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Commentary on Isaiah 56:1-3,6-8

Today’s reading comes from the first chapter of Third Isaiah, the last of the three parts into which Isaiah is divided. This third part contains a collection of oracles addressed to Judah, the southern kingdom which includes Jerusalem. They seem to indicate that the Israelites have now returned to Palestine after their exile in Babylon. The time is after 539 BC.

The subject of today’s reading is a blessing on all who observe the Sabbath. During and after the exile, observance of the sabbath became a touchstone of total fidelity to God’s law. The sabbath had originally been instituted after the Exodus from Egypt and was seen as the ongoing sign of the Israelites’ covenant with their God. To ‘keep the sabbath’ was a sign of commitment to the whole of the covenant.

What is significant is that in today’s passage the blessing is extended to those who are not ethnically Jewish. “Let no foreigner who has attached himself to the Lord say, ‘The Lord will surely exclude me from his people’.”

‘Foreign’ proselytes are being invited to join the Jewish community, on condition that they observe the covenant. This would necessarily include circumcision, which, for Jews, was the sign of adherence to the covenant. At the same time, some of the restrictions laid down in Deuteronomy are set aside. These had excluded some of the peoples who had opposed the Israelites settling in the Promised Land, especially the Moabites, and men “whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off”, that is, eunuchs. Verses 4 and 5 which are omitted from today’s reading say:

Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say, ‘The Lord will surely separate me from his people’; and do not let the eunuch say, ‘I am just a dry tree’. For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.”

What is being said very clearly is that, provided a person is totally committed to the service of God, other factors, such as race or physical disabilities or previous behaviour, are of no account. Members of some ethnic groups who had been living among the Israelites had been excluded from worship for several generations as were those who lacked physical, especially sexual, integrity. People who could not produce children were seen as of no value to a society. (And, as Jesus indicates in the Gospel [Matt 19:11-12], the word ‘eunuch’ could also be applied to those who were impotent and it seems it could even include homosexuals who had no interest in developing relations with the opposite gender. They were effectively eunuchs.)

An unconditional statement is made: “All who observe the sabbath, not profaning it, and cling to my covenant – these I will bring to my holy mountain. I will make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their holocausts and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar.” The “holy mountain” refers to Mount Zion in Jerusalem, on which the Temple was built.

And the Lord’s promise concludes with words Jesus will quote later on: “My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples.”

All this is in preparation for the coming of Jesus which we are about to celebrate. In the New Covenant, in the Kingdom which Jesus came to establish there are absolutely no barriers whatever based on race, ethnicity, nationality, social class, or occupation, gender or sex or orientation, or physical disability… All that is asked that one say ‘Yes’ to the Way of Jesus, to become a co-builder of God’s Kingdom on earth.

As we prepare to celebrate Christmas. Let us, too, say an unconditional ‘Yes’ to the Lord.

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Commentary on John 21:15-19

The Gospel reading is from the very end of John’s Gospel. The whole chapter is divided into three parts. In the first, seven of Jesus’ disciples are out fishing and have caught nothing. Then in the early dawn, as light breaks, a stranger on the shore tells them where to drop their nets. When they do so, they make a huge catch of fish and at that point the Beloved Disciple, the one with the deeper spiritual insight, exclaims:

It is the Lord!

They then bring the catch ashore.

In the second part, after coming ashore, the disciples find that a fire has been lit and a meal is ready for them, a meal of bread and fish—a Eucharistic meal. The disciples are somewhat confused. Jesus, on the one hand, does not look familiar and yet they know it is he.

At the end of the meal, Jesus begins to speak with Peter, although he addresses him by his own name, Simon:

Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?

It sounds like a simple question, but in fact it makes Peter very uncomfortable. He has not forgotten the shameful moment during the trial of Jesus when he swore three times that he had never laid eyes on Jesus. And this on top of an earlier boast that, even if all the others betrayed Jesus, Peter never would. He was in effect saying that he loved Jesus more than his other companions.

But now, in this scene, it is a more humble and remorseful Peter. After betraying his Master he had wept bitterly, deeply regretting his cowardice. Earlier on, when they were in the boat and the Beloved Disciple had cried, “It is the Lord!”, Peter immediately dressed himself. Only the innocent can go naked (like our First Parents in the garden before their sin), and Peter was deeply aware of his failings. At the same time, his diving into the water to get to Jesus first was a sign that, sinner though he may have been, he deeply loved his Lord.

Now, in answer to Jesus’ painful question, he simply replies:

Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.

And, of course, Jesus did know. The reconciliation then takes place and Peter is told:

Feed my sheep.

He is fully restored to his role as Peter, as the Rock on which the community will be built and to which he will be responsible.

But Jesus is not yet finished. Twice more he asks Peter if he loves his Master and twice more his leadership of the community is re-affirmed. Peter is all too conscious why he is being asked three times and it hurts:

Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.

And, of course, it was true.

The second half of the passage, while spoken about Peter, seems almost a poem about the course of anyone’s life:

Very truly I tell you,
when you were younger
you dressed yourself
and went where you wanted;
but when you are old
you will stretch out your hands,
and someone else will dress you
and lead you where you do not want to go.

The Gospel writer interprets this poem saying:

Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God.

Peter’s witness will cost him his life, but will also lead the Church forward to growth unimaginable to Jesus’ original disciples.

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Commentary on Isaiah 1:10-17

Last Saturday we saw Isaiah’s call to be a prophet of God taken from the sixth chapter. We now go to the beginning of the book and from now on will have selected readings from chapters 1-39, which are really part of Isaiah’s own ministry.  The rest of the Book of Isaiah (Parts 2 and 3) is now attributed to other writers.

Isaiah pulls no punches in communicating his message. When he writes: “you rulers of Sodom” and “you people of Gomorrah”, these are not addressed to the peoples of those cities which were long ago destroyed.  He is speaking to the rulers and people of Jerusalem and the southern kingdom of Judah of which it is a part.

Today’s reading is a severe attack on religious hypocrisy.  It is part of an oracle presumably uttered in the Temple at the beginning of Isaiah’s ministry. Like Amos (see the First Reading for Wednesday of Week 13 of Ordinary Time), Isaiah castigates ritual divorced from morality. He makes it clear that the sincerity of the worshipper, not the number of his or her religious activities, is most important.

On the face of it, the people seem deeply religious. But he disparages:

…the multitude of your sacrifices…burnt offerings of rams
and the fat of fed beasts…the blood of bulls
or of lambs or of goats.

God finds no pleasure in a mere multiplicity of offerings.  He does not even expect them:

When you come to appear before me,
who asked this from your hand?

Their offerings are not really directed to God, but are a form of self-adulation: “How good we are!  How pious and dedicated we are!”

The air filled with the smell of incense has become loathsome to Yahweh.  He has no time for all their “new moons”, which were celebrated at the beginning of every month. Special sacrifices and feasts were part of the observance.

All their efforts at religious celebration and observance are in vain. When they spread out their hands in prayer, Yahweh hides his eyes:

When you stretch out your hands,
I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
I will not listen…

Why? Because their “hands are full of blood”—on the one hand, the blood of sacrificial victims, coupled with that of the poor and weak who have been exploited and abused.

At first sight, it all seems to contradict everything we have heard about our merciful, forgiving and compassionate God.  We remember, too, how Jesus taught us to pray incessantly.  But here the prayers are so hypocritical.  They consist of purely external ritual devoid of any real commitment to Yahweh’s will.

Their prayers can never be heard until they emanate from deep within the heart. Their prayers will be heard when people’s lives are seen to change radically—when they cease to do evil things and concentrate on what is good.

They need to wash themselves clean and put away their misdeeds, which no amount of sacrifices and holocausts will cover up.  They must have only one aim:

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean…
learn to do good;
seek justice;
rescue the oppressed;
defend the orphan;
plead for the widow.

When they search for justice and reach out to the oppressed, when they treat the widow and the orphan with justice, love and compassion, then and only then will their sacrifices be truly acceptable to the Lord.

In a society which knew nothing of social welfare, where the needy depended on support from the family, the widow and the orphan were particularly vulnerable to abuse and neglect.  The widow might very well be relatively young, having lost her husband through disease, accident or war.  She had no future as no man would again marry her.  If she was childless, she was of no interest to her father’s family or even her own.  The orphan, too, was left exposed to destitution or having recourse to prostitution, male or female.

Applying this reading to our own situation is not difficult. We can see people devoting a great deal of energy to religious activities such as devotions, pilgrimages and novenas.  We can see them obsessed with keeping commandments and regulations and external observances, but in their daily lives there is often widespread lack of charity, compassion or a willingness to forgive, to tolerate, to understand. There is often a wide dichotomy between what they proclaim in church and what they do in their daily lives.

“Don’t speak of love; show me!” exclaimed Eliza Doolittle to Professor Higgins in the old play, My Fair Lady.  That could well sum up what God is saying to his people in today’s reading.

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Commentary on 2 Kings 25:1-12

Today we come to the end of the sad story of Israel’s degradation and humiliation—the second deportation. Yesterday we saw how Mattaniah, renamed Zedekiah, had been made a puppet or vassal king of Judah, the southern kingdom, by Nebuchadnezzar. He was no improvement on his predecessors. The passage which comes between yesterday’s and today’s readings is as follows:

Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he began to reign; he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem…He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, just as Jehoiakim had done. Indeed, Jerusalem and Judah so angered the Lord that he expelled them [the two kings] from his presence. Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon. (2 Kings 24:18-20)

Rebelling against the king was a bad mistake on his part…

It was in the ninth year of his reign that Nebuchadnezzar came to Jerusalem with his army and, for the second time, laid it under siege. Earlier, he had subdued all the fortified cities in Judah except Lachish and Azekah (see Jer 34:7). A number of Hebrew inscriptions on potsherds were found at Lachish in 1935 and 1938. The Lachish ostraca (i.e. letters) describe conditions at Lachish and Azekah during the Babylonian siege.

Jerusalem, built as it was on an outcrop of high rock with steep sides, was not an easy city to capture and was able to resist for more than one year, into the 11th year of Zedekiah’s reign. But eventually, with the people starving, the walls were finally breached. It is possible that some desperate citizens may have deliberately brought this about to end the siege—and their starvation.

However, the king and his soldiers escaped from the city by night. Because of the surrounding armies, they had no option but to head for the Arabah, a desolate area in the Jordan valley. But there was no escape and the hapless king was caught near Jericho and abandoned by his troops.

He was brought into Nebuchadnezzar’s presence where sentence was passed on him, as a rebellious vassal. His two sons (his potential successors as king) were killed before his eyes while Zedekiah himself then had his eyes put out and was brought to Babylon. Ezekiel (12:13) had prophesied that the king would be brought to Babylon, but would not see the city. Jeremiah had advised Zedekiah what to do to avoid his own punishment and the destruction of the city, but the king had not listened (see Jer 38:14-28).

Finally, Nabuzaradan, the captain of Nebuchadnezzar’s bodyguard, took control over Jerusalem. He proceeded to wipe out every vestige of its past by burning the Temple, the king’s palace and every large building in the city. In the previous siege, the vessels of the Temple had been taken away, but the building had remained. Lastly, the formidable walls which had protected the town were torn down.

The remainder of the population, those who had gone over to Babylon’s side, and the last of the artisans, were all carried off into bitter exile. Only the very poor were left behind to take care of the vineyards and the farms. They would form the remnant which would maintain the continuity of the city of David with the future.

It was an ignominious end of the kingdom originally established by Saul. With the outstanding exception of David—and even he had done some pretty bad things—the dynasty had a pretty dismal record as vicegerents of Yahweh.

The lesson of the reading is very similar to that of previous days. God does not take vengeance as we humans do, but on the other hand, we do reap the natural consequences of immoral behaviour.

At the same time, even the most negative experiences can be turned round. A good example of this is to be found in Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, where he shows that those who survived best in the Nazi concentration camps were those who found positive meaning and something to live for even in the utter degradation of their surroundings. Frankl himself was a clear example of one such person. Out of all this corruption and immorality will come David’s descendant, Jesus the Christ. God certainly does write straight with crooked lines.

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Commentary on 2 Kings 24:8-17

The fate of the southern kingdom, including Jerusalem, was to be no better than that of the north. Today’s passage describes the first deportation of the Hebrews from Jerusalem into Babylon. However, the conquerors now are not the Assyrians, but the new ‘world power’ of the day, the Babylonian empire under King Nebuchadnezzar. We meet him again in the Book of Daniel where we read the famous stories of the hand writing on the wall and the dream of the statue with the feet of clay, the story of Daniel in the den of lions and the three young men in the fiery furnace. Like all the emperors before and after him, Nebuchadnezzar’s empire was doomed to fall. But here, he is seen as an instrument of God in bringing punishment on the sinful and idol-worshipping people of Judah.

King Jehoiakim of Judah had unwisely rebelled against the Babylonians after being subjected to them for three years. This brought a wave of invasions and destruction from neighbouring peoples on sinful Judah (2 Kings 24:1-7).

Now his son, Jehoiachin, a mere 18 years old, had only been on the throne for three months. The young king, like his predecessors, did not follow the ways of the Lord, which means that he led a life of immorality and idolatry. It is just then that Jerusalem was besieged by the Babylonian forces. Less than 25 years had passed since the events of yesterday’s reading when Jehoiachin’s father, Josiah, had tried to turn the people of Judah back to God and observance of the covenant law.

During the siege, Nebuchadnezzar himself arrived. According to Babylonian records, the king “encamped against the city of Judah, [that is, Jerusalem] and on the second day of the month of Addaru [i.e. March 16, 597 BC] he seized the city and captured the king”, Jehoiachin. It was the eighth year, by Jewish reckoning, of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign. The city does not seem to have put up much of a fight, even though, built on a hill with steep sides, it was a formidable challenge to attacking forces, as Sennacherib found to his cost.

Jehoiachin, however, together with his mother and all his court, surrendered and were taken captive by the Babylonian king. Jehoiachin was to remain under his rule for 37 years, until the death of Nebuchadnezzar, under relatively comfortable circumstances. This fulfilled a prophecy of Jeremiah:

As I live, says the Lord, even if King Coniah [short for ‘Jeconiah’] son of Jehoiakim of Judah were the signet ring on my right hand, even from there I would tear you off and give you into the hands of those who seek your life, into the hands of those whom you fear, even into the hands of King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon and into the hands of the Chaldeans. I will hurl you and the mother who bore you into another country, where you were not born, and there you shall die. But they shall not return to the land to which they long to return. (Jer 22:24-27)

What was in a way even more shameful and sacrilegious, the treasures of the Temple and the royal palace were all carried away. Some of these included gold vessels which had been put in place by King Solomon when he built the Temple. It was in one way a terrible sacrilege, but with sacrifices no longer possible, there is even an implication that Yahweh is no longer present among his people.

Finally, practically the whole population of Jerusalem was carried off. This included the whole of the army, as well as craftsmen and artisans. All of these could be used by Nebuchadnezzar for his own building projects. Only the poorest of the poor were left behind. Altogether some 10,000 were reportedly taken away. There is likely to have been an overlap between soldiers and skilled craftsman, just as in Israel today all young men have to serve in the armed forces.

In Jehoiachin’s place, his uncle Mattaniah was installed as king and given the name Zedekiah. Mattaniah was a son of King Josiah, whom we saw in yesterday’s reading and the brother of Jehoiachin’s father, Jehoiakim. Mattaniah means ‘gift of Yahweh’ while Zedekiah means ‘Yahweh is my justice’. It has been suggested that Nebuchadnezzar wanted to imply that his actions against Jerusalem and Jehoiachin were just. There is even a hint that the king is simply an instrument of God’s justice in what took place. In any case, the name change signified subjection to Nebuchadnezzar.

Once again, we see God’s people pay for their infidelities in failing to keep the law of the Lord. And yet, it is likely that many of those who were carried off adjusted to their new circumstances, made the best of them, may even have done very well and came to regard their place of exile as home for them and their children. In our own times, we see Jewish communities in exile thriving, not to mention the millions of other peoples who have contributed to the ‘melting pot’ that is the United States, Australia and the European Union.

There was not much benefit in sitting and moping about one’s past and longing for old days, old ways and old places, although some did do that (as in Psalm 137, “By the rivers of Babylon…”). Nothing that happens to us is the end of possibilities. Every experience is a challenge to find God in a new situation, a new environment. Wherever life brings us, God is there close by. He is always to be found where we happen to be now, not where we would like to be.

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Commentary on 2 Kings 4:8-11,13-16; Romans 6:3-4,8-11; Matthew 10:37-42

In today’s Gospel, Jesus says:

Whoever loves father or mother…son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me…

Jesus seems to be making an attack on family life, telling us to turn our backs on our own flesh and blood. These seem to be scandalous words and a hard saying which many would find difficulty in accepting.

No matter what the Gospel may say, for a large number of people their family comes first before everything else. Yet we need to remember that Jesus himself belonged to a people which has as strong a sense of family as any culture anywhere.

Centrality of family
Others might find Jesus’ words disturbing for other reasons. They feel that there is already too much of a breakdown in family life both in the West and in other parts of the world. There are too many people abandoning their responsibilities to their families either as parents or as children.

Now, more than ever, the family needs special nurturing. In these times we find so many living together, but not formally married; so many marriages end up in separation or divorce with tragic consequences for all concerned, but for the children most of all; as a consequence, there are so many single parents and abandoned mothers. These problems, in turn, create serious social problems on a wide scale and have become a major concern of many governments.

What Jesus is saying
However, with a more careful reading, we can see that Jesus is in fact touching on the roots of these very problems. The opening words of today’s Gospel may be understood in two interlocking ways.

First, Jesus is saying that no individual and no group of people can so live their lives as to put their own interests absolutely above those of others. This is the false “find their life” which Jesus speaks of. We might say, “My country—right or wrong”, “My race or my religion—right or wrong”, or “My family—right or wrong”.

The wants of any person or any group of people (e.g. a family) cannot be met by trampling on or denying the basic rights and needs of others. If people in my family were to act in such a way, I would, in conscience, have to separate myself from such behaviour. And I would do this precisely because I love my family. I simply cannot join them in behaviour which I know to be unjust and evil and self-centred. I could not condone immoral practices, e.g. becoming rich by fraud or criminal practices, on the part of one or both parents.

How does the family view society?
We speak of the family as the nucleus of any society and rightly so. But the family cannot be an end in itself, as seems to happen not infrequently. Many families seem to see society as there to provide them with whatever they want to have.

In our day, we may distinguish between ‘political refugees’ and ‘economic migrants’. Some flee their countries because they are likely to suffer harassment and persecution. Others flee from poverty to a place where they hope to find some economic security. We can sympathise with all of these.

Whatever the reason, there is something wrong when there is no loyalty, no commitment whatever, no sense of making any contribution to the well-being of the society where they live, be it their birthplace or some place ‘overseas’. Jesus’ words are very relevant in such a situation.

A larger sense of family
The second meaning of Jesus’ words follow logically from this. In the view of Jesus—and it is a theme running right through the New Testament—those who identify with him and become his followers, belong to a new family. It is a family where every single person, including family members, relatives, friends as well as complete strangers, but most especially, those in need are truly my brother or sister.

It does not at all mean that we love our family members less. In fact, because of our closeness to them, we have special responsibilities towards them. But we now see those related to us by blood as part of a larger family to whom we also have responsibilities.

Jesus wished to spell the end of the divisions that bedevil the relations between human beings: divisions according to race, culture, nationality, religion, class, employment and so on. Various forms of tribalism (you only have to go to a big football match to find it!) still flourish everywhere and family life is not an exception.

The view of Jesus means that there will be times when I will have to give more love, more compassion, more material help to strangers—the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, those in prison, the social outcasts, the unemployed or unemployable, the handicapped, the lonely and those unloved—who are in greater need than members of my own family. He tells us:

Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me. (Matt 25:40)

And it is the very same me and brothers and sisters in need, when Jesus says:

Whoever loves father or mother…son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me…

Hospitality to the stranger
This is spelt out in the rest of today’s Gospel and in the First Reading. Hospitality, welcoming the stranger into one’s house, follows on what has been said. It is given a high priority in the New Testament and is a tradition which lives on in many parts of the Church today. The basis of all hospitality is that we all belong to one family and that every person is a brother or sister in a very real (and not just a ‘spiritual’ or ‘religious’ sense). It can, in the words of the Gospel, be something as simple as offering “even a cup of cold water”. Unfortunately, in our affluent urban societies, the protection of our material goods now usually takes priority over welcoming the stranger. The open door has been replaced by iron bars, alarms and surveillance cameras. It is again a sign of the serious distortion of our values and a breakdown in human relationships.

We need to realise to what extent materialism and consumerism are dominating our lives and turning our families and homes into isolated fortresses. We live in a society which is based on competition, power, influence and success. We are urged to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and to make it on our own, even at the expense of others.

There is only so much of the cake available. We are encouraged to fight for the biggest slice possible for ourselves and our own families. Just too bad if others don’t get enough—obviously, they did not try hard enough.

In decency, of course, some crumbs will be allowed to fall from our tables for those who just ‘can’t make it’ (see Jesus’s story about the rich man and Lazarus—Luke 16:19-31). Certainly, helping the poor often means dropping a few coins in a plate or basket, but it is not allowed to impinge on our enjoyment of what is not really ‘necessary’ in our lives. For instance, would we be ready to give up a holiday abroad and take a cheaper one at home in order to support victims of hunger, disease or homelessness?

More than enough
What Jesus in substance is saying is that when we all work hard to ensure that everyone has enough, there will be more than enough for all. Jesus’ concern, then, is that others have all they need, and my concern is that I have all that I need (not just what I want).

The bottom line for all of us is: Am I living my life at the expense of others? Do I treat society as a place which owes me—and no one else—a living? Or am I trying to live somehow in solidarity with others? Am I aware of neighbours or people in my area who are in real need? Am I more concerned about the value of my house than that the disabled be given a sense of belonging in society? Am I more concerned about my social status than be seen in the company of ‘those people’? What does ‘family’ mean to me? Do I see the human family as being part of my family?

As we prepare soon to share the Body of Christ, which is an expression of our belonging to the family of all God’s children, we will say together the ‘Our Father’. The ‘Our’ refers not just to us gathered here, still less our own family members, or the people of our own race, but rather to every single human being. Because we all have one, common Father, we are all very really brothers and sisters to each other.

Far from speaking against the family, Jesus is telling us that we can only be really part of our own families when we realise that we belong to and are called to share what we have, and that we are part of the human family all over the world.

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Commentary on Jeremiah 20:10-13; Romans 5:12-15; Matthew 10:26-33

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells the Twelve:

…have no fear…

In times of uncertainty about the future it is not surprising that many show signs of fear and anxiety. The words of Jesus may sound good, but do they give any real reassurance in times of trouble?

Much of the fear and anxiety of people today is about their material security, even when times are good. Perhaps times are good now, but will they last? The Gospel is not terribly concerned with that. In the ideal Christian community, material security will not be a major problem because believers will take care of each other and share their resources with those in need. The fact that such sharing communities are not very common makes one wonder how much real Christianity in practice exists!

Reactions of hatred
The readings today are concerned with a rather different problem, namely, what happens when the living of the gospel is taken seriously. We are being reminded that to become a follower of Christ in the full sense (as opposed to just a churchgoing Catholic) and to spread his message of love, justice and peace in word and practice will be seen by some people as a real threat to be resisted.

It is quite an illusion, which we sometimes live under, to think that the perfect Christian is someone who is loved and admired by all. On the contrary, such a person is likely to be bitterly hated “for my name’s sake”.

To be a fully committed Christian involves loving others with the same love that Christ showed for us, but it is no guarantee whatsoever that we will be loved in return. We are not Christians in order to be loved and looked up to, but to proclaim by word and example the vision of a fully human life that Jesus taught us.

Sign of contradiction
This will mean quite often calling in question the less than human standards that often prevail in our societies. The Christian is a ‘sign of contradiction’ as our vision of life calls into question many of the prevailing values of society. To do that, even in the most loving and non-violent and non-manipulative way, can be seen as a negative judgement by some and invite retaliations of hate, bitterness, violence—and sometimes death.

Examples of this abound in the history of the Church. A prominent example in the 1980s was when Archbishop Oscar Romero was gunned down in the middle of celebrating Mass by the military rulers of El Salvador. This was followed some years later by the brutal and sadistic murder of six priests dragged from their beds in the middle of the night. All that these men did was to draw attention to the many injustices being perpetrated against the poor and powerless in their society. Altogether some 75,000 people fell victims to military oppression in El Salvador alone. Sadly, in that country today as well as in other places in the world, atrocities are still occuring.

All of these men could easily have avoided their fate if they had simply been ‘good’ churchgoing Catholics, avoided touching on political and social issues and kept their mouths shut. (Which, incidentally, is what some expected Archbishop Romero to be like. He was in fact chosen by his peers as a known conservative who would not ‘rock the boat’.)

But we do not have to go to Central America for examples. They can be found, for instance, in the history of the Church in Africa, China, Japan and Korea where thousands have given (and, in some places, continue to give) lives for the sake of, and shed their blood in the name of, the gospel. It has been said that there have been more Christian martyrs in the most recent century than in any other since the time of Jesus.

Standing up to be counted
Today’s Gospel reminds us that we do have a responsibility to stand up and be counted. And, thank God, many are still doing so:

Everyone, therefore, who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven, but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.

At the same time, we are assured of God’s protection and help.

The greatest danger is not the loss of our lives, although some people will be prepared to make any compromise to survive physically. As Jesus says:

Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell. (Matt 10:28)

The greatest fear is not that we may be killed, but that we may be seduced into betraying those values on which our integrity as human persons depends.

To save our ‘bodies’ at the expense of truth, love, justice, freedom or at the expense of human solidarity—this is the real danger. That is the real death.

Prophets
Some in the Christian community are called to greater prominence in proclaiming God’s message. We call these people ‘prophets’. They are not so called because they are fortune tellers who know the future, but it is true that the genuine prophet can read more clearly ‘the signs of the times’ and anticipate trends in society. Politically, Winston Churchill was such a ‘prophet’ when, in the 1930s, he stood relatively alone on the British political scene denouncing any form of appeasement with Hitler. We know now how right he was.

The role of the prophet is well described in today’s First Reading. Jeremiah was initially not a very willing prophet. He did not think he had the qualifications, but God assured him that he was the man God wanted.

He soon found that the role of a prophet in bringing God’s message to his people did not win him many friends. He heard people say:

Denounce him! Let us denounce him!

And he complained:

All my close friends
are watching for me to stumble.

People watched out for him to put a foot wrong so that he could be denounced.

This is a common reaction to prophets. It makes it easier for people not to have to listen to their message. In spite of all, however, Jeremiah knew that God and Truth were upholding him:

…the Lord is with me like a terrifying warrior;
therefore my persecutors will stumble,
and they will not prevail.
They will be greatly shamed,
for they will not succeed.

Institutional and charismatic
We see two kinds of prophets in our Church today. One group could be called ‘institutional’ and they include bishops, priests, theologians and other religious leaders, both women and men. Their main role is to help all of us to be faithful to the true spirit of Jesus’ gospel in the way we live our daily lives both individually and corporately.

The second group we can call ‘charismatic’ prophets and these are prophets in the more real sense of the word. In our own recent past might be Martin Luther King and the already mentioned Archbishop Romero. Both these men gave their lives for what they believed. But one would also say that St Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa) was a prophet, not so much for what she said, but for what she did, and in particular, by drawing our attention to caring for the ‘poorest of the poor’ and finding Christ in them. Perhaps each one of us can add our own names to the list of Christian (and non-Christian) prophets in the world today and in our own communities. Who are the real prophets in our country, in our society, in our community today?

All called to be prophets
Prophecy is seen in the New Testament as a very special gift of the Spirit and, in its full sense, is a special vocation. However, some form of prophecy is incumbent on all of us. Each baptised person is called on to give witness to Christ in his or her life situation. Each one of us is called on to give witness to the values of the gospel both by word and example and that may mean, at times, being a ‘sign of contradiction’ in our families, in our schools, in our working places and in the wider society.

If we find that we are not known to be Christian, or that being a Christian seems to be no different from anyone else, if we find that our Christian communities and our parishes leave no mark on their surrounding society, then we need to ask ourselves seriously what kind of Christian lives we are leading and what kind of witness to the gospel we are giving.

It is not enough simply to be assembling together once a week. Our lives—individually and together—need to witness visibly to justice, equal dignity of all, honesty, a spirit of service, sharing resources and defending the weak and marginalised.

To be a living witness to Christ may generate some hostility among people we know. For instance, it may happen when we insist on being honest, rather than ‘on the make’, serving rather than manipulating people for our own ends, being friendly and fair to all and not just to ‘one’s own’ and standing up for immigrants and strangers in our community. It is better to be right with Christ than wrong with the crowd. To be a living witness, one needs confidence in Christ and in oneself, and a conviction that the only way that benefits all is the Way of Jesus.

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Commentary on Exodus 19:2-6; Romans 5:6-11; Matthew 9:36—10:8

The Gospel opens with Jesus looking over the crowds of people. He is filled with compassion for them. They are “harassed and helpless” like sheep without a shepherd. Things have not changed that much. So many today are still harassed by various forces and helpless, drifting without any real direction in their lives. “Do you know where you’re going to?” Diana Ross and the Supremes sang many years ago. How many of us can really answer that question?

A rich harvest
So Jesus says to his followers:

The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.

Certainly the harvest is plentiful. There are nearly 2.4 billion Christians in the world today and that seems like a huge number. Even so, we account for less than one-third of the world’s population. Over seventy-percent still do not know Christ! And even among many of those who carry the name Christian and have been baptised, he is to a large extent, a stranger.

However, there are over 3 billion people who fervently belong to other faiths: Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. Undoubtedly these religions have profound insights into the meaning of life and they produce their own saints, prophets and mystics. It is wrong to refer, as we did in the past, to such people as ‘pagans’ and ‘infidels’. If we really want to find pagans and infidels, that is, people who live a totally secular life in our own time, shouldn’t we rather look at our own wealthy, post-Christian western societies?

Where are the labourers?
The harvest is indeed plentiful, right on our own doorstep. Undoubtedly, the labourers, too, are few. That does not just mean that we do not have enough priests, brothers and sisters. The call to be a harvester is being made to every single follower of Christ. It is being made to every single person here. The way each one of us does harvesting depends on the circumstances of our life: our family situation, work situation, education, personality and temperament, and so on.

One way we can ask the Lord to send labourers into his harvest is for each one of us to say to him:

Here am I; send me! (Is 6:8)

So often we pray for “vocations”, but we do so in a very narrow way, as if the only vocation was to be a priest or religious. And somehow, we always seem to be thinking of other people, people we do not know, certainly not people in our own family or our own children. Today, let us hear the call made to ourselves and reflect on how we can answer.

The first harvesters
In today’s Gospel, Jesus begins by calling his first harvesters. He picked out twelve of his disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits—to liberate people from them and to heal every disease and sickness. Notice that the mandate is not just ‘religious’. It is for both spiritual and physical healing, the making whole of the complete person at every level.

These disciples are called “apostles”. It may surprise us that this is the only time this word is used in Matthew’s Gospel. A disciple is basically a follower, someone who learns from a master and becomes more and more like him. The word ‘apostle’ is a more active word. It implies someone who is entrusted by his lord and master with carrying an important message to others. Of course, one has first to be a good disciple before becoming a reliable apostle.

Why twelve? Because in the old Israel there were the twelve sons of Jacob, who became the patriarchs and the heads of the twelve tribes into which Israel was divided. These twelve men are the leaders of the new Israel, the new Kingdom being established through Jesus.

A mixed bunch
The Apostles are certainly a mixed bunch of people. Some of them were probably illiterate, which was not such a serious handicap in those days when there were hardly any books. One of them was a former tax collector, one of a class much despised for its venality and corruption. Another seems to have been some kind of anti-government rebel or zealot. And one, of course, turned out to be a traitor.

It does not give us much reason to say, as sometimes people do, that, “I am not good enough to do the Lord’s work”. When we look at the Church today in all its vastness and complexity and in the extraordinary cultural richness it has given to the world, we are amazed that this was all begun by such seemingly ‘ordinary’ people. If Jesus could use them, he can certainly use me. Again, can I say to him today:

Here am I; send me! (Is 6:8)

At first, the Apostles are told only to go to the ‘lost sheep’ of Israel and to avoid the Samaritans and Gentiles. God’s message is first for his own people and, in general, Jesus’ own work is almost entirely confined to the Jewish community. Later, of course, the mandate is extended to people everywhere. And what are these missionary Apostles to do? They are to proclaim that:

The kingdom of heaven has come near.

Kingdom of God, or heaven?
This does not mean, as mentioned in a previous commentary, that people are all going to die in the next day or two and go to “heaven”. Matthew, writing primarily to the Jewish converts to Christianity, always goes out of his way to avoid using the name of God, and ‘heaven’ is one of his favourite substitutes. So, in reality, we are talking about the Kingdom of God. And that Kingdom is not a place. The Greek word used in the Gospel is basileia, meaning ‘rule or reign’. So it is better to speak of the reign or Kingship of God. The Kingship of God is close because of the presence of Jesus Christ. We enter the Kingdom not by going somewhere, but by aligning ourselves totally with the Way of Jesus, when his thoughts become our thoughts and his ways become our ways.

The Apostles are to show the nearness of the Kingdom when they:

Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons.

These are all signs of God’s loving power working through them and reaching deep into people’s lives.

A programme for our own time
In modern terms, we could describe these works as:

• Curing the sick—People can be sick in many ways, and not just physically. We can all be agents for bringing healing and wholeness back into people’s lives, especially those we come in contact with.
• Raising the dead—We cannot literally raise people from the dead. We can, however, help people to recover an interest and zest for living. People can be physically alive, but dead in many other respects.
• Cleansing those with a skin disease—For us, that is to rehabilitate and bring back fully into our communities all those who, for one reason or another, are marginalised, rejected, despised, or ostracised on the basis of race, nationality, marital status, religion, gender, sexual orientation, certain modern-day illnesses and so on.
• Casting out demons—In our day demons are all those suffocating and enslaving forces which dominate, manipulate and restrict our freedom to live in truth and love. They include many elements of our contemporary lifestyle; the pressures to conform to what is in fashion, whether it be clothes, food, drugs of all kinds—prescribed and non-prescribed; and the tendencies to hedonism, extreme individualism and violence of all kinds. Our abortion culture is simply one of the symptoms and effects of all this. We have to start by casting out these demons from our own hearts first before helping others to true liberation.

Finally, says Jesus:

You received without payment; give without payment.

Yes, all that we have are God’s gifts to us. God’s gifts are literally ‘price-less’. They are meant to be used freely and liberally for the benefit of all. We are not in the business of sharing our faith for the money or the kudos it brings. To paraphrase the famous statement of President John Kennedy in his inaugural address, we should:

“Ask not what others can do for you—ask what you can do for others.”

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Commentary on Matthew 5:33-37

Today’s third example from the Sermon on the Mount is of Jesus’ ‘filling out’ the meaning of the Law based on the instruction, saying:

You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.

In the Book of Numbers we read:

When a man makes a vow to the Lord or swears an oath to bind himself by a pledge, he shall not break his word; he shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth. (Num 30:2)

Jesus goes far beyond this requirement. He simply tells us to stop making oaths altogether. The true follower of Christ does not need to take oaths or to swear on anything—however sacred—to guarantee the truth of his words. Jesus says:

Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.

The Christian should be a person of known integrity. He can be taken at his word and no further guarantee is required. It is nice to be known as such a person. Truth should be our second name.

Sometimes, of course, people may not be entitled to the whole truth. In fact, honour may require us even to sacrifice our life rather than reveal something that might put another person in danger, but we should never be guilty of positively deceiving another.

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Commentary on 1 Kings 19:19-21

Immediately following the passage describing Elijah’s meeting God at Horeb (Is 19:11-16) comes today’s short passage which is actually borrowed from the Elisha cycle or tradition. Elijah has basically finished the work God had given him to do and is getting ready to hand on to his successor, Elisha.

Coming from the mountain where he had met the Lord (in the “sound of sheer silence” or “a gentle breeze” in some translations), he comes upon Elisha ploughing behind twelve oxen yoked to ploughs. Elisha himself was following the last one. It seems the other eleven were being driven by Elisha’s servants.

That number of animals and assistants indicated that Elisha was a farmer of some means, perhaps even rich by the standards of his time and place. As Elijah passed by he threw his cloak over the shoulders of Elisha. The meaning was clear. He was passing over to Elisha the prophetic vocation which had been his. The cloak represented both the person and his authority. And, in Elijah’s case, the cloak had miraculous powers which were also being passed on. Elisha immediately accepted the call and ran after Elijah. He just made one petition, namely, to go back and say a final farewell to his parents. Elijah granted his request.

Elisha went off, but at the same time, he slaughtered his pair of oxen; used the wood of his plough as fuel to roast the meat; then shared the meat with his servants. The meaning was very clear. He was ‘burning his boats’ and committing himself totally and unreservedly to his calling as God’s prophet and spokesman. Elisha’s break with his past vocation was complete. He then went off and followed Elijah as his attendant. ‘Attendant’ is the same word in Hebrew to describe Joshua’s relationship with Moses.

The story is one of a calling being passed on and being generously accepted. Elisha’s request to go back and say goodbye to his family (whom he probably never saw again) and a relatively prosperous way of life reminds us of the man who wanted to say goodbye to his family before becoming a disciple of Jesus (see Luke 10:59). Jesus said that, for a disciple of his, even that should be set aside. As Peter would say:

Look, we have left everything and followed you. (Mark 10:28)

And indeed they had.

But Elisha did show the level of his commitment by disposing of all his property and following the Lord and his teacher, Elijah, with only the clothes on his back.

We might ask what do we still cling to in our following of Jesus? What things would we find it most difficult to let go of if we were asked? What is the level of our commitment to following Jesus right now?