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Commentary on Sirach 27:5-8; 1 Corinthians 15:54-58; Luke 6:39-45

Today we have the continuation of Luke’s Sermon on the Plain (not the Mount). Last Sunday’s Gospel told us not to judge or we would be judged ourselves. Does this mean that we are never to criticise other people? ‘Criticise’ comes from Greek, krino, meaning “to make a rational judgment”. So we speak of a film or drama ‘critic’ who may indeed tear a production to pieces or, on the other hand, may praise it to the skies, give it five stars and ‘two thumbs up’.

What is being forbidden by Jesus is not judgment as such, but negative, destructive judgment. There are times when we are expected to give constructive, helpful criticism.

We are often free with the first and slow with the second (e.g. by giving the excuse that we are not qualified). We cannot pass judgment unless we have some vision and understanding. Jesus asks us:

Can a blind person guide a blind person?

How can the blind, those without understanding, presume to give leadership to others who are blind? The result is inevitable:

Will not both fall into a pit?

In life, it is not at all unusual to hear people talk with great authority on things of which they know very little, e.g. complex policies and problems. People who never open a Bible, seldom go to church, are not involved in its activities or not even Christians, frequently have no hesitation in saying what is wrong with the Church. This does not mean that the Church has no faults. Nor does it mean that the Church’s weaknesses should not be highlighted. It does mean that one should speak from genuine knowledge and accurate data and to the people who can do something about it. The same applies to everything else we like to pass judgment on.

Following Jesus’ example
Jesus says:

A disciple is not above the teacher…

This is to say that our judgements should be like those of Jesus. But he also says:

…every disciple who is fully qualified will be like the teacher.

He “will be like the teacher” in judging to save and help, not to knock down and destroy. If we are to avoid blindness we need to walk in the footsteps of people who can see. We need to acknowledge our own blindness, our blind spots, our myopia, our astigmatism of prejudice and lack of objectivity.

It is not much use prefacing some solemn judgement on the Church, for instance, with “When I was in grade school, I was always taught by Sister Imelda that…” What we learnt in grade school or high school is likely not enough so many years later when the Church itself has changed in so many ways and we ourselves have changed. But most of us tend to be both perspicacious and blind—we can see the slightest fault in others while being totally oblivious to much greater faults in ourselves.

Some of us spend large parts of our lunch breaks and recreation times gossiping. This consists mainly of saying what is wrong with other people (present company excepted—until present company goes away). Do we ever feel slightly nervous leaving a party or a group that has been involved in extensive gossiping about peers or colleagues? As soon as we walk out the door they may start saying the same things about me that I was saying about other absent people. On the other hand, if a subject of criticism walks into the room, he or she is likely to be greeted like a long-lost friend, as if they were the most wonderful people in the world.

Why do we do so much of this kind of thing? Do we really enjoy it? Do we feel good about it afterwards? Do we believe that if only other people changed—the boss, some colleagues, parents, children—life would be wonderful?

Pre-emptive strikes
In fact, I think much of our criticism is a form of self-defence, a kind of pre-emptive strike. We feel inadequate and insecure and try to even things out by pulling down people we feel are better than us. No wonder Jesus calls us ‘hypocrites’. This word, from the Greek hypocrites, was used to refer to a stage actor. When I go on like this I am playing a role in which I am the tragic, misunderstood hero or heroine, and the rest are out to get me. It is usually quite a false and misleading picture of the reality.

The Greek actor wore a mask to indicate the role he was playing (in ancient Greece, all the actors were male). We spend a lot of time wearing masks to hide from others the real self of whom we are secretly ashamed. By supposedly ‘exposing’ the weaknesses and wickedness of others, we give our fragile egos a boost.

But Jesus says that everything depends on the inner person and not on the outward appearance. Hypocrisy will not long go undetected. No really good tree can produce bad fruit; and no really bad tree can consistently produce genuinely good fruit.

“The kiln tests the potter’s vessels”, says today’s First Reading. Once we open our mouth we reveal ourselves. We are told:

Do not praise anyone before he speaks,
for this is the way people are tested.

When we gossip, we often tell people a lot more about ourselves than those we are condemning.

Place for criticism
It is important to emphasise that the Gospel is in no way saying we should not have opinions or that we should not express them. But it is saying the following:

• We should avoid having such a high awareness of the shortcomings of others that we have lost the ability to see and accept our own.
• We can spend hours talking about what is wrong with other people—superiors, peers, family members—in their absence, but are not prepared to bring our grievances for open dialogue with the people concerned. Change will never take place under such circumstances. And one wonders sometimes if we really want things to change! Wouldn’t life be extremely dull with nothing whatsoever to grumble about?
• People who gossip incessantly suddenly become reluctant and tongue-tied when asked to evaluate honestly (i.e. both positively and negatively) a colleague who is being considered for another post. Such an evaluation, including its negative parts, may be extremely helpful both to the candidate and the whole organisation. It can avoid the appointment of a person to a position who is quite unsuitable—and it may happen that I am the only person aware of the weakness.
• We live under the illusion that if my boss changes, my spouse changes, my work or home environment changes, then I will be happy. Why should other people change just for me?

Let me change
The real solution is for me to change—to behave proactively rather than just have a knee-jerk reaction every time something touches a sensitive nerve in me. Let me be in charge of my own life and stop trying to change others. As Fr Tony de Mello used to say, “When I change, my whole world changes”. And not only that, when I change, other people are likely to change, but even if they do not, my attitude towards them will not be the same. We have to make our own bed; we don’t wait for others to do so. To again quote Fr de Mello, “Attitude is everything”—my attitude, that is.

I can learn to be totally accepting of reality, and of the way people are. I can refuse to be intimidated or irritated or resentful. I can take off my actor’s mask and be fully myself. In the process I can let other people too be themselves. I am no longer worried about planks in my own eyes or in others’—what you see is what there is.

I judge myself by the standards of Jesus: a good tree bears good fruit. And the words describing the fruits of a good tree are full of warmth, affirmation, encouragement and compassion with now and again some positive, constructive confrontation and challenging. This is because:

…it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.

This sounds like a much better recipe than a life spent in never-ending griping and sniping.

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Commentary on Hosea 2:16-17,21-22; 2 Corinthians 3:1-6; Mark 2:18-22 Read Sunday of Week 8 of Ordinary Time (Year B) »

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Commentary on Sirach 15:16-21; 1 Corinthians 2:6-10; Matthew 5:17-37

The first Christians were all Jews. In the beginning, they continued to observe many of their traditional customs, e.g. about circumcision, about clean and unclean food. As well, they went to the Temple in Jerusalem to pray. But very soon, non-Jews (Gentiles) also became Christians, and these did not have to observe some of the traditions of the Jews. But the Jewish Christians felt uncomfortable about this. When they became Christians, did they have to abandon traditions, which were so much part of both their religious and social life? It became a very serious issue in the Apostolic Church.

Matthew’s Gospel, from which today’s passage comes, was written primarily for Jewish Christians and today’s reading—and indeed the whole of this Gospel—can be seen as words of encouragement for them. Throughout his Gospel, Matthew constantly uses the Old Testament to show that the life of Jesus is not a breakaway from past Jewish traditions, but that it is a continuation of all that was foretold by the prophecies of the Hebrew Testament. The life and teaching of Jesus is not to be seen as a new religion; Jesus’ life is the natural development of the story of salvation. And Jesus is the climax of that story, because Jesus is the Messiah king and saviour for whom the Jews had been waiting for such a long time (in that sense, our Bible—Old and New Testaments—is really only one book).

The Law and Jesus
So in today’s Gospel Matthew emphasises the relationship between Jewish Law and the teaching of Jesus. Matthew reassures his readers that Jesus has not come to abolish the Law and the prophets, but to bring them to completion. So, in a sense, the Law still has force.

…until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.

On the other hand, there is much in Jesus’ teaching that is completely new. He did not abolish the Law, but he introduced a completely new way of thinking. He did not abolish or change the Law, but went far beyond its literal requirements. For Jesus, just to keep the Law externally is not enough. To be a disciple of Christ, the foundation of our lives must go deeper—to a mutual love. To keep the Law without love is like having a body without a soul. Literally, to keep the Law of God and of the Church is not the same as being a good disciple of Jesus. Jesus says today:

…unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees [who were perfect observers of the letter of the Law], you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

The Scribes and the Pharisees kept the Law and the Commandments very carefully. But Jesus would say that, though they observed the external requirements of the Law, they did not have the spirit which is the foundation of the Law: to love God and to love the neighbour as oneself. Clearly, this teaching would have made much more impact on a Jewish audience but, even in our Christian lives, it is possible for people to have a very mechanical notion of what is good behaviour. This is revealed often in the way we “go to confession”.

Six examples
To help us understand his meaning Jesus gives six striking examples, and in today’s Gospel, we have four of them. In these four examples, Jesus helps us to understand that, to be one of his disciples, it is not enough simply to keep what the Law tells us to do. We do not keep the Law through our behaviour, but through our basic attitudes, our basic values.

When the Pharisees kept the Law, they wanted to obey God, but very often they neglected the needs of others. It was their own ‘perfection’ they were mainly concerned about (just as we can be exclusively concerned about being in a ‘state of grace’). Even now, some people in confession are sorry because their sins offend God or are instances of personal failure, but often they show little awareness of how their sins hurt other people.

For Jesus, we cannot separate our relationship with God and our relationship with people. If we cannot find God in our brothers and sisters, we cannot say that we really love God. Or in the words of the First Letter of John:

We know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brothers and sisters…All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them. (1 John 3:14-15)

Do not kill
The first example from the Law that Jesus gives is, “You shall not murder”. But Jesus says we must not even get angry or use insulting words with others. What Jesus is saying is that we must deeply respect the dignity and rights of every person, a person who is unconditionally loved by God and for whom Jesus will sacrifice his life. And if we do not respect our brothers and sisters deep within our heart, we cannot say we respect God. So if I am going to the Temple to pray (a religious act of worship) and I remember I have offended someone, I should go and reconcile with my brother first, and only then make my offering in the Temple. Otherwise, my prayers and offering are of no real value.

Life and worship cannot be separated—each influences the other. Yet, how often do we piously go to Mass when we have deeply hurt another person and need to reconcile with him or her? We cannot say we love Jesus if we are hurting others.

That is the meaning of the sign of peace which we share with others before sharing in the Eucharist at Communion. And, where possible, it would be great to make a point of giving the sign of peace sincerely to a person with whom we have a problem, a person we may criticise or dislike, or someone who is a foreigner or a complete stranger. If we cannot do this, we should question the genuineness and integrity of our communion.

Do not commit adultery
Adultery occurs when there are sexual relations between two people, of whom at least one is already married. In Jewish Law there were very serious penalties for this. We remember the woman who was brought to Jesus to be stoned to death, because that was what the Law demanded. Jesus, however, says you can even commit adultery in your thoughts (and nobody knows about it—except you).

Again Jesus is saying that, apart from our external actions, our basic attitude is paramount. We cannot just use another person as an object to give us pleasure. We cannot use another person like a toy. When that happens both are degraded. Real love is completely different. Real respect is completely different. And adultery is wrong not so much because it is a sexual act outside marriage, but because it is an act of serious injustice to the innocent married partner and seriously injures the marriage relationship. It is a serious breach of trust and fidelity.

No divorce
The Gospel tells us that the Law also says:

It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’

In Jesus’ time, it was relatively easy to divorce. If a husband became sexually attracted to another woman, he could just make an official declaration that he was divorcing his wife. It could be for very trivial reasons. She could do nothing—she had no say in the matter.

It was legal, but according to Jesus, it was against the dignity and the rights of the wife. It was legal, but it was both selfish and unjust. It was legal, but also immoral. For Jesus, it is not enough for something to be legal. It must also be good. It must also be an expression of love and justice. That is something we need to remember. Immoral acts are not less immoral simply because they do not happen to be against the law, or because I am no longer a practising Catholic.

It would seem that Jesus is dealing here with divorce for selfish reasons. In our time, divorce is often the result of a marriage having irretrievably broken down. In Jesus’ time, love or happiness had very little to do with marriage. It was governed by the laws and by tradition, and was seen primarily as the bringing together of two families with the purpose of producing heirs.

The matter is more complex in our own time and we have also to distinguish between obtaining a civil divorce (which Catholics can do) and having a second sacramental marriage (which, under the present legislation, Catholics may not do). And there are other issues involved in the question of divorce, but they can be dealt with more fully when we deal with the question later (Sunday of Week 27 in Year B).

No false swearing
Jesus also says:

Do not swear at all… Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’.

It was common in Jesus’ time for people to guarantee the truth of what they said by making a solemn oath before God. Jesus’ point is that a good Christian does not have to swear at all, because a true Christian is a reliable and totally honest person. He or she is a person of integrity. Such people can be trusted when they speak. They don’t have to give external guarantees. Their ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ means exactly what is said and there are no mental reservations. It is a pleasure to meet people like that, who are totally transparent and have nothing to hide.

Catholics and the law
There are not a few Catholics who feel that if they just keep the Commandments they are good Catholics. They often like to ask, “Is this a sin?”, meaning, is it against the law? Is it a mortal sin or is it a venial sin? If it is ‘only’ a venial sin, then I can do it.

But true Christians do not ask whether something is legal or illegal. They love God, they love Jesus, they love their brothers and sisters. Their only concern is how they can serve and love them more and more. They want to work with Jesus and with his brothers and sisters to build the Kingdom of God. No matter how much they do, they know they can still love more and do more and be more.

It is not then a question of law; it is not a question of what I have to do. It is a question of how much more I can do, how much more I want to do. The requirements of the law are way behind.

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Commentary on Isaiah 58:7-10; 1 Corinthians 2:1-5; Matthew 5:13-16

Today’s Gospel immediately follows the Beatitudes. And the readings are saying that the Beatitudes must not only be lived, but seen to be lived. The Gospel reminds us that it is essential for the Christian disciple both to be seen and heard. Christianity is not a private religion. I am not just a Christian for me only. Christianity is a vision which is meant to change the world, and there is no doubt that, to a great extent, it has.

Several images
Jesus uses a string of images to express this: He wants his disciples to be the salt of the earth. Salt is a basic and essential item in our diet, but it had a particular value in ancient culture. It is a purifier, a seasoning and a preservative. This was especially the case in the days before refrigeration. Today we tend to take in too much salt and are warned about doing so. But in older times, it was a precious and often expensive commodity, and because of its value, it was often a favourite item of taxation.

What Jesus emphasises is its distinctive taste. We often judge food by saying it has too little or too much salt. Christians then, by their gospel-centred lives, are to give a distinctive ‘taste’ to society. Those who really have the spirit of the Beatitudes (including non-Christians) will permeate the world, renew it, and slow down its social and moral decay.

But salt only produces its effect when it is totally merged with the food. It is indistinguishable from the rest of the food, but its presence or absence is very obvious. The Christian, too, can only be truly effective when he or she is fully a member of society, and at the same time, gives an unmistakable taste to that society.

There have been times when Christians felt that they should keep away from the ‘world’. Monks and nuns, who were among the most committed Christians, built large walls around their property to keep the ‘world’ out—although they clearly did have a visibility of their own, especially in an all-Christian society. Their very separation from the rest of society and the lives they led were meant to be a challenge. It is possible that in a secular and pluralist society, such witness may give a very different message and be less effective.

In our Western society, we often put salt on the side of the plate. This is like the Christian who does have taste, but who lives on the fringes of society and makes no impact on it. This can happen very easily when, for instance, we have a parish which is only concerned with its own spiritual well-being and makes no effort to reach out. There are many parts of our society, especially the commercial, industrial and entertainment areas where the Church is often totally absent. The other extreme is when a Christian is totally immersed in secular society, but has nothing to give. This is like the tasteless salt which is good for nothing.

“You are the light of the world”
Jesus said of himself:

I am the light of the world. (John 8:12)

In today’s Gospel, we are then called to be and to do what Jesus did for the world. The Gospel message is to shine out through our words and actions. Some people will not like that light, preferring darkness, and may try to put it out. But Jesus dealt with that in the last Beatitude where he speaks of persecution for the sake of the gospel.

Jesus uses two more images to emphasise the essential visibility of the Christian. He speaks of a city built on top of a hill. It sticks out like a sore thumb; there is no way to hide it. And he speaks of a lamp on a lamp stand. What is the point in lighting a lamp, then covering it up? What is the point in getting baptised, joining the Christian community and then becoming completely invisible to others, especially to those who are not Christians? For instance, how many of my neighbours know that I am a believing and practising Christian? How many of my colleagues at work know? How many of my socialising friends?

What should be seen?
And what does Jesus want people to see? Packed congregations? Magnificent churches which are architectural masterpieces? Thousands on their knees praying? People doing severe penitential exercises? Planeloads of pilgrims going to places of devotion, like Rome, the Holy Land, Lourdes, Fatima and Medjugorje? What does he want people to see?

All these things are undoubtedly good, but nothing like this is mentioned in today’s readings. What kind of religious observation does God want to see? To answer that question let us listen to the First Reading from Isaiah:

…to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke…

This is Christianity? This is religion? But it is so political! And Isaiah is not finished yet, and he asks another clearly rhetorical question:

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

It is then, and only then, that we will truly be the salt of the earth:

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly…

Then you will find God.

Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, “Here I am”…
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.

Show off your good works!
Let the light that is in us, then, shine brightly. And why is this? Is it so that people will see our good works and say how wonderful Catholics we are? No! There is only one reason for us to be salt and light for others—so people may be drawn to God as their Lord. Our only aim in living out the gospel with maximum visibility is to point people in the direction of the God who loves them and in whom is their ultimate happiness. Our aim is to urge people to work together for the kind of world that God wants us to have.

To do all this we do not need elaborate training, or a postgraduate degree. It is within reach of the most simple, even illiterate, person. It is not a question of passing on knowledge, but of sharing our experience of a loving God.

So Paul says today in the Second Reading:

When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come…with superior speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified….I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were made not with persuasive words of wisdom but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.

Paul tells us elsewhere that he begged God to remove from him a serious disability which he felt prevented him from preaching the gospel effectively. Three times he begged God to take this thing away. And, he says, God answered his prayer, not by taking it away, but by helping Paul to realise that it was precisely in his weakness and through his weakness that God’s power became most obvious in him (see 1 Cor 12:7-10).

So our lack of talent or influence or education can never be excuses for not sharing our experience of Christ and of working with others to establish the Kingdom among us. We saw that in a person like St Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa), who exerted such a powerful influence by the utter simplicity of her life. Wearing her simple white sari and her old leather sandals, she could visit the destitute and dying in the slum of an inner city and the next day be socialising with the rich and powerful wearing exactly the same clothes. That is what being the salt of the earth means.

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Commentary on Zephaniah 2:3, 3:12-13; 1 Corinthians 1:26-31; Matthew 5:1-12

Today we begin the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is presented as the new Moses. He presents five long discourses by Jesus, which can be seen to match the Pentateuch (the five first books of the Bible), traditionally attributed to Moses as their author and which embody the Jewish Law. Just as the Pentateuch embodies the Jewish way of life, so these discourses embody Jesus’ vision of the life he proposes for us.

The Sermon on Mount is the first of these five discourses. It is not a tape recording or a verbatim record of an actual sermon or address. Rather, it is a collection of sayings and teachings focusing on the personal qualities expected of a disciple of Jesus.

It is given on a mountain. Mountains are traditionally seen as holy places where God is specially present, and there are several instances in both the Hebrew and Christian Testaments where mountains feature in a significant way. Apart from today’s example, we have, to give just two examples, Mount Sinai where God gave the Law to Moses, and the mountain of the Transfiguration where something of Jesus’ inner reality was revealed to three chosen disciples.

Jesus sat down, a position of authority, e.g. when the Pope speaks officially, he does so ex cathedra, sitting on his chair or throne. Jesus’ audience consists of the Twelve, his other disciples and all those who wish to hear what he says.

The core of Christian living
Just as the Ten Commandments are the core of the Jewish way of life and a law to follow, so the Beatitudes are the core of the Christian way of life. Yet, they are often not understood as such. In many ways, they are largely ignored as guides to Christian living, and many Christians still regard the Ten Commandments as their life guide. As a priest, I have yet to hear anyone refer to the Beatitudes in making their ‘confession’!

However, there are major differences between the Commandments and the Beatitudes. In a literal sense at least, the Commandments are fairly easy to keep. And what is very significant as far as the Gospel is concerned, they can be observed without love. They can be kept in a very selfish, self-centred way. This was perhaps the problem of the rich man who said he kept the Commandments since he was young, but could not bring himself to share his wealth with the poor. This was surely a failure in love for the neighbour—and so he could not become a disciple of Jesus.

In the society where Jesus grew up, a good person was understood as one who kept the Law perfectly. In fact, many of the Commandments can be kept by not doing anything at all, e.g. not stealing, not being violent, not doing unlawful sexual acts and not talking about other people. A highly introverted, narrow-minded Puritan might very well be observing the Commandments to the letter. And this was where the conflict arose between Jesus and the scribes and Pharisees.

Strictly speaking, the Beatitudes are not commandments. They are not so much things to be done, or rules to be kept, as deep-down attitudes of the mind. And, in fact, their observance is only possible with a deep love of God and of other people. They can never be kept fully—they are goals that are always calling us further. They never leave any room for complacency. One can never say about the Beatitudes what the rich man said to Jesus, namely, that he had kept all the commandments since he was young.

Sources of true happiness
Each Beatitude begins with the word “Blessed”. ‘Blessed’ is a translation of the Greek makarios, and the Latin, felix. The meaning of these words is a combination of happiness and good fortune. So we could translate either with “Happy are those…” or “Fortunate are those…” As well, ‘Blessed’ used in this same sense is also a good rendering.

The Beatitudes must be understood in the context of the Kingdom. The Kingdom, as discussed previously, is not a place. It is that complex of relationships that exists between God and those who have totally accepted him as the Lord and guide of their lives, and who share God’s vision of what life is about.

So, in the Kingdom it is not the rich, the successful and the powerful who are really happy and fortunate, but the meek and lowly. Clearly that is not the conventional way of thinking for many in our world. And that is why to enter the Kingdom requires metanoia, a radical change in the way we see life and its values.

This point is made forcefully by Paul in today’s Second Reading:

God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.

It is also made in the First Reading:

Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land, who do his commands; seek righteousness, seek humility… For I will leave in the midst of you a people humble and lowly… They shall do no wrong and utter no lies, nor shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouths.

Eight paths to happiness
Right at the beginning of Jesus’ teaching he throws down a challenge to conventional thinking. Let us now take a brief look at each one of these ways of being blessedly happy.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
The poor in the Bible are not just the materially destitute, but all those who in their need turn to God. Poor in spirit are those who clearly acknowledge that they depend totally on God. With such an attitude, one has already entered the Reign of God. One acknowledges clearly that one is not self-sufficient, that one’s life always hangs by a thread and can be snuffed out at any moment. In our daily lives we are dependent on a huge number of people who provide for our needs. It is the loving power of God, accepted and experienced, that helps us to see just how dependent, how powerless in every respect we really are.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Here we think not just of those grieving a death, but those also who feel a deep sorrow for the evils and injustices of this world. They mourn not just for their own pain, but are in solidarity with all those who are the victims of “man’s inhumanity to man”. They face this pain with others and do not run away from it in hedonistic, escapist enjoyment. They realise that often the only way to cope with pain is not to go round it, but to go through it. Such people will, in turn, experience comfort and a certain inner peace. They can discern the loving presence of God even in situations that seem so negative and painful.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
The Greek word here for “meek” is praus, a word only found in Matthew, and then just three times. It is normally translated as ‘gentle and kindly’. It is the very opposite of arrogance, bullying and violent manipulation. It embodies deep respect and tenderness towards all. It learns to find and radiate goodness everywhere. It is not to be identified with wimpishness, weakness or cowardice. The truly gentle person, the one who can remain gentle and respectful of the other’s dignity in the face of provocative violence, is a very strong person. It is not an attitude we normally see in the heroes of action movies, who are more likely to deal with hostility by visiting violence on their foes. There is a fullness of life for the gentle that the arrogant and violent and manipulative can never know. And the world is theirs in a way that is never possible for the merely rich.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
For those who live in an area of abundant water and food, hunger and thirst are rarely experienced as the poor inhabitants of the desert lands often experienced in Jesus’ time. The intense hunger that Jesus speaks about here is that people everywhere may receive what is due to them for a life of dignity and fulfilment. There are people in our society who only hunger and thirst to have the goods of this world for themselves, whatever impact this may have on others. But there are in our society others who have a hunger and thirst to dedicate their lives and energies to work for the restoration of true justice and peace in our societies. Such people belong to the Reign of God, for it is God’s will that that the hunger for justice be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
This is not just pity or sympathy, but a deep down compassion and empathy, a real entering into the pain that others are experiencing. Such people can be absolutely assured of God’s compassion for them. In another context, Jesus told his followers to imitate the mercy and compassion of God. This means we have to put aside all forms of judgmentalism and prejudice, not to mention hate and contempt for others. This is part of the command to love our enemies, those who hate and curse us. Our instinct is to pay such people in kind, but then we are no different from them. On the contrary, we need to pray that their bitter hearts may be softened, that they may be enabled to reach out in love to all without exception.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
This is not about sexual purity. It refers to the person who sees things with a totally unprejudiced eye, with no distortion whatever. They have 20-20 vision of everything and every person around them. They are able to see things and persons as they are. This is a very rare quality. They are the complete opposite of the self-centred bigot, the racist or the narrow-minded legalist. It is not surprising that such persons can see God, not in the sense of having visions, but in being able to discern God’s loving presence all around them. Such persons are truly blessed.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
These are those individuals who are active agents of unity and reconciliation wherever they are. The peace here is not simply an absence of hostilities—an uneasy truce—but a genuine healing and bringing together. We can be peacemakers in our families and homes, in our schools and workplaces, between churches, and in all the areas of our society where there is conflict. Peace is inextricably linked with justice; there cannot be peace where there is prejudice, discrimination or exploitation. It would be difficult to find a nicer thing to say of anyone than that he or she was a peacemaker. No wonder such people are called children of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
How can people suffering persecution be called blessed? Because of the reason why they suffer—they do it for the gospel, for the sake of justice and goodness. To suffer for bringing truth and justice into the world has a consolation and joy all its own.

Historically, think of civil rights marchers in the 1960s, singing in the paddy wagons on their way to prison. Remember the many Christians who have lost their lives striving for justice in many countries. Our more recent times have allegedly produced more martyrs for faith and justice than any previous century. It is something for which we should be both proud and ashamed. But we pray that there will always be people who would be deeply unhappy if they did not remain true to a calling to justice and peace. We know the unease we feel when we compromise on truth or justice. There are some things which are bigger than us, and we will be more ready to give up everything for their sake and experience a special joy in doing so. As a young mother said to me once soon after having her first baby: “Now I know why a mother will gladly die for her child.”

A special relationship
The Beatitudes have a quality and depth which goes far beyond the moral requirements of the Ten Commandments. They call for a very special relationship with God and with the people around us. They involve not merely a personal observance of ethical rules, but a deep concern to be involved in the building up of the world we live in, helping to make it a place of truth, love, compassion, justice, freedom and peace. This is what the ‘Kingdom’ is all about. It is a completely different ball game. Am I ready for it?

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Commentary on Isaiah 8:23 – 9:3; 1 Corinthians 1:10-13,17; Matthew 4:12-23

There are three distinct parts in today’s Gospel reading:

1. Jesus, the light of the nations and the fulfilment of Hebrew Testament prophecies;
2. a call to total conversion, to live in that light;
3. early responses to the call.

After the arrest of John the Baptist, Jesus moves up north to Galilee. It is his home province. It is where he will begin his public life.

John’s arrest
A note about John’s arrest—the verb in the original Greek is paradidomi, which literally means to “hand over”. This is a theme word, a refrain, which goes right through the Gospel:

• John the Baptist was handed over—and executed (by King Herod);
• Jesus was handed over—and executed (by both Jews and Gentiles)—he died for all;
• Many of Jesus’ disciples were handed over—and some were executed (mainly by Gentiles).

And this ‘handing over’ has been happening to disciples ever since, down to our own day. Paradoxically, persecution can always be the expected result of living the gospel of truth and love.

At the consecration during every Eucharist, the celebrant says:

Take this all of you and eat it: this is my body which will be given up for you.

“Given up” is perhaps a less than ideal translation of the Latin tradetur which means “will be handed over” and is the Latin equivalent of the Greek verb paradidomi. So, in the Eucharist, the Body of Christ is also ‘handed over’ to us. And we, in turn, collectively as the Body of Christ in the Christian community, are expected to continue that handing over of ourselves in the service of the gospel and the promotion of the Kingdom.

Galilee
Matthew says that Jesus left his home town of Nazareth and went to live in Capernaum, a town in Galilee, which, he tells us, is on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, “in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali”. This reminds the evangelist of a prophecy from Isaiah, which Matthew now sees being fulfilled.

At this time, Galilee did not seem an obvious choice for the Messiah’s mission. It was regarded as a ‘remote’ province (“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”, Nathanael asked with some surprise and cynicism in John 1:46). It was a rebellious region where even Jews were not noted for their observance of the Law.

Yet the prophecy suggests that the Light of the World is to be found in Galilee. Galilee, of all places, is to be the light of the nations? Not for nothing do we speak of a ‘God of surprises’!

But it is precisely in this Galilean town of Capernaum that Jesus, the Messiah, begins his mission. His ‘preaching’ is summed up in one deceptively simple sentence:

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.

‘Preaching’ would be better translated ‘proclaiming’, making an announcement of Good News.

Good News
What is this ‘good news’? The Greek, eu-angelion, from which comes the Latin evangelium, is translated into modern English as “gospel”. This is a variant of the earlier ‘God-Spel’ or ‘good news’.

And what is this good news? The Good News is that the “kingdom of Heaven” is near. ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ can be a very misleading term. To many, it may be identified with ‘heaven’, the ‘place up there’ where we hope to go to after death…if we have behaved ourselves.

In fact, it is important to be aware that the term in this context has far less to do with a future life than with our life here in this world. The other Gospels speak more directly of the “kingdom of God” which, in fact, is what Matthew also means. However, Matthew’s Gospel was written for a Christian community consisting primarily of converted Jews. In their tradition, they were very reluctant ever to use the name of God directly, and so Matthew throughout his Gospel speaks of God in indirect ways. One way is to use the term “heaven”, or to use the passive voice of a verb. For example, Matthew writes:

…whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
(Matt 16:19)

He does not say by whom they will be bound or loosed, but it is clearly understood to be by God.

Again, ‘kingdom’ for us suggests the territory ruled over by a king. The Greek word the evangelists use is basileia from the word basileus, which means a ‘king’. But basileia is better translated as ‘rule’, ‘reign’ or ‘kingship’. It indicates the power of being a king rather than the place over which one is king. To be ‘in the Kingdom’, then, is not to be in a particular place, either in this life or the next. Rather it is to be living one’s life—wherever we are—under the loving power of God. It is to be in a relationship of loving submission to one’s God and Lord and to be in an environment where values like truth, love, compassion, justice, freedom, commmunity, and peace all prevail.

Repent!
The way to enter that relationship is, in Jesus’ words, to “repent”. This is the response to Jesus’ call. ‘Repent’ usually means to be sorry for, to regret some wrong actions we have done in the past. Jesus, however, is asking for much more than that. It is a call, not to wipe out the past, which is really not possible, but for us to change direction from now on and into the future. The Greek word which is rendered by many translations as ‘repent’ is metanoia. This word implies a radical change in one’s thinking; it means looking at life in a completely new way, making what is now sometimes called a ‘paradigm shift’. This new way of seeing life is spelt out through the whole of the Christian Testament.

It is only when we begin to make this radical change that we begin to become part of that Kingdom, that we begin effectively to come under the influence of God’s power in our lives. We begin to see things the way God sees them, and our behaviour changes accordingly.

The call is not just to be sorry for past sins, and not to do them any more. There has to be a complete change of direction, a deep involvement in doing God’s work. That work involves working with others for an end to poverty and destitution, to hunger and joblessness, to communal and religious hatred, to rampant greed, ambition and shameless consumerism, and to create a world of love and care—the special attributes of God. The Kingdom has not yet arrived. There is still much to be done—right here where we live.

This is a message not just for Catholics or Christians, but for people everywhere. The Kingdom goes far beyond the boundaries of the Church, and the Kingdom is being realised in many ways in places where Christianity has yet to penetrate. A majority of the world’s population does not know the gospel of Jesus, but that does not mean that the values of the Kingdom are absent. We must learn not to see Christianity or Catholicism in sectarian terms—‘them’ and ‘us’. The message of Jesus is a vision of life for all humanity and should be communicated as such.

First partners
After his preaching, Jesus finds the first partners for his work. They are not Pharisees or scribes, not scholars or influential members of the community, but fishermen, who may have been quite illiterate in the sense that they could not read or write. However, they may well have been steeped in the oral tradition of their Jewish faith, knowing their Hebrew Testament much better than most of us know our New Testament!

It is significant that the call takes place right in their working place. The initiative for the call comes from Jesus. As John writes in his Gospel:

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

For them it means a metanoia, a complete break in their lifestyle. There is a complete letting go.

And after this call:

Immediately they left their nets and followed him.

They put their total trust in Jesus, leaving behind their only means of livelihood, not knowing where it would all lead. Jesus himself had already taken this step in leaving Nazareth, his family and his livelihood as a carpenter. From now on their life would consist, not in worrying what they could get and keep, but in service to their brothers and sisters, especially those in greatest need.

At the same time, there is no evidence that they lived in destitution or want. Leaving the tools of the only way of life they had known was to choose to lead a simple lifestyle, i.e. only having those things necessary for their sustenance and their work, the new work Jesus was calling them to do.

Their security now came from the new lifestyle they were inaugurating, life in a mutually supporting community, where the needs of each one were taken care of. This, in effect, brought a life of greater material, emotional and social security than is found in our individualistic, competitive, rat-race style of survival.

One great family
They separated from their families, not because they did not love them, but because, as disciples of Jesus, they realised they belonged to a much larger family. They were learning not only to love their own, but to love especially all who were in need of love, care and compassion.

In the beginning, their first concern may be family members (early on, Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law), but later on they will give priority to those in greater need, non-family members, foreigners, total strangers, even enemies. To follow Jesus is to belong to a much bigger family.

In the Second Reading, too, Paul warns against divisions in the Christian family. It seems that the Christians in Corinth were dividing into factions and identifying themselves with various community leaders. Paul writes:

What I mean is that each of you says, “I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,” or “I belong to Cephas”…

It is clear that such divisions are harmful. All disciples can only be for one person, the One who suffered, died and rose for them, the One in whose name all of them were baptised—Jesus their Lord.

We have, unfortunately, many such divisions among Christians today—“I am a Catholic”, “I am an Anglican… a Lutheran… a Methodist… a Presbyterian…” The list, alas, is endless. This is not the kind of family that Jesus intended. Such a dysfunctional family is not in a good position to give effective witness to the Good News of truth and love and fellowship which Jesus prayed for at the Last Supper (John 17).

Today’s call is asking us not just to fit Jesus into our chosen way of living, but to fit ourselves into his vision of life. In doing so, we are not making a sacrifice. Rather, we are on to a sure winner where we can only gain.

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Commentary on Isaiah 49:3,5-6; 1 Corinthians 1:1-3; John 1:29-34

Today we begin again the Sundays in the Ordinary Season, now of the Year A liturgy. On most Sundays in Year A, we will be following the Gospel of Matthew. However, today’s Gospel reading is from John.

Our readings speak about two things: the identity of Jesus, and the mission of Jesus. We need to know who Jesus is, if we want to be his disciples. We also need to know what his mission is, if we want to be good disciples. Because a good disciple is also an apostle. By definition, a disciple is a follower, whereas an apostle is the bearer of a message from a superior. The Christian disciple not only follows the gospel of Jesus, but also helps others to hear and accept it.

Who is Jesus?
Who is Jesus? We see him today, simultaneously in the role of Lord and Servant. Today’s Gospel speaks about Jesus being baptised by John the Baptist. As Jesus approaches, John announces to some of his own disciples:

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

Why is Jesus called by this strange title, the Lamb of God? It refers back to the origins of the great Jewish feast of the Passover. According to the tradition, God had been urging the Pharaoh to let God’s people leave Egypt. There had been a series of plagues, but each time Pharaoh reneged on his promise to let the people go. The final and most terrible plague involved the slaying of every firstborn child in Egypt.

In order that the Israelites might not be punished, they were told to smear the doorposts of their houses with the blood of a lamb. When God’s angel struck, he passed over the blood-painted houses of the Israelites, and their children were spared. They had, in effect, been saved by the blood of the lamb.

Pharaoh acknowledged defeat and finally said he would let the Israelites go (he would go back on his word once more, and with disastrous results). On the night before the Israelites left, under the leadership of Moses, they had a final meal which included the eating of a roast lamb (the same lamb whose blood had been painted on the doorposts of the house). The lamb then becomes the sign and symbol of the liberation of God’s people from slavery and oppression.

This great event of the Exodus, the ‘going out’, was and is commemorated in the Passover meal which Jesus celebrated with his disciples at the Last Supper, and that which is still celebrated by Jews worldwide. The Passover meal is now also being observed unofficially by many groups of Catholics and other Christians during Holy Week.

Jesus the eternal Lamb
But for us—and this is John the Baptist’s meaning—Jesus is the new Lamb which brings freedom and liberation from the oppression of evil and sin. He sacrifices himself to take away our sins.

Through his death he liberates us. It is no coincidence that Jesus’ sacrificial death took place at the Passover. He is the new Pasch—he is the Lamb who both sacrifices himself, and is sacrificed to liberate us. It is his blood poured out that is the sign of our salvation.

Jesus can do this because he is at the same time our Lord and our Servant. Because he is our Lord, he can take away our sins. Because he is a servant, he sacrifices his life for us. And he is not only our servant, he is our friend. As he told his disciples at the Last Supper:

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John 15:13)

And he insists that his disciples are his friends, not servants. Even more, Jesus is our Brother.

Jesus and John
John the Baptist also speaks of Jesus in the same way. He says:

After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.

We know that John and Jesus are related. And we know, from Luke’s Gospel, that John is older than Jesus by about six months, yet he says that Jesus ranks above him and existed before him.

John appears first, proclaiming the Kingdom of God. But Jesus precedes John in dignity and status. Because, before John was even conceived in his mother’s womb, Jesus, the Word of God, already existed.

So John says:

I myself did not know him…

How come he does not know his own cousin, although he makes clear statements about him? Why does he not know his cousin? Of course, he knows Jesus while at the same time he does not know him. For at first, he did not know the real identity of Jesus. Jesus is not only his younger relative. Jesus is his Lord and his God.

Son of God
When did John know? When, he says, he:

…saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him.

John goes on:

I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’

And then he makes his declaration of faith:

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

Jesus is Lord and God. In this first chapter of his Gospel, John gives all of Jesus’ titles: Word, Son of the Father, Lamb of God, Son of God, Messiah [the Christ], Jesus of Nazareth, Son of Joseph, King of Israel, Son of Man.

And yet, this Jesus Lord is standing in the river water, together with many sinners. He is God, but he has come to serve us, to love us, to liberate us, to mingle with us, to be one of us. And he asks us to work with him in the same way—to be in the world and to serve the world, to serve all as brothers and sisters.

Jesus as servant
The First Reading also speaks of Jesus as servant:

You are my servant,
Israel, in whom I will be glorified.

The prophet says the Lord:

…formed me in the womb to be his servant…

And what is the work of this servant? His work is:

…to bring Jacob back to him,
and that Israel might be gathered to him…

In the Reading, it is Isaiah who is being spoken to by “the Lord”, but the words clearly are now applied to Jesus—and by implication also to us.

But it is not enough to bring just the Jews back to God:

It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to restore the survivors of Israel…

Much more, as Isaiah continues:

I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.

Jesus is the Light of the whole world. He wants every single person to experience his salvation. He wants every single person to enter the Kingdom of God. He wants every person to experience the truth, the love and the freedom of the gospel. The mission of Jesus is to bring all the people of the world back to God, their Creator, their Beginning and their End.

Our common mission
The mission of Jesus is also our mission. We cannot be good disciples of Jesus if we are not also good apostles. To be a good Christian necessarily entails being a good evangeliser. Our duty is not only to save our own souls and ‘go to heaven’. Our duty is also to share our faith with others, help them to know Jesus and his gospel, and to experience directly the love of God.

Where can we do this? In our homes and families, in our working places, in the area covered by our parish.

Let us pray that God will help us to work together with Jesus to establish his Kingdom in the whole world, and especially in that part of it where we live out our lives.

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Commentary on 2 Samuel 5:1-3, Colossians 1:12-20 and Luke 23:35-43

Today, the last Sunday of the Church year, we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King. It is one of the most beautiful and meaningful feasts of the year.

The concept of king and kingdom is at the very heart of Jesus’ message to us. He came to inaugurate among us the Kingdom of God. By this we understand that complex of people and communities which have totally accepted and assimilated the vision of life under God which Jesus proclaimed. It is a vision, not only for a minority sect among the peoples of the world, but a call that is valid for all, a message which contains the deepest hopes and longings of peoples everywhere.

To take on board this message is to enter a life of fullness, of deep happiness and satisfaction. It is not necessarily a life without pain or suffering. In fact, pain and suffering may be integral to the very development of the Kingdom vision in our lives. It is a life which essentially involves other people, who on the one hand are agents of my personal growth, and who on the other, depend on me to be the agents of their growth.

Behind all this is the figure of Jesus Christ, our King. In himself, he embodies the whole vision of the Kingdom by the way he lived, spoke, worked, taught, healed, liberated, and finally sacrificed his life in love for us.

In today’s Scripture readings, we are given two extraordinarily contrasting images of our King. They are complementary and we cannot have one without the other.

In the reading from the Letter to the Colossians we have a description of the Son as emanating from the Father with all the power and dignity of God. The letter tells us that we have been:

…transferred…into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

We gain our freedom through his “forgiveness of our sins.”

To enter the Kingdom is to experience being brought from darkness into light and we gain our freedom through the forgiveness of our sins. To be free and to be in sin are mutually exclusive.

Who is this Son? Paul says:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him.

And Paul says:

He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

In other words, before anything was created, the Son existed.

This is the special gift that the Son is for us. Through his taking on himself our human nature, we have been given access to the very being of God himself. We have access to the way God thinks, the way God loves. Being made in his image, we are called also to reflect in our lives the way God thinks and loves. And so the Son is called Pontifex (Latin, ‘bridge-builder’) and ‘Mediator’—for in his humanity as Jesus, he is the visible link between God and ourselves.

In the man Jesus, we have an intimate access to God, and yet God remains transcendent and, in many respects, unknowable and unattainable. In Jesus we see God as—to use Paul’s phrase:

…only a reflection, as in a mirror… (1 Cor 13:12)

When Jesus speaks and acts, it is both a man and God who speaks and acts, but the fullness of God cannot be accessed through the human body of Jesus. So it is that all the prayers of the Church go through Jesus to the Father. Jesus is the Way; the Father is the End, the Ultimate Goal.

But the letter goes further, for it says that:

He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.

The body of the risen and glorified Jesus is not now a human body, but the whole Christian community taken together. It is now our calling and responsibility to be the mediating agent between God and the world. It is for us to proclaim the Kingdom both in word and in the way we live together, because:

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:35)

Together with Jesus as the Head of our Body, we have a special mission to be pontifex and mediator between God and the world.

In the Gospel, we are transported to an altogether different scene, a scene that can scarcely be reconciled with the image of the Second Reading. Jesus, our King, is hanging nailed to a cross between two other executed criminals. On the sign above his head are the words:

This is the King of the Jews.

On each side are his two ‘courtiers’, a pair of murderous gangsters. Apart from the terrible physical pain he experiences, Jesus has been stripped of all dignity as he hangs there naked before a mocking world. This is the final ‘emptying’ (Greek, kenosis) described in the Letter to the Philippians (2:7). Is this truly, as described in the Second Reading:

…the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation…

Is this the same One through whom “thrones or dominions or rulers or powers” were brought into being? No wonder that Paul says the Cross of Jesus is a scandal:

…a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles… (1:Cor 1:23)

For our part, can we see and understand that this moment of utter degradation is in truth the most glorious moment in the life of Jesus? The moment when he gave the:

…uttermost proof of his love…
(John 13:1, Knox Bible translation)

Below the cross, the religious leaders, who engineered his execution, now mock the Teacher and Wonderworker who drew huge crowds, saying:

He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!

The soldiers, too, only knowing by hearsay that he claims to be a ‘king’, join in the jeering, as does one of the criminals beside him, who says:

Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!

But it is the other criminal who shows deeper insight. He fully acknowledges his own guilt, but sees that Jesus is totally innocent of any wrongdoing. And he turns to Jesus, addressing him with a strange intimacy:

Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

It is an acknowledgement of Jesus’ Kingship. Once again, Jesus sees not the stereotype nor even the vicious past of this man, but only the repentant individual before him here and now. That is enough, and he says:

Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.

What an extraordinary thing to say! There is no delay, no testing of the genuineness of the man’s repentance. Today with Jesus, he enters into eternal glory, into the very fullness of the Kingdom—even before any of Jesus’ other disciples, before his own Mother!

Here is the wonder of our King and what it means to be part of his Kingdom. It is beautifully described in the Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer in today’s Mass:

As King he claims dominion over all creation,
that he may present to you, his almighty Father,
an eternal and universal kingdom;
a kingdom of truth and life,
a kingdom of holiness and grace,
a kingdom of justice, love and peace.

Our King has been chosen for us by God, but it is for each one of us to profess our allegiance to him. We do this, not just by saying it in so many words, but by taking on board the fullness of his life and teaching which we find in the Gospels and in the rest of the New Testament. And as members of his Body, we too—in some strange way—share in that Kingship. Today we are called to work together to expand the reality of his Kingdom in our families, in our society and in the world generally.

Lord Jesus, your Kingdom come!

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Commentary on Malachi 3:19-20; 2 Thessalonians 3:7-12; Luke 21:5-19

We are coming very close to the end of the Church year. In fact, next Sunday, when we will celebrate the feast of Christ the King, is also the 34th and last Sunday of the liturgical year. So, as usual at this time, the Church invites us to think about the final end of things. Our world, in which we spend so much time planning and securing our worldly future, is only temporary. Our own lives in this world will not last forever. The plans we make must always be contingent and conditional and take our final destiny into account.

In today’s passage from Luke’s Gospel we find Jesus in the Temple at Jerusalem. It is quite near the end of his public life. Some of the people around him—perhaps they were visitors from ‘out of town’ (or his disciples, as Matthew and Mark suggest)—were awestruck by the beauty of the stonework and the wealth of offerings being made by pilgrims.

The Temple was one of the most impressive buildings in the world at that time. In fact, the huge structure was not yet quite completed when Jesus was there. To most Jews, it was a place made to last forever (just as we feel somehow that St Peter’s in Rome should last forever). It was, so to speak, the ‘soul’ of the Jewish faith, the focal point for all Jews everywhere—just as Rome is for Catholics. The comment of Jesus, referring to the Temple, must have seemed appalling, if not actually blasphemous:

As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.

End of the Temple
Jesus, of course, was absolutely right. As the result of a rebellion by the Jews against the Romans, Jerusalem was besieged and the city and Temple utterly destroyed. The Holy of Holies, a place so sacred that only the high priest could enter it once a year, was ransacked and the sacred vessels carried off as booty. Today, visitors to Rome can see the event depicted in sculpture on a triumphal arch built by the Emperor Titus to commemorate his victories. All that is left of King Herod’s mighty monument in Jerusalem today is the ‘Wailing Wall’.

The unthinkable had happened. And for many Jews, including Jews converted to Christianity, it must have seemed like the end of the world. The early writings of the Christian Testament are very much concerned with what they believed was the imminent end of the world and the return of Christ in judgement. They were wrong, as we know, and even before the Christian Testament was completed, its later books indicate that the end is not so soon. The emphasis shifted from expectation of an early return of Jesus, to focusing on how to fruitfully spend the time of waiting.

Share the load
This, it would seem, is partly the meaning of Paul’s exhortation in the Second Reading today. The letters to the Thessalonians are among the earliest of the New Testament writings, written in the year 50 AD, twenty years before the destruction of the Temple. Luke’s Gospel, however, is believed to date from about 85 AD, fifteen years after its destruction in the year 70 AD.

Paul, using his own example, urges everyone in the community to work and pull their weight and not live “irresponsibly”, being a burden on anyone:

…we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day so that we might not burden any of you.

All are to contribute to the life and sustenance of the community. It seems there were some, who were so convinced that the end was near, that they were just sitting and waiting for the Lord to come and were even urging others to do the same. As Paul says of them, they were acting like:

…mere busybodies, not doing any work.

Such “doomsday” people are present in every generation.

Three kinds of phenomena
In the Gospel, Jesus lists three kinds of phenomena which might induce people to believe that the end of all things was coming. He says:

Beware that you are not led astray…

Jesus warns us today, because:

…many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them.

These false messiahs and salvation-gurus have occurred even in our own time. We need to heed Jesus’ advice and have nothing to do with such people.

There will be, Jesus warns, many events which will seem like the end, but they will not be:

When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified, for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.

Jesus predicts wars between and within nations. As well, he says:

…there will be great earthquakes and in various places famines and plagues, and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.

The last 100 years, not to mention the most recent decades, have seen a horrifying abundance of such evils and catastrophes.

Finally, Jesus speaks of the special threats hanging over his own followers:

But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name.

Many of the early Christians thought that persecution was also a sign of the coming end of the world. Jesus, however, reminds us that it is an integral part of the Church’s ongoing life. And so it has been.

Persecutions inevitable
There will always be people who hate the gospel message, who find it deeply threatening. The Christian is called both to live and to proclaim a set of values and a vision of life that challenges the accepted viewpoints and lifestyles of most societies. If the Church stops experiencing persecution, abuse and criticism, we may well ask how well we are living our Christian lives and how faithful we are to the way of Jesus.

When the Church is attacked, even violently, it is not a sign of the end of things. Nor is it necessarily a sign that the Church has been moving in the wrong direction—often quite the contrary. Neither is it something that we go out of our way either to avoid or to invite. It is not, Jesus says, something to be anxious about. It is not what those against us may do in the future that matters most, but what we are doing here and now to carry out the mandate of Christ.

How to react?
How, then, should we react to today’s readings? On the one hand, we must listen carefully to Jesus’ warnings. There will be an end to things, even those things we feel must last forever. On the other hand, we are not to be panicked into seeing the end even in major catastrophes. St Augustine, who lived in the sixth century, thought that the collapse of the Roman Empire and its culture under the hordes of ‘barbarians’ (today’s Germans, French and Scandinavians), who poured down from the north, must be the end of everything. There are such cataclysmic events in our own time. How wrong they were, and how wrong we are to believe this!

As long as Christianity remains steadfast to its faith in God, to seeking the truth, to human compassion and justice, it cannot disappear. And it is to these things that we are to bear witness. We may have to do so under painful experiences, when we are:

…betrayed even by parents and siblings, by relatives and friends…[and when they] put some of you to death.

It requires a great inner strength, courage and conviction to put truth, love, justice and solidarity with all above one’s own family and friends and to suffer their betrayal. Yet, Jesus promises:

I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.

These words, echoed in the First Reading from Malachi, have across time been proven true again and again.

Securing our future
However, for many of us, the problem is not anxiety about the end of our world, but living as if there were an eternity of tomorrows. So many of us work so hard to guarantee an ironclad security for ourselves and our families. People are so focused on a future which they are assured they are going to enjoy. They seem to believe that all they have to do is take the right steps, get the right breaks and have enough money to guarantee the future is under their control. The words of Jesus in today’s Gospel are pushed into the background (they are so pessimistic!). In this thinking, living the Christian life means fitting the Gospel into our chosen lifestyle and our chosen future.

That is as foolish as the man in Jesus’ parable who, having got all his wealth together, says to himself:

Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry. (Luke 12:19)

We know what happened to him. And it happens to people all the time—and it will happen to us.

The end of the world that is our universe may be, from all the evidence, far away. We may be fortunate to live in a society free from wars, ethnic strife, famine and natural disasters, and free from religious persecution or discrimination. Yet, there is another end we all have to face and which is totally outside our control—the end of our bodily life here on this earth.

Are we ready for that? There is only one effective way to prepare: to live each day fully in the company of Jesus. We do not prepare for the end by guaranteeing our future (we can’t), but by living fully with God and for God at every moment of every day.

We can do this by:

• personal prayer;
• absorbing the message of the Gospel so much into our way of seeing life that it permeates everything we say and do;
• becoming ‘other Christs’, by learning to find Jesus, to love and respond to him in every person, in every place and in every experience of our daily life.

Then, no matter when Jesus comes to take us away, we will be more than ready. We will meet not as strangers, but as dear and intimate friends who know each other well.

More

Commentary on 2 Maccabees 7:1-2,9-14, 2 Thessalonians 2:16-3:5 and Luke 20:27-38

It will help if we put today’s Gospel passage into its context. First of all we need to realise that at this stage in Luke’s gospel, Jesus is already in Jerusalem and he will not leave the city again. The whole of the 20th chapter deals with the coming climax of Jesus’ public life and the situations which led to his rejection and condemnation by the religious leaders of his people.

Jesus’ authority to speak and act as he does is challenged by the governing establishment, the chief priests, the scribes and the elders. He gives them the warning parable about the vineyard owner who let out his vineyard to tenants. The tenants refused to give the owner the fruits of his own vineyard and actually killed servants who were sent to collect them. Finally, they also killed the owner’s son, thinking that thus they would become permanent masters of the vineyard. But, Jesus says, the owner will destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others. Jesus’ listeners, knowing full well exactly what he was saying, reacted in horror – “God forbid!”. Of course, that is just what happened. Just 40 years after this, the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem and destroyed it and the Temple with it. Even for the early Christians, it seemed the end of the world (just as the later sacking of Rome by “barbarians” seemed the end of the world for St Augustine).

Two encounters
Following on this we have encounters between Jesus and two influential groups. First, the Pharisees, who were both deeply religious and strongly nationalistic (a dangerous mix then, and now!), try to entrap Jesus into making a politically compromising statement. They show him a Roman coin, and ask an apparently sincere and innocent question about taxation. But “marvelling at his answer”, they were reduced to impotent silence.

Next, it is the turn of the Sadducees featured in our Gospel passage today. Who were the Sadducees? Basically they were a sect within the Jewish community. They included many of the priestly class and upper echelon families. Politically, they were more ready to compromise with the Romans in the interests of their own power and wealth. We may remember the remark of Caiaphas, the high priest and a Sadducee, that it was better for one man, Jesus, a fellow-Jew, to die at the hands of the Romans, than that the whole Jewish nation be destroyed. He was totally unaware of the irony and the hidden truth of his words.

Another distinguishing mark of the Sadducees was that they only accepted as the word of God the part of the Old Testament known as the Pentateuch. The Pentateuch consists of the first five books of the Hebrew (Old) Testament, which are traditionally attributed to Moses as their author (obviously, Moses could not have written all those books but it was the custom of the time to attribute authorship of a notable work to a famous person).

Because of this, the Sadducees did not accept beliefs which are only found in other parts of the Hebrew Testament. So, for instance, they refused to believe in the existence of angels – or resurrection from the dead.

It is on the basis of this that they confront Jesus with a problem, which is not a problem for them but which they deem unanswerable for Jesus (and other Jews, especially their rivals, the Pharisees*).

Levirate law
The problem the Sadducees address was based on a tradition, known as levirate law, by which a man was expected to marry the childless widow of his brother. This was so that the dead man’s name would be carried on to the next generation (it was presumed and expected, of course, that a son would be produced).

In their challenge to Jesus, the Sadducees propose an extreme case where seven brothers, who all die before having children, are married successively to the same woman. And they conclude by asking: “At the resurrection – which you believe in but we do not – which of the brothers will be the wife’s husband, since she was married to them all?” It was a mocking question meant to rubbish the belief of other Jews. The Sadducees feel that, without belief in life after death, there is no problem. The dead simply disappear into oblivion. But, for Jesus and those other Jews who did believe in the resurrection of the dead, the Sadducees felt their hypothetical created an insoluble solution.

Life after death
Jesus answers the question on various levels. First of all, he implies that life after death is not the same as a physical existence. Jesus’ own resurrection is never to be understood in that way either. Resurrection is not resuscitation. If we say that we rise body and soul we are only saying that we rise in the wholeness of our persons – which includes our spiritual and intellectual levels, our physical reality and, very importantly, our whole personal history (our fourth dimension!). All are part of ME and all shared in the life to come. That is what we believe.

Secondly, Jesus raises a point which pervades the whole of the Gospel message. All those who are in Christ enter into a new relationship with God and with all other people. We express this whenever we start to pray “Our Father”. These relationships transcend blood and marriage.

So Jesus says, “The children of this age take wives and husbands.” On the other hand, he says, “Those who are judged worthy of a place in the other age and in the resurrection from the dead do not marry because they can no longer die for they are the same as the angels, and being sons (Greek, masculine, huioi) of the resurrection they are sons (huioi) of God.”

This is another assertion of the new kind of family that we enter as disciples and followers of Jesus. It belongs to the statement that Jesus made when he was told that his mother and brothers were looking for him. “Who is my mother? Who is my brother? Whoever does what God wants him to do is my brother, my sister, my mother” (cf. Mark 3:31-35).

New relationships
In “this” age, of course, people continue to marry and have other relationships but in the “new” age of Jesus, in the world of Jesus which covers both present and future existence, there is a whole new set of relationships. Seen in that light, the question of the Sadducees has no relevance whatever. There is no problem. People do get married and have families but, in the long run, it is our relationship with God, which determines our deeper relationships with each other.

It is also seems implied that in the “age” of Jesus, marriage is no longer a must for all. There are cultures in which even today every male is expected to get married and where daughters too are expected to get “married off”. It is not really essential for the Christian, as a Christian, to be concerned about having a family, about the family line being continued, about having sons rather than daughters.

The call to celibacy, whether for priests, religious or lay people, is a statement of this belief and it is why the witness of celibacy by some in the Church is seen as full of meaning in our Christian community.⁺

Argument collapses
Seen in this light, the argument of the Sadducees completely collapses. It is seen as very “this-worldly” and narrow-minded. However, Jesus has still one punch to throw. It is one that may not completely convince us today, but it would have made the Sadducees stop in their tracks. The Sadducees began their attack by quoting from the law of Moses concerning the obligation of a younger brother to marry his deceased brother’s wife. This law, of course, they accepted and believed as true (how well they actually followed that law in general was something their opponents, the strictly observant Pharisees, might have had something to say about).

In replying to them, Jesus concludes his argument by also quoting from a book of Moses. “Moses himself,” says Jesus, “implies that the dead rise again.” He did so when “the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush” (Exodus 3:2). And the Lord, identifying himself, said to Moses, “I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6). And God, Jesus tells the Sadducees, is God, “not of the dead, but of the living; for to him, all are in fact alive” (even after death). The Sadducees fall silent. They dare not contradict the word of God coming through Moses.

It is not in today’s Gospel passage but immediately after this Luke comments: “And some of the teachers of the Law (possibly Pharisees) answered, ‘Teacher, you have spoken well’”. In other words, they were delighted to see the Sadducees put down. And Luke continues, “For they (the teachers of the Law) no longer dared to ask Jesus any question.” Jesus had established his authority but he had also guaranteed his final destiny.

Lord of life
In general the theme of today’s Mass is that Jesus is the Lord of life. And, that life is not terminated by physical death. We see this in the First Reading, which is from Maccabees (a book of the Bible, incidentally, not recognised by all Christians).

The issue here is not just about eating or not eating pork, or narrow-minded nationalism. It is about values, which transcend physical existence, which are of greater value than physical survival. Jesus knew this, the constant stream of martyrs down the centuries knew this, people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Maximilian Kolbe knew this. It is understood by the mother, who does not hesitate to give her life to save her child’s. “Ours is the better choice,” says the youngest Maccabee, “to meet death at men’s hands, yet relying on God’s promise that we shall be raised up by him.”

“The glory of God is a person fully alive” (Gloria Deo homo vivens) said St Irenaeus and only that person who has the perfect freedom to let go of everything, even physical life, for the sake of truth, justice and love and total commitment to the well-being of brother and sister is a fully alive person.
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*There is a wonderful scene in the Acts of the Apostles where Paul has been arrested and has returned to Jerusalem. The Roman authorities, having no idea what all the fuss was about, had sent Paul to be formally charged by the Sanhedrin, the ruling council of the Jews. Seeing the composition of the council, Paul appealed to the belief of the Pharisees (he himself was a Pharisee) in the resurrection against the Sadducees. As a result, the gathering was divided. The Pharisees now jumped to the defence of “their man”, proclaiming his innocence. The assembly was thrown into uproar as Pharisees and Sadducees went at each other. Paul had to be whisked away by the Romans who thought he would be torn to pieces in the melee (see Acts chaps 22 and 23).

⁺This is not really an appropriate occasion for the much longer discussion of the controversial issue of mandatory celibacy for Catholic clergy.