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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?

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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.

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Commentary on Luke 11:47-54

There are more strong words from Jesus against the Pharisaic mentality. Today the charge is of hypocrisy:

Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your ancestors killed.

The people build monuments to remember the prophets of old, but those same prophets were killed by their ancestors. On the one hand, they are building the monuments as an act of atonement, while they themselves have exactly the same attitudes as their ancestors. They do not listen to their own teaching.

Jesus utters words which he identifies as “the Wisdom of God”:

I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute…

It is not a quotation from the Old Testament or any other book known to us. It could refer to God speaking through Jesus (the Word, the Wisdom of God) or presenting, in quotation form, God’s decision to send prophets and apostles, even though they would be rejected.

Jesus is basically saying that the mission of the Church (his Apostles) is linked with the mission of the Old Testament prophets, who, like Jesus’ disciples, suffered and, in some cases, died at the hands of their contemporaries. Jesus, of course, himself will be one of them, the last and greatest Prophet.

Jesus says the scholars of the Law carry with them guilt for the killing of every good person and every prophet since the murder of Abel down to that of Zechariah. The murder of Abel by his brother Cain is recorded in Genesis (4:8), the opening book of the Old Testament, and that of Zechariah, son of Jehoiada in 2 Chronicles (24:20-22). This latter book is regarded as the closing of the Hebrew Testament by the Jews. It is like our describing the whole Bible in terms of ‘from Genesis to Revelation’. Jesus was referring to the history of martyrdom right through the whole of the Old Testament.

There is one final attack against the scribes and their way of thinking and acting. They interpret the Law in such a way that they make it inaccessible to the ordinary person. And, what is worse, they do not observe it themselves:

For you have taken away the key of knowledge; you did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering.

They kept both themselves and the people in ignorance of the true way to salvation and wholeness. As it is put in Matthew’s Gospel:

But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. (Matt 23:13)

One wonders how many of our Church leaders, teachers and theological and moral ‘experts’ have not done exactly the same thing over the years and down to the present day? How many Catholic parents and teachers have made the Christian message basically inaccessible to the young, and then we wonder why they have no interest in religion?

Not surprisingly, all these attacks only increased the hostility of the Pharisees and the religious leaders against Jesus. They were able to get him to speak on a multitude of religious questions hoping that he would convict himself out of his own mouth. As far as they were concerned, they were more than successful.

What they did not realise was that Jesus was operating from a completely different vision of what life is really about. His new wine could not fit into their old wineskins. The questions for each one to ask are: Do I share the vision of Jesus? What does ‘Christianity’ mean to me?

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Commentary on Revelation 14:14-19

Today’s passage, whose meaning at first sight seems puzzling, is a vision of gathering together the righteous and the good, followed by judgement on the wicked. The actual destruction of the wicked pagans will be treated more fully later on (Rev 19:11-21), but it is not part of our liturgical readings. Our reading today is inspired by a short passage from the prophet Joel (3:13) based on the grain and grape harvests:

Put in the sickle,
for the harvest is ripe.
Go in, tread,
for the winepress is full.
The vats overflow,
for their wickedness is great.

As we shall see, the grain represents the good and the wine the bad.

In his vision, John sees:

…a white cloud, and seated on the cloud was one like the Son of Man, with a golden crown on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand!

The “Son of Man” refers to Christ, and the cloud indicates a divine presence—God’s throne. The “golden crown” represents a golden wreath of victory, his victory over death and sin.

The “sharp sickle” refers to that used by the Israelites for cutting grain (usually a flint or iron blade attached to a curved handle of wood or bone). The sickle is the tool for harvesting and Christ as Judge comes to reap his harvest, gathering in, first of all, the elect—those who have been faithful to his Word.

Says a second angel:

Use your sickle and reap, for the hour to reap has come, because the harvest of the earth is fully ripe.

In other words, it is the time for the final judgement and the gathering in of the righteous. So, the “Son of Man” wields his sickle over the earth and brings in his harvest.

In the second part of the reading, we see another angel, also with a sharp sickle, coming out from the “temple in heaven”—the place where God has his dwelling. That angel “has authority over fire”. In Jewish tradition, various angels were responsible for particular aspects of the world, including wind, water and the bottomless pit. Here, fire is closely associated with the idea of judgement. Fire both destroys the bad and purifies the good.

The angel of fire “came out from the altar” where the prayers of the persecuted and martyred are carried up to God. Now judgement comes on those who made them suffer.

The angel then calls out to the One, saying:

Use your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for its grapes are ripe. So the angel swung his sickle over the earth and gathered the vintage of the earth, and he threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.

The context suggests (in contrast to the harvesting sickle mentioned earlier) the smaller grape-knife with which the farmer cut the clusters of grapes from the vine. According to the NIV Study Bible, the traditional wine press was:

“…a rock-hewn trough about eight feet square with a channel leading to a lower and smaller trough. Grapes were thrown into the upper vat and trampled with bare feet. The juice was collected in the lower vat. At times mechanical pressure was added.”

The treading of the grapes was a common symbol in the Old Testament for the carrying out of God’s judgement. In Isaiah, there is a vivid image of God treading the wine press of judgement:

I have trodden the winepress alone,
and from the peoples no one was with me;
I trod them in my anger
and trampled them in my wrath;
their juice spattered on my garments,
and I stained all my robes. (Isa 63:3)

And so, today’s reading speaks of the “winepress of the wrath of God”.

Our reading concludes at this point, but there is one more verse in the full text of the chapter:

And the winepress was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the winepress, as high as a horse’s bridle, for a distance of about one thousand six hundred stadia.
(Rev 14:20)

The pagans are to be destroyed well outside of Jerusalem because bloodshed would defile the city. Jesus too was executed and shed his blood outside of Jerusalem (Heb 13:12-13). His execution in this manner showed that Jesus and the New Covenant had been rejected and, in his dying, he identified himself with the sinner whom he came to reconcile with God.

The theme of the final judgement is one that goes right through our readings as we approach the end of the liturgical year. It is a time for reflection on where we stand before God and before each other.

These reminders are not meant to frighten us, but to help us to prepare and, above all, to be ready at all times. For our judgement is as close as the day of our death, which can come up on us like a “thief in the night”. Every day we read of people whose lives have come to a totally unexpected end. But if we are always ready, there is nothing to fear.

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Commentary on 1 John 4:11-18

The reading continues to remind us of the primacy of God’s love.  It begins with a very significant statement:

Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.

One would expect the writer to have said that, if God loves us so much, we should love God back—but no. The real test of whether we are returning God’s love is our passing on that love to our brothers and sisters. God does not need our love and, in fact, strictly speaking we cannot give to God something he already has in infinite abundance. That is why we respond by passing it on.

Part of the reason for that is because “no one has ever seen God”. This statement is directed against the people called Pneumatikoi (from the Greek, meaning ‘the spirit people’), who held that a human being could make direct contact with God simply by intuition. No, God cannot be seen. That means that it is difficult to measure our real love for him. On the other hand, it is very easy for us to think that we love him. (Remember the comic strip character Charlie Brown’s famous remark: “I love mankind; it’s people I can’t stand.”)

But John says that if we can genuinely love the people around us—who are very visible indeed, sometimes uncomfortably so—then God is really present in us through that love and it gradually transforms us.

God is also present in us through our faith in and commitment to Jesus as the Son of God. The reading tells us:

God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God.

Because God is love, those who deeply love:

…abide in God, and God abides in them.

Here again, we have the double theme of this letter: To obey God is to believe in Jesus as his Son and to love those around us.

Finally, love and fear do not co-exist. When we are filled with the love of God, a love which flows out from us towards others, there is nothing we need fear. That is, we have no need to be afraid of God or his judgement (although there may be things happening in our life which may generate fear). Fear comes from the threat of punishment, but for the one who is close to God in love, such fear has no meaning. If I do experience a fear of God, then it is an indication that my love is defective. (This fear is not to be confused with ‘fear of the Lord’, one of the gifts of the Spirit. ‘Fear’ in that sense is rather a sense of awe at God’s infinity, but not the kind of fear when we come face to face with a life-threatening danger.) If there is no love in us, then we simply do not know God who, by definition, “is love”.

Repeating what has already been said, our Christian life is about being loving persons, not primarily about orthodoxy or theological expertise, or conformity to rules, or making sacrifices, or carrying out “religious” duties. St Paul put it this way:

…if I…do not have love, I am nothing. (Cor 13:2)

In verses just prior to today’s reading, John says:

Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.
(1 John 4:8)

If I am not a loving person, all the rest is a waste. If I am a truly loving person, everything else is taken care of.

And what is the source of that love? It is not ourselves. Again, John says:

In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us…
(1 John 4:10)

Our loving acts are only an expression of his love working in us and through us. Our love is always a response to his, and never the other way round. The evidence is in God’s sending:

…his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
(1 John 4:10)

Jesus hanging on the cross is the most dramatic sign of God’s love for us, a love that is totally gratuitous (so we call it ‘grace’) and never earned by any action of ours.

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Commentary on 1 Maccabees 6:1-13

We read today of the end of the reign of King Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who caused such sufferings to the Jews, as we have seen. Disasters now overtake him, resulting in his sickness and death. For the author of First Maccabees the reason is clear—his desecration of God’s holy city of Jerusalem.

In terms of strict chronology, this episode of the king’s death should really be recorded before the Dedication of the Temple which we saw in yesterday’s reading. The reading begins by telling us that Antiochus was making his way through the Upper Provinces of his empire, that is, inland to the east. Reports had reached him of a city called Elymais which was extremely wealthy with silver and gold. There was a temple there full of golden armour which had been left there by Alexander the Great, who was the son of Philip of Macedon, the first king of all the Greeks. This was the temple of Nanaea-Artemis.

In fact, there is no town of this name known. ‘Elymais’ is the Greek form of Elam, which refers to the country around Susa, the old capital of Persia, close to where the River Tigris runs into the Persian Gulf. The term more strictly refers to the mountainous region north of Susa.

Antiochus attacked the city, but was unable to take it because, as we are told, the inhabitants had forewarning of the attack. In Second Maccabees we read:

When the leader reached Persia with a force that seemed irresistible, they were cut to pieces in the temple of Nanea [a Persian counterpart of the Greeks’ Artemis] by a deception employed by the priests of the goddess Nanea.
(2 Macc 1:13)

First Maccabees does not mention this and may not know of it. The author says that the king was routed in battle and had to retreat to Babylon which lay some distance to the northwest on the River Euphrates.

On top of this, more bad news reached the king. His armies which had invaded Judaea had been routed, and one of his top generals, Lysias, in particular, who had advanced with massive strength, had been forced to flee before the Jews. The Jews, in turn, were now more powerful than ever thanks to the large amounts of weapons they had captured in their victories.

They had also pulled down the “abomination”—the altar to Zeus which Antiochus had erected in the Jerusalem Temple—and rebuilt the old walls which surrounded the sanctuary and fortified Beth-Zur, one of the king’s cities.

All of this was too much for Antiochus, who was shocked and profoundly shaken by the turn of events. These defeats—and perhaps the overthrow of the statue of all the all-powerful gods, Zeus and Baal (in whom he believed), filled him with grief and undermined his health. He took to his bed, fell sick with grief because things had turned out so badly for him. After spending some days confined to his bed, with recurrent attacks of melancholy and depression, he realised that his end was near. It was time for him to make his peace with his gods.

On his deathbed, he summons all his “Friends”, that is, his close associates and ministers, and makes a deathbed speech. He cannot sleep and he is overcome with anxiety about his fate. He wonders how he could have come to such a state of distress, considering how generous and well-loved he was in his heyday. He remembers only the favours he showered on those who were close to him, but seems to have been completely unaware of the depth of suffering that he had caused in the peoples he had conquered and over-run. How many other authoritarian tyrants have felt the same—that all they did was for the good of their people? Dictators come to believe their own propaganda.

However, Antiochus does remember now how wrongly he acted in Jerusalem, when he plundered the Temple of all its sacred vessels and ordered the extermination of the people of Judah “without good reason”. He is now convinced that this is the reason why so many misfortunes have overtaken him and why he is dying miserable, “perishing of bitter disappointment in a strange land”. It is the just punishment for all he did against God’s people. There is an element of true repentance in his words and for this he lays himself open to God’s mercy.

Technically speaking, he was not dying in a “strange land” because Persia still was part of his Seleucid Empire. This book says the king’s death was punishment for the pillaging of the Temple in Jerusalem, but Second Maccabees says it was for plundering the temple of Artemis. Second Maccabees also says, as we saw from the quotation above, that the king died in this temple, having walked into the trap set for him and his ‘Friends’ by the priests of the temple.

Actually, Antiochus must have died before all of this, but the author has to adapt his story to fit the time frame he has chosen. As we saw in speaking of the Dedication feast yesterday, it is likely that it was because the king was already dead that Judas Maccabeus was able to seize the Temple in Jerusalem. As far as we are concerned, it is not an important point because it does not alter the basic meaning of the story and what it might say to us.

How do we think our lives will be evaluated by those who have known us in life? Do we believe ourselves to be more kindly and compassionate than we actually are? What actions of ours in the past do we now see were very wrong and unjust? What amends can we make, for it is never too late to turn ourselves round. We cannot undo what has been done, but we can act to make a radical change in our lives and relationships from today on.

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Commentary on Luke 18:35-43

Here we have Luke’s version of the story of the blind man, called by Mark, Bar-Timaeus—the son of Timaeus.

In Mark, the story is strategically placed at the end of a long teaching section where Jesus’ disciples are slowly deepening their understanding of Jesus and his mission. The story, full of symbols, sums up all that has gone before. It is like a mini-gospel (see the commentary for Thursday of Week 8 in Ordinary Time).

In Luke, the story has also a very significant positioning. It falls between two other stories, both about rich people. One was a highly religious man who was not able to accept Jesus’ condition that he share his wealth with the poor before becoming a disciple. The other is about a man who supposedly was anything but religious and yet, after meeting Jesus, gives away a large proportion of his wealth to the poor. Which of these was really blind?

In addition, the first story of a rich man is followed by the third prediction of Jesus’ suffering, death and resurrection, after which, says Luke, the disciples did not understand what Jesus was talking about:

But they understood nothing about all these things; in fact, what he said was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said. (Luke 18:34)

His Apostles—they too are blind.

As the story opens, we are told that Jesus was approaching Jericho. Jericho was already a very ancient city, located about 8 km west of the River Jordan and about 25 km north-east of Jerusalem. In Jesus’ time, the Jericho of the Old Testament was largely abandoned, but a new city, south of the old one, had been built by Herod the Great. It was the last main stop for Jesus before arriving in Jerusalem.

In Mark’s version, Jesus is leaving Jericho, but here Luke has Jesus approaching the city. Mark has Jesus leaving Jericho on the way to Jerusalem and his passion, and the blind man becomes his follower. Luke has Jesus going into and through Jericho on the way to Jerusalem because he wants to bring in Zacchaeus (a rich man whose eyes are opened by Jesus), a story not mentioned by either Mark or Matthew.

Luke’s story begins with a blind man sitting beside the road begging (in Matthew’s account, there are actually two blind men; see Matt 20:29-34). As we have mentioned before, the ‘road’ is the Way to Jerusalem on which all of Jesus’ disciples must walk together with him. When the beggar hears that Jesus is passing by he begins to call out in a loud voice:

Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!

By addressing Jesus as ‘Son of David’, he implies Jesus’ role as Messiah-King.

The people tell him to keep quiet. A useless beggar like him has no right disturbing the Master. But the man ignores them and keeps crying out (in this he reminds us of the persistent widow we read about the other day). Then, Jesus stops. If the man had not kept calling out, Jesus might not have heard him and might have passed forever out of his life. How often does that happen to us?

Jesus orders the man to be brought to him. Again, it is always through other people that we come to know Jesus—and sometimes it will be through me, and only through me, that others will come to know him. I may be the only link that a person has with Jesus—something to think about. On the other hand, I may be the one person who blocks someone approaching Jesus and his Way. We saw earlier what happens to those who are a ‘scandal’, a stumbling block to Jesus.

Jesus asks:

What do you want me to do for you?

It is a question that he keeps asking me. How do I answer? Have my answers changed over the years? Today let me reflect on what I really want from him. And ask him for it.

Now listen to this man’s response to Jesus’ question:

Lord, let me see again.

Of course, one might think, it was a natural response from a person who was blind. But in a wider sense, so is each one of us. We all need to see. It is our poor sight that prevents us from knowing Jesus and seeing where he wants us to go. We could hardly make a better request.

Jesus immediately responds:

Receive your sight; your faith has saved you.

If only we too had the faith that would help us to see clearly!

And what did the man do when he could see? He became a follower of Jesus and gave glory to God. No longer blind, no longer a beggar, no longer by the road, but on the road with Jesus. On the road—and Jesus is the Road, the Way—to Jerusalem and all that it means. That is the natural response for those who can really see.

Just before this (not part of our readings), the rich man who wanted “eternal life” was not able to “see” and so could not accept Jesus’ invitation. In contrast, tomorrow we will meet someone who did have his eyes opened and responded generously.

The story also applies to Jesus’ disciples who gradually will have their eyes opened too, and then they will understand why Jesus had to suffer and die on his way to glory. They will understand that it was the uttermost proof of God’s love for each one of us.

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Commentary on Luke 10:21-24

As Christmas and all it means approaches, the Gospel reminds us of the tremendous privilege that has come to us through our knowing Jesus Christ:

Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see but did not see it and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.

These words were spoken by Jesus just after seventy-two of his disciples had returned from their mission of proclaiming the Kingdom and doing the same work as he was doing. They echo words he had spoken to them earlier:

To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but to others I speak in parables, so that
‘looking they may not perceive and
hearing they may not understand.’ (Luke 8:10)

These words imply, not that only the disciples are offered insight and understanding, but rather that the disciples are, by definition, those who open themselves to hear and to see and to understand the message.

So for us, today is a day of special thanksgiving for being so blessed. But with privilege comes responsibility. It is for us to see more clearly who Jesus really is, and to have a deeper understanding of his vision and of his ways. It is for us to listen ever more acutely to the Word of God so that it really penetrates our consciousness and is absorbed into our very being.

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Commentary on Genesis 1:20—2:4

God completes the work of creation we were considering in yesterday’s reading.

Evening and morning, the fifth day
On the fifth day God creates swarms of living creatures from the waters (rivers and seas, and salt and fresh water are not distinguished) and the birds of the air. These include:

…the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm and every winged bird of every kind [i.e. everything that flies, including insects].

The Hebrew word for ‘create’, bara, is a verb whose only subject can be God. There are three objects of creation mentioned: the universe as a whole, sea monsters controlling the waters, and human beings, who control the land. And:

God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”

And, as before:

…God saw that it was good.

Evening and morning, the sixth day
On the sixth day it is the turn for land-based creatures—all kinds of domestic animals (cattle, sheep), creeping things (reptiles, snakes, insects and small animals), and wild animals. It was God who brought all these into being. And he saw that they were good.

Also on the sixth day he creates human beings, saying:

Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.

The “us” in this passage certainly does not denote many gods, but God taken together with the retinue of the divine court. The plural can also express the majesty and fullness of God’s being, and the common name for God in Hebrew is elohim, a plural form (recall also that, in the past, the pope and some royalty used the term ‘we’ in speaking of themselves).

While some translations of the Bible use the word “man” in lieu of “humans”, the original translation of the word used is a collective noun for the whole human race, male and female, and so we read later in the sentence, “let them have dominion”. The New Revised Standard Version Bible updated edition (NSRVue, the translation cited in these commentaries) is more accurate in using the term “human” (note, the separate creation of man and then woman is found in the second creation account).

In our image
The human image, in some paradoxical way, resembles a God who has no visual image—perhaps in his speech, his intelligence and moral sense. We should note the opposite, namely, that the Bible does not hesitate to depict divine manifestations in human form. God is even presented with human feelings—sadness, disappointment, anger, vengeance and so forth.

This close relationship with God distinguishes human beings from the animals. It also involves a distant sharing in God’s nature: intellect, will, dominion and authority. We are like God in our access to truth and wisdom, if on an infinitely lower level. We are like God in ability to love. All this paves the way for an even higher image: our sharing in the divine nature through the gift of grace (God’s love experienced and active in our lives). Being in God’s image, humankind is given dominion over all other living things, including wild animals—in the sea, on land and in the air.

Now we have the first piece of poetry in the Bible—forty-percent of which is poetry:

So God created humans in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

Male and female God created them
Both male and female are created equally in the image of God, who is beyond gender and inclusive of both. Compare this also to the later narrative of woman’s creation (see this Thursday’s reading).

They, too, are told to increase and multiply, to fill the earth and be responsible for it and for all the animals, birds and living things within it. And to both humans and all the fish, animals and birds are given the fruits and seeds of every tree and plant. It is a description of a golden—and vegetarian—age, when human beings and animals were at peace with each other, all having only plants for their food. That will change with the coming of Noah (Gen 9:3).

The work of creation of both heavens and earth is now finished, completed in the six days when work was allowed:

God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.

God rested on the seventh day
With his work completed, God rested on the seventh day. And in this way God blessed the seventh day and made it ‘holy’, because on that day he had rested from his work of creation. In future, his people would work on six days but would, in imitation of Yahweh, ‘keep holy the Sabbath day’. It would be a day of prayer and worship and of rest from all kinds of work.

The Sabbath (Hebrew, shabbat) is of divine institution, for on that day God himself rested. The word shabbat is avoided here since, according to the Priestly author, the Sabbath was not imposed until the giving of the law on Sinai, when it then became the sign of the covenant (Exod 31:12-17). However, even at the creation God set an example which was to be followed.

The last sentence of the passage brings to a close one of the creation stories in Genesis, but it can also be read as the beginning of the next section:

These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

Reflecting on today’s reading, we cannot be unaware that our responsibility to be stewards of God’s creation has frequently led to serious abuse of our environment at all levels and is a major concern today. We have mistaken stewardship for domination and control rather than good management.

The whole of creation is put into our hands to supply our needs. But we realise more and more that we ourselves are part of that creation, and that there is an essential symbiosis, a mutual interdependence. From mighty galaxies to sub-atomic particles there is a seamless robe of being into which we must fit, in a way that benefits all.

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Commentary on Daniel 9:4-10

The theme of the readings today is repentance; it is a prayer for God’s mercy and compassion. It is extraordinary that for over 1,000 years this prayer from the Book of Daniel has been read in today’s Lenten Mass. It is an excellent penance prayer—a national act of contrition describing God’s perfection and man’s imperfection. It is a prayer of sorrow and repentance for the many ways in which we have failed to listen to God and his messengers. It is a prayer which contains humility, worship, confession and petition:

…we have sinned and done wrong, acted wickedly and rebelled, [turned] aside from your commandments and ordinances. We have not listened to your servants the prophets…

And:

Righteousness is on your side, O Lord, but open shame, as at this day, falls on us…

So much of the time, these are not the words we hear from people’s lips—or our own. As soon as something goes wrong, we immediately start looking around for someone to blame.

Our media spend a great deal of time and space pointing fingers at others as the source of our troubles. We call it “scapegoating”. It is something we all indulge in to a greater or lesser extent. Just let us listen to a few people gossiping together over a pint or a cup of coffee.

Today’s reading calls on us to point the finger at ourselves and to be fully aware of how we have failed, have sinned, have rebelled—and have much to be sorry for. A good way to measure our sensitivity in this area might be to look at our confessions. When we do go, what do we confess to? Do we just throw out a few platitudinal admissions (e.g. ‘telling lies’, ‘distractions at prayers’, ‘losing our temper’), or do we go deep into the areas where we truly fail in our relationship with God, with others and with ourselves?

Perhaps we do not go to Confession at all because “we can’t think of anything to say”. At the same time, most of us would be very slow to reveal to others our inner thoughts and feelings because, to tell the truth, we are quite ashamed of them. Paradoxically, it is often the Saint, the one who is closest to God, who is most aware of his or her sinfulness and need for healing.

Lent is a time for conversion, renewal and change. It is a time for openness—especially with oneself. That cannot even begin to take place until we are aware of, and acknowledge in ourselves, the areas where that change has to take place.

And, having recognised our faults and the harm they have done to others and to ourselves in our relationship with God, we beg his mercy and compassion. And we know for certain that God’s mercy and compassion are guaranteed, once we open ourselves to him.