of God (Rom 8:19-25). It is also an existence which is totally beyond our powers to conceive. The less we say about it the better!

And “the sea was no more”, because the sea is the home of the dragon, Satan. As in the time of the Exodus, the sea will now draw back, not for a while, but forever before the triumphant advance of the New Israel.

What now exists is the:

…the holy city, the new Jerusalem…

This is the title for the gathering of all those who have faithfully followed Christ and are now united to him. Jerusalem is described as beautifully:

…prepared as a bride adorned for her husband [God].

This is an image found among the prophets Isaiah and Hosea. It speaks of the marvellously intimate relationship between God and his people, those who really belong to him. See, too, Jesus’ parable of the wedding banquet (Matt 22:2-14).

The reading is speaking of what is in store for those who have been faithful, in spite of suffering and even losing their lives, to Christ and his Gospel. On the other hand, the powers of evil are overcome forever and those who, by their own choice, became their servants are lost for ever.
 
It is not for us to speculate just how all this takes place, still less to think that the images in Revelation correspond in any literal way to the reality. It is for us to concentrate on the lives we are living now, and to seek, find and respond to Jesus as we come in contact with him at every moment of our day.  Then we can leave the future safely in his hands. He will take care of us. “Do not be afraid,” is the message always on his lips:

…remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.
(Matt 28:20)

__________________________________
*The millennium (from the Latin mille, “thousand”, and annus, “year”) is taken literally by some as 1,000 actual years, while others interpret it metaphorically as a long, but undetermined period of time.  

From the NIV Study Bible, there are three basic approaches to the subject of the millennium, mainly from non-Catholic positions:  

1. “Amillennialism: millennium describes the present reign of the souls of deceased believers with Christ in heaven.  The present form of God’s kingdom will be followed by Christ’s return, the general resurrection, the final judgement and Christ’s continuing reign over the perfect kingdom on the new earth in the eternal state.
2. Premillennialism: the present form of God’s kingdom is moving towards a grand climax when Christ will return, the “first resurrection” (see Rev 20:5-6) will occur and his kingdom will find expression in a literal, visible reign of peace and righteousness on the earth in space-time history. After the final resurrection, the last judgement and the renewal of the heavens and the earth, this future, temporal kingdom will merge into the eternal kingdom, and the Lord will reign forever on the new earth.
3. Postmillennialism: the world will eventually be Christianised, resulting in a long period of peace and prosperity called the millennium. This future period will close with Christ’s second coming, the resurrection of the dead, the final judgement and the eternal state.”

Many, however, will take the “millennium” as something purely symbolical.  When people die, they go straight to God to be with him forever or, if they have so chosen, to be separated from him. In a situation where there is no time and only a ‘Now’, all will ‘arrive’ simultaneously no matter when in temporal time they leave this earth, so the Final Judgement is not a matter of past, present or future. Again, these are matters which are best left outside the field of speculation.

More

Commentary on Revelation 15:1-4

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

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

Later in the chapter, John will describe how:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More

Commentary on John 1:29-34

Yesterday we saw John the Baptist denying that he was the Messiah or any of the great prophets. Today he gives testimony to Jesus as the one he had been talking about.

The passage begins with “The next day…” We mentioned already that the opening section of John up to the wedding at Cana represents a week, echoing the seven days of creation in Genesis. We will see that phrase occurring three more times in the first chapter, and that brings us to the fourth day of the week. There is then a gap, but the wedding at Cana is introduced as taking place “on the third day”, that is, after the previous four, and hence is the seventh day.

As John saw Jesus approaching, he said to those around him:

Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!

Another feature of this first chapter is that the author introduces the various titles of Jesus which he uses later on.

Why the “Lamb”? The central feature of the Jewish Passover feast was the lamb, which was eaten during the Passover meal. It recalled the lamb which the families of the Israelites ate on the eve of their escape from Egypt, and whose blood was painted on the doorposts of their houses. When the angel of God came to destroy all the firstborn, it “passed over” the houses of the Israelites, which had been marked with the lamb’s blood. This became then a symbol of liberation, and one of the most important celebrations in the Jewish calendar.

For us, however, there is now a new symbol of liberation, a new Lamb. Jesus is both the ‘offer-er’ of the sacrifice and its victim, and his death and resurrection inaugurate a New Covenant between God and his people. It is perhaps significant that in all the Gospel accounts of the Last Supper, there is no mention of a lamb being eaten during the meal. This is because there was a new Lamb, who told his companions to take and eat, take and drink the bread and wine “handed over for you”. And it is through the blood of this Lamb that we find salvation and liberation.

The title Lamb of God also recalls the suffering servant led like a lamb to the slaughter, which we read about in Isaiah (53:7,10). In Revelation, too, we read of the victorious apocalyptic lamb who will destroy the evil in the world (5:5-7; 17:14).

The Baptist then indicates the superiority of Jesus over himself:

This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’

In the context of the Prologue we read earlier, this is an intimation of Jesus’ pre-existence as the Word with God (remember that, chronologically, John was slightly older than Jesus). John also explains why he was baptising; it was to make Jesus known to the people of Israel. His baptism did not have the power to forgive sin; this would be the prerogative of Jesus and his disciples. (In John’s Gospel, the Baptist also says that up to this, he had not known Jesus, which conflicts with the other Gospels where he is presented as a close relative.)

John then continues to talk about the baptism of Jesus, whereas the event itself is described in Matthew and Luke. He says that he personally saw the Spirit of God come down on Jesus like a dove, and it stayed with him, indicating the enduring relationship between the Father and the Spirit with the Son. The dove is a symbol of new life, recalling the dove which brought the olive branch back to Noah’s ark to indicate that the Flood was over. At the same time, the One who told John to baptise with water also said that the One on whom the Spirit came down would, in turn, baptise with the Holy Spirit. The Baptist concludes:

And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Chosen One.

“Chosen One” is also translated as ‘Son of God’, so here we have another title of Jesus.

Each one of us has also received the same Spirit in our baptism. It was that Spirit which inspired Jesus in all his Messianic work, climaxing in his death on the cross. May the same Spirit inspire us to follow in Jesus’ footsteps and join with him in his work to build the Kingdom.

More

Commentary on Genesis 1:1-19

Today we begin reading the Book of Genesis and the story of Creation. Although Genesis is at the beginning of the Bible, that does not mean that it was the first book to be written, still less that it represents an “eyewitness account”. In fact, experts distinguish a combination of accounts written at different times. The form we now have is a later, sophisticated work, written with a specific purpose in mind. It is not a scientific account and it does not clash with more recent scientific discoveries because it is written on a completely different level.

It is more about God, and our relationship with God, than about how the world actually came to be. The central message is that there is only one God, and that he is the source of all that is; he is totally good, and everything he creates is good. Genesis acts as an introduction to the five books of the Pentateuch, the Law of Israel, and shows how God brought order into a chaotic universe.

Our present selection of readings covers the first 11 chapters, which deal with what is called the ‘primeval history’ or pre-history, the Creation, the various ‘falls’, and ends with the incident of the Tower of Babel. The rest of Genesis is concerned with the origin of God’s people, with the first patriarch Abraham and his immediate descendants—Isaac, Jacob and Joseph and his brothers. We will cover the second part of Genesis in Weeks 12-14 of Cycle I. The last word of Genesis is “Egypt”, and leads immediately into the Book of the Exodus, describing a much later period where we find the Israelites living in Egypt.

Today’s reading begins with God bringing into existence (out of nothing) what we might call the infrastructure of our world. This section introduces the whole Pentateuch and, in a way, the whole Bible. It shows how God brought (created) an orderly universe out of primordial chaos (of nothingness). It forms a background for the call of Abram and the real beginning of the biblical story in chapter 12.

This first version of the creation story is attributed to the ‘Priestly Source’ (vs the ‘Yahwist Source’). As such, it is less detailed and more theological. Its primary focus is on God’s role. It aims at a complete logical classification of beings whose creation is deliberately fitted into the framework of a week that closes with the Sabbath day of rest. The text makes use of the primitive science of its day. It would be a mistake to look for points of agreement between the picture given here and the data of modern science (hence, the futility of the debate between the so-called ‘Creationists’ and ‘Evolutionists’).

The text uses a scenario found in some creation myth stories, but the emphasis here is very much on our world as the creative work of a single transcendent and all-good God, existing before the world he brought into being.

Recounting the origin of the cosmos and its glorious centrepiece, earth, it shows God masterfully orchestrating the events of creation. Each phase follows more or less the same basic pattern established on Day One: divine command, result, divine approval, enumeration of the day. The effect is anything but monotonous. Like a musical theme with variations, the story shows the world gradually becoming more mobile and complex, until, by the sixth day, it is ready for self-perpetuation through procreation (for detailed discussion, see The Harper-Collins Study Bible introductory section on Genesis).

“In the beginning” is not seen as a beginning from infinity as suggested by the opening of John’s Gospel:

In the beginning was the Word… (John 1:1)

It is not a creation from nothing; it is the beginning of recorded history rather than the origin of being which the philosophers seek to understand. The earth was a formless void and darkness covered the abyss (deep). There was a total lack of order and no light. God was absent. But with God there came order, an astounding and undeniable feature of a universe whose existence is often attributed to pure chance.

A “wind from God” hovered over the chaotic watery wastes of the deep. This is not the creative wind of the Spirit. Creation is said to have been brought into being either by the “word” or the “act” of God. But some translators do see the Spirit of God present in the phrase.

The deep (or the abyss) is the primordial ocean according to the ancient Semitic understanding of the universe. After God’s creative activity, part of this vast body forms the salt-water seas (Gen 1:9 and following); part of it is the fresh water under the earth (Ps 33:7; Ezek 31:4), which wells forth on the earth as springs and fountains (Gen 7:11; 8:2; Prov 3:20). Part of it, “waters above the heavens” (Ps 148:4), is held up by the dome of the sky (Gen 1:6 and following) from which rain descends on the earth (Gen 7:11; 2 Kings 7:2,19; Ps 104:13).

The rest of today’s reading deals with the first four days of creation. First, there is light, but the sources of the light are not yet mentioned. Light is created, but not darkness, which is a purely negative concept. The creation of light is mentioned first, since the succession of days and nights is to be the frame in which the work of creation takes place. God saw the light as good, and God separated light from darkness. It was “good” in the sense of being both acceptable and also intrinsically good:

God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.

There was evening and morning, the first day
In ancient Israel, a day was considered to begin at sunset. According to the highly artificial structure of the creation story, God’s activity is divided into six days to teach the sacredness of Sabbath rest on the seventh day in the Israelite religion. We should remember, too, how in the Gospel the Sabbath begins on the evening of Friday. That was why Jesus had to be buried before sundown on Good Friday, when the Sabbath would begin (see Mark 15:42).

On each of the succeeding days the same formula will be followed:

God said: Let there be…

– What was commanded comes into being.
– God sees that his work is good.
– The number of the day is given.

God then made a dome or vault in the midst of the waters, separating waters from waters. The vault, that is, the sky or the heavens, now divided the waters above the dome from the waters below it. This is the universe as the ancients understood it in their visual observations, from a vantage point they believed to be the centre: a flat earth and a curved and solid heavenly dome surrounded above and below by primordial waters. The water below produced springs from which rivers and lakes originated; the water above explained the rain, which came through apertures (“windows”) in the vault (the understanding of cloud-forming evaporation was still centuries away!).

Evening and morning made the second day
The waters under heaven now are brought together and reveal dry land, thus producing “Earth” and “Seas”:

And God saw that it was good.

Next vegetation and plants appear bearing all kinds of fruits and seeds. (What is remarkable is that the succession of creations harmonises with a contemporary understanding of evolution: vegetation, swarming creatures, fish, birds, animals [mammals] and human beings.) Again:

…God saw that it was good.

Evening and morning, it is the third day
Lights are now created in the vault or dome to divide the day from the night. Light has already been created, but now its dissemination is divided among the heavenly bodies. These will also mark seasons, days and years, and give light to the earth. There is one great light to rule the day and a lesser one to rule the night, as well as the stars—to separate light from darkness. The names ‘sun’ and ‘moon’ are deliberately omitted because these were often treated as gods by neighbouring peoples. For God’s people, they are no more than heavenly lamps dividing day and night and marking the seasons and times for festivals.

God saw it was good. Evening and morning it is the fourth day
Through all this there is the underlying refrain:

And God saw that it was good.

The message is clear: there is only one God and he is totally good and everything he does is good—very good. Why then is there so much evil and suffering in the world? The answer to that question will come later.

More

Commentary on Mark 2:23-28

Today we have a third confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees on the place of the Law in people’s lives. His disciples are accused of violating the Sabbath by picking ears of corn (“heads of grain”) as they walked through a field. Stealing was not involved, as ‘gleaning’, especially by the hungry poor, was tolerated. But the Law forbade reaping on the Sabbath. One could hardly call what the disciples were doing ‘reaping’, but with the casuistic mind of the Pharisees and teachers of the Law, the bias was on the side of safety. The perfect observer of the Law would not do anything that could even be regarded in the slightest as a violation.

Jesus solves the issue by appealing to the Hebrew Testament, which, of course, the Pharisees recognised as the word of God. He reminded them how King David and his followers, because they were hungry, went into the house of God and took the loaves of offering, even though only the priests were allowed to eat them. Jesus then enunciates two principles. The first was:

The Sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the Sabbath…

The second was that:

…the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.

The first principle is a very important one, namely, that all laws are for people and not vice versa. They are not ends in themselves, and moral perfection is not in their literal observance. The hunger of David and his men transcended a religious regulation (that only the priests could eat the bread of offering). For the Jews of Jesus’ time, virtue was in perfect observance of the Law. For Jesus, observance of the Law was only perfect when it was for the good of others and oneself.

The second principle was that Jesus, as the Son of God, was not bound by human laws, however lofty their motive. We would do well to remember those principles in the living out of our Christian faith.  It is possible to lead rule-centred Christian lives rather than love- and people-centred lives.

There is only one law in our faith:

Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. (John 13:34)

Even God will not violate that law because God is love. Any law which, in a particular situation, does not serve this overriding law can be set aside, and should be set aside. Positive laws are necessary for smooth functioning in society, but they are never absolute.

More

Commentary on Deuteronomy 31:1-8

We come to the last part of Deuteronomy which tells of the last days of Moses. Today’s reading deals with handing on the baton of leadership to Joshua.

Moses knows that his end is near. He tells the people that he is already 120 years old (probably not to be taken too literally) and no longer capable of being their leader. This is not a reference to any physical disability. The reason is that God has forbidden him (and Aaron) to lead the people into the Promised Land:

…the Lord has told me, ‘You shall not cross over this Jordan.’ (Num 20:12)

We read about this in last Thursday’s First Reading (Num 20:1-13).

The people need not fear because Yahweh will be with them as they conquer the land:

The Lord your God himself will cross over before you. He will destroy these nations before you, and you shall dispossess them.

And he gives his encouragement to Joshua who will take his place as their leader:

Joshua also will cross over before you, as the Lord promised.

Yahweh will treat the resident peoples as he treated Sihon and Og the Amorite kings and their country—he wiped them out. He will put the resident peoples at the Israelites’ mercy and will deal with them exactly as laid down by the commandments he gave.

Moses passes on Yahweh’s message to the people:

Be strong and bold; have no fear or dread of them, because it is the Lord your God who goes with you; he will not fail you or forsake you.

The Lord’s exhortation is often given through his servants to the people of Israel. So also to Joshua, to Solomon and to Hezekiah’s military officers. By trusting in the Lord and obeying him, his followers will be victorious in spite of great obstacles.

Then Moses summoned Joshua in the presence of all the people and told him also to “be strong and bold”. He would have the privilege of leading the people into the land which Yahweh long ago had sworn to his ancestors he would give to his people. And he has no need to worry because Yahweh will show the way, will be together with his people and not let them down. Moses tells them:

Do not fear or be dismayed.

Reading this account, it is difficult sometimes not to feel that we have here, to some extent, a rationalisation of their entering someone else’s territory and taking it by force from its legitimate inhabitants, pagans though they may have been. The same questions arise in the establishment of the State of Israel in the last century and even more so in the establishment of Israel’s settlements beyond its internationally recognised borders.

The history of the Church also is not without examples of ‘God’s will’ being used to justify behaviour that later seems altogether unacceptable.

More

Commentary on Romans 4:20-25

Paul continues to give the example of Abraham’s faith as a model for all of us. One might wonder why he devotes so much space to Abraham, but we must remember that he was seen as the father of God’s people (including us), and that he was looked up to as a model of good behaviour, which won God’s favour:

No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.

Through his faith Abraham gave glory to God because all that happens in his life is clearly the work of God and not of a human person. Faith truly is all-powerful; it shares in the power of God himself.

When the father of the epileptic boy came to Jesus to heal his son, Jesus told him:

All things can be done for the one who believes. (Mark 9:23)

Paul, too, could boast of his weaknesses because, as he said:

I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
(Phil 4:13)

And so, from today’s reading, this was the faith that:

…was reckoned to him as righteousness.

This kind of faith is the sign of real ‘uprightness’, real goodness. It is not the self-generated ‘goodness’ which is no real goodness at all. As Jesus told his disciples at the Last Supper:

…apart from me, you can do nothing. (John 15:5)

It was this surrendering of himself, against all apparent reason, into God’s hands which was Abraham’s “justice”, that is, his being made right with God. This is not a moral rightness, but a total harmony of relationships, a union of heart and mind. And the word ‘reckoned’ in Scripture applies not only to him; it is there for our sake too—our faith, too, will be ‘reckoned’.

What is true of Abraham is true for every single person. Our genuine goodness will be measured by the level of our faith and trust in the God who gives us strength. And, as Abraham was made right with God because he believed in a God who brought life from the dead, so we will be justified because:

It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.

This is the source of our “justification”, our being ‘made right’ with God—namely, that we totally give ourselves to Jesus Christ, as Lord and Saviour, who died and was raised to life so that we might share that life with him. In our case we go to God in faith through our intimate following of Jesus, joining him in suffering, death and resurrection.

God may seem at times to be calling us to the impossible. But our faith helps us to see that God works in everything and through everything. Apart from Abraham, there are many other examples in the lives of Christians, especially some of the great saints. Let us follow in their footsteps.

More

Commentary on Mark 3:13-19

Jesus goes up a mountain. It has no name because the symbolism is more important than the location. Mountains in the Scriptures are holy places associated with the presence of God. Jesus goes up mountains at more solemn moments in his public life—here, during the Sermon on the Mount, at the Transfiguration, and after feeding the 5,000.

Jesus’ purpose on this occasion is to pick the inner circle of his followers:

[He] called to him those whom he wanted, and they came to him.

Later he will say:

You did not choose me, but I chose you. (John 15:16)

A call includes both the invitation and the response. The same is true for each one of us. The call is always there—can we say the same about our response?

There were twelve in this inner circle of disciples. In the New Covenant, they would be the ‘patriarchs’, the foundational pillars of the new community, embracing the new Israel.

They are called ‘apostles’. This is a word to be clearly distinguished from ‘disciples’. The ‘disciple’ (coming from the Latin verb discere, meaning ‘to learn’) is essentially a follower who imbibes the teaching of the teacher and tries to make it part of his or her life. However, ‘apostle’ (from the Greek verb apostello, meaning ‘to go out on a mission’—like an ambassador) is essentially one who has a mandate from the teacher to pass on to others.

In the Pauline letters, where the term appears most often in the Christian (New) Testament, ‘apostle’ means primarily one who has been a witness of the Risen Lord and has been commissioned to proclaim the resurrection. Paul himself, because of his experience at Damascus, is regarded as one of Jesus’ Apostles.

The Twelve were to be Jesus’ companions. They were to preach, that is, proclaim his message of the Kingdom, and work with him to make it a reality. They were to cast out demons and liberate people from all situations which enslaved them to any form of evil.

The list is headed—as are all lists of the Apostles—by Simon Peter. For Mark, the name Peter was given on this occasion. In Matthew, it is given later, following Peter’s confession of Jesus’ identity. In the Gospel of Mark, the list included one man who would betray (“handed him over”) his Master and Lord.

And today there are still those, called by Jesus, who betray him. What about me?

Surely not I, Lord? (Matt 20:22)

There go I but for the grace of God.

More

Commentary on Romans 8:26-30

Today’s reading follows immediately on yesterday’s. Paul continues his message of encouragement and hope. Paul writes:

…the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with groanings too deep for words.

Just as we saw that hope sustains the believer in his suffering, so the Spirit also is with him when he prays. Earlier Paul had spoken of the believer “groaning”, now it is the Spirit who ‘groans’ as our petitions are passed on to the Father. Obviously, the Spirit does not literally groan. It simply means that he does not communicate in words or that his thoughts cannot be expressed in human language. (And why would the Spirit want to use our kind of language?)

And it is not that the Spirit, who is God, intercedes in the way that Our Lady or the saints are said to intercede for us. Rather it is through the Spirit, which has been given to us in baptism, that the prayers we need to make are carried to the Father in language that we could never express:

…God, who searches hearts, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

Genuine prayer will not be haphazard requests for something we simply happen to want at any particular time. Nor will it be a kind of arm-twisting by which we try to make God arrange things in the way we would like. It is not surprising that, when what we ask for in that way does not happen, we can feel that God is not listening to us.

On the other hand, prayers that we make in and through the Spirit will always include the desire to know the will of God and for the strength to be able to carry it out in the different circumstances of our lives. In both Matthew and Luke we read:

If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him! (Matt 7:11)

and

If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him! (Luke 11:13)

Ultimately, all genuine prayer will be made in and through the Spirit of God because the purpose of our prayer is to be united with God. Our prayer is to be “Your will be done” and not “Lord, my will be done”. We do not just want to do God’s will reluctantly; we positively long to make our will conform to his. His wants and ours then perfectly coincide, and that is where our deepest happiness lies. The purpose of prayer is find out what that will is, to know where the Spirit is leading us.

The Jerusalem Bible has this to say about prayer in the New Testament:

Paul insists on the necessity of constant prayer taught by Jesus himself and practised by the early Christians. Paul is always praying for the faithful and asks them to do the same for him and for each other. These prayers must ask for growth in holiness, but also for the removal of all external and internal obstacles to it; we have to pray, too, for the orderly conduct of the country’s business. Paul lays special stress on prayers of thanksgiving for every gift of God and particularly for the food God gives us; he begins all his own letters with a prayer of thanks and he wants the spirit of gratitude to pervade all the Christians’ dealings with each other. In liturgical gatherings prayers of thanksgiving and praise must predominate and these sentiments must inspire the hymns that the Christians compose for these occasions. It is the Holy Spirit who inspires the prayer of the Christian, and Paul prefers to emphasise this.

Paul now moves on to discuss God’s call for us to share his glory:

We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.

And our “good”, of course, is that we grow evermore into the likeness of Christ and become ‘other Christs’. It is difficult at times to see how certain experiences can be working for our long-term good, yet this is a conviction that we need to learn—that our loving God is present in every experience. Of course, that may be extremely difficult to see at the time and it may be only after a long period that we begin to see how this experience was beneficial, that it was a true learning experience.

Again and again, people have—and perhaps not till much later on—realised that some very painful experience, such as a serious illness or the loss of a loved one, has been an occasion of personal growth and maturing. This will help people who ask “Why?” or “Why me?” when they have had a very bad experience. In the middle of everything it can be very difficult to see where God’s love is working, but it is there. It takes time, it takes faith to realise that God’s love is in operation all the time.

It is a limited view of God which sees him as a kind of puppet master who gives good things to his friends and punishes his enemies. His thoughts are not our thoughts and his ways not our ways.

The sooner we come to understand his thoughts the better. And it is important to realise that this is not fatalism. Fatalism is to lie down passively under the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Nor is it the “opium of the people” which Karl Marx spoke about—passively putting up with a life of suffering (and exploitation by ‘capitalists’), because of the promise of a happy life after death. The true Christian responds actively and positively to every experience, trying to find God there and responding to his call. And finding happiness in the here and now.

Paul now speaks of how God, from all eternity, knew those who would be:

…predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family.

Clearly, we are touching here on the issue of predestination. There are those who believe that God has decided from all eternity who will be saved and who will not and that there is nothing anyone can do about it. Either you are one of the lucky ones or you are not. There are those who take the number 144,000 of the elect, mentioned in the Book of Revelation, as the revealed number of the saved. That puts billions of the world’s population, including the majority of Christians, totally out of the running and reduces God’s saving love to a lottery.

However, this can be understood in a very different way. God’s knowledge is infinite and eternal. Everything that has ever happened or will ever happen is known to him simultaneously in an eternal now. For God there is no past or future. God then knows who are going to live their lives according to his will and those who will decide of their own free choice to reject him. If one may use a rough analogy, it is like a man who stands on top of a hill and looks down on a winding road below. He sees two cars approaching in opposite directions at high speed. They cannot see each other, but the man on the hill knows that, inevitably, there is going to be a serious collision. He knows it is going to happen, but he is not in any way responsible.

God then knows now which people will accept the message of Jesus and put their faith in him as Lord and who, with that faith and commitment, will gradually grow into the likeness of Jesus, their Lord and Brother. But in so far as they are modelling themselves on him, Jesus remains the “firstborn within a large family”—the ‘eldest brother’. He is the One who holds the position of highest honour in the Father’s family to which we, the baptised, also belong. And he is the ‘natural’ Son, while we are adopted by God’s gift.

Christ, as the perfect image of the Father, came among us to restore to fallen Man the original splendour which had been darkened by sin. In union with Christ, we can now be formed in the even greater image of a son of God. The glory which Christ as the image of God possesses by right is progressively communicated to the Christian until his body is itself clothed in the image of the ‘heavenly’ person:

…those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

Those whom God’s foreknowledge knows will do his will are those he has called (and who have answered his call). And because of their call and their positive response, they are ‘justified’, that is, they are made right with God through their openness to the ‘grace’ of his love poured into them. And these are the ones he will bring with him one day to share his glory.

The talk of predestination, some may find disturbing. In this context, predestination is really a way of speaking of God’s eternal knowing. God lives outside of time. For him there is neither past nor future; only the present. Each one of us has been in the mind of God eternally. The time of our arrival in his creation is known to him. The progress of our life and all the choices we make are known to him. We do not make our choices because he knows them; he knows our choices because we make them. God then knows from all eternity who says ‘Yes’ to him and who says ‘No’. All those who say ‘Yes’ can be said to be called and predestined for justification and glory; those who say a final ‘No’ are called, but are not predestined—by their own choice—for justification and glory.

So, as far as God is concerned, our predestination is set because he knows what our choices and responses to his call will ultimately be. As far as we are concerned, it is not at all set because there are still opportunities for us to make a final ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. Is that worrying? It need not be. As Jesus told Thomas à Kempis, the author of the Imitation of Christ, if we concentrate on saying ‘Yes’ to Jesus at every moment of every day the future will take care of itself and there will be nothing to fear. Have you said ‘Yes’ yet?

More

Commentary on Mark 12:28-34

Not all the Pharisees and Scribes were hostile to Jesus—we have Nicodemus as one very good example. And here today we have a scribe who approaches Jesus with no apparently hostile motive. He had seen how well Jesus had dealt with the challenges put to him by various groups. He now comes to ask a question which was much debated among scholars.

There were more than 600 commandments in the Jewish Law, and it was often asked which of these had priority over the others. Unusual for him, Jesus immediately answers the man’s question. Was this because, unlike on other occasions, it was asked with politeness and respect and was a genuine request for an opinion?

In answering the question Jesus does not give just one commandment but two:

Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

and

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Both answers are taken from the Law of Moses (Deut 6:4-5 and Lev 19:18 respectively) and so satisfy his questioner’s request. However, as we read through the New Testament and especially the words of Jesus in the Gospel, we know that Jesus gives his own twist to these two commandments.

First, in answering a question about which is the most important commandment, he gives two commandments which, in his view, are quite inseparable; one cannot be kept without the other. We cannot say we love God and then refuse to love our neighbour. He will make two other refinements. He will extend the meaning of ‘neighbour’ to include every single person and not just the people of one’s own race, religion or family (see Luke 10:30-37). And he will set as the standard of love, not just the love we are able to show, but the depth of love which he will show by dying for us (John 15:13).

The scribe is very pleased with the answer that Jesus gives and expresses full agreement, and:

When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

That is to say, the scribe is very close to having the spirit of the gospel and to the following of Jesus. He still has to make the crucial step of committing himself to follow Jesus and become actively involved in the work of the Kingdom.

Whether Nicodemus or this scribe took that step or not we do not know. However, we can make our choice to start today or renew our commitment to keep this double commandment and to reflect on how well we put them together.