More

Commentary on Acts 5:12-16; Revelation 1:9-13,17-19; John 20:19-31

On this Divine Mercy Sunday—the first Sunday after the celebration of Easter—the emphasis is on faith in the presence and power of the living Jesus in our midst. About Divine Mercy Sunday, Pope John Paul II stated,

It is a time where we are blessed with divine mercy as it reaches us through the heart of Christ crucified.

The work of Jesus continues
The Risen Jesus now lives on in the community which believes in him. The Apostles are now endowed with the same powers that Jesus had during his life here on earth, not in their own name, but in the name of Jesus their Lord. In today’s First Reading, we are told:

…many signs and wonders were done among the people through the apostles.

And that:

…more than ever believers were added to the Lord, great numbers of both men and women…

People came crowding in from the towns round about Jerusalem, bringing with them their sick and those tormented by unclean spirits:

…they even carried out the sick into the streets and laid them on cots and mats, in order that Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he came by. A great number of people would also gather from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing the sick and those tormented by unclean spirits, and they were all cured.

It is living testimony that Jesus is active and continues his saving and whole-making work among us, for the disciples do these works in the name of Jesus their Lord.

The Apostles proclaim the message of Jesus as Saviour and invite people to join their company. We know that many indeed did come to join them, but there is a telling phrase in the First Reading that:

None of the rest dared to join them, but the people held them in high esteem.

Is this already a hint of the counter-witness of the early Christians when they were already being regarded with suspicion by the religious and civil authorities and when it was becoming dangerous to be identified with them? They were a group to be admired—but from a safe distance. It is yet another sign that the early followers were about to share the same fate as Jesus himself.

Mixed reactions to be expected
Things have not changed greatly in our own time. For it is through the Christian community and its witness that people come to know of Jesus and are led to faith in his message of truth and life. It is a witness that rests on the shoulders of every single follower of Jesus and we do it not just by explicitly religious actions, but by the very pattern and impact of our daily lives—an impact that arouses both positive and negative responses.

The Gospel, however, brings us back to an earlier stage when the disciples have not yet come to the full realisation that Jesus, whom they saw crucified, dead and buried, is now alive, that he is risen. As the Gospel opens we see them huddled together in that room with the doors firmly locked “for fear of the Jews.” At any moment they dreaded the arrival of the police to arrest them as accomplices of the dangerous subversive who had been executed on Golgotha the previous Friday.

Peace instead of fear
And then, all of a sudden, the Jesus they presumed dead is standing among them. He says in greeting:

Peace be with you.

This can be taken as a blessing, echoing the ordinary Jewish greeting, Shalom. Or it can be taken as a statement of a fact—Jesus essentially saying: “With my presence among you there comes deep inner peace.” This is the same peace that comes when Jesus calms the surrounding storms in the Gospel stories. They experience an unutterable joy:

Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.

“Lord” is the title for the Risen Jesus.

But it is not just to be a happy reunion. There is work to be done, the work that Jesus began and which they are to continue:

As the Father has sent me, so I send you.

They are being given a mission. The word ‘mission’ comes from the Latin word ‘to send’ (mittere). All followers of Jesus have a mission—all are missionaries.

Passing on his Spirit
Then, when he had said this:

…he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

In John’s Gospel this is the Pentecost experience, when the Holy Spirit comes down on the disciples. In Luke’s Acts, Pentecost takes place 50 days after the Resurrection, but for John it takes place on Easter Day. For us, it makes no difference—the meaning is the same.

What Jesus does is reminiscent of the Creation story when God ‘breathed’ over the waters and brought life and order into the chaos. He ‘breathed’ again and Adam, the human being made in the image of God, comes into existence. Now, Jesus ‘breathes’ the Spirit of his Way, of his Truth and of his Life, making of the disciples (in Paul’s term) “new human beings,” full of the Spirit of the Father and Jesus.

The meaning of forgiveness
The very empowering authority of Jesus is transferred to them:

If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.

When they act together in the name of Jesus, they have his authority. And above all, their task is to ‘forgive sin’, that is, to bring about a deep reconciliation between people and God and among people themselves, to make all one in Him:

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. (Matt 5:9)

We are not just talking here about “confession,” or the institution of the sacrament of reconciliation, although its roots can be traced to here. Forgiving sin is much more than a juridical act of declaring sins no longer held against someone. It involves the healing of wounds and division between God and people—and between people as brothers and sisters—in one family based on truth, love and justice. That is the work of the Kingdom. That is the work of every Christian community and every member in it.

The doubter
But there is even more to today’s story. Thomas, “one of the twelve,” was not there on that Easter Sunday. He stands for the sceptic in all of us:

Unless I see…I will not believe.

In the Gospel story, Thomas generally comes across as a bit of a grump. He likes to criticise, to put objections, to make difficulties, to call into question. He now wants convincing proof:

Unless I [can]…put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.

The following Sunday—in fact, the Sunday we are celebrating today—the doors are again closed. (This is now not out of fear but as an indication of the way that the Risen Jesus now becomes present.) Again there is the reassuring greeting of ‘Peace’. Jesus now addresses Thomas directly:

Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.

Extraordinary confession
There then follows the greatest confession of faith in all of the Gospels when Thomas says:

My Lord and my God!

Thomas had been invited to touch the wounds, but he does not seem to have done so. And his cry of recognition is not based only on the evidence of his senses. He does not say, “Jesus, it’s you!” Rather, he says “My Lord and my God!” It is, in fact, a profound act of faith in the reality and identity of the Person standing before him. And that is something he cannot see only with his physical senses. Only the eyes of faith can lead him to so speak.

Jesus gives a further word of encouragement, though, offered for those of us who have not had Thomas’ privileged experience:

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.

Of course, all belief in Jesus involves some element of seeing, of ‘in-sight’. But we have not had the experience of seeing and knowing the Jesus of the Public Life—Jesus before his crucifixion.

However, our faith enables us to see him in all the surroundings of our daily life, especially in those people who are filled with his Spirit and who bring him into our lives. And we also see and find him in all the sick, the weak, the oppressed and the poor around us who provide us with opportunities to know, love and show compassion for Jesus. We are even to see him in those who are hostile or who do harm to us in the sense that we are challenged to be Christ for them in our unconditional love and concern for their well-being.

Breaking down barriers
To see and know Jesus in our lives is, at the same time, to recognise when he comes to us, as well as to be ready for day-to-day opportunities when we can bring him into the lives of others. Above all, can we be true to the mission Jesus gave to his disciples to be makers of reconciliation and to be peacemakers, breaking down walls of hatred, prejudice and fear? We do this by living lives of integrity, of love and compassion and of real justice for all. Each time we do that, Easter is celebrated and Jesus is alive among us.

More

Commentary on Acts 10:34,37-43; Colossians 3:1-4 or 1 Corinthians 5:6-8; John 20:1-9 or Luke 24:1-12 (for afternoon Masses, Luke 24:13-35)

Our Easter celebrations form the heart of our Christian living. Our faith is deeply rooted and finds its real meaning in the resurrection of Jesus. St Paul says that, if Christ is not risen, then all our believing is in vain.* It is sad, then, to find people who make Good Friday and the death of Jesus the climax of Holy Week. However, attitudes change over time and more and more people have come to love the Easter Vigil liturgy, especially when it is done well.

Those Christians who depict the cross without the body of Christ on it are making a very important point. The cross was the high point of Jesus’ gift of himself to the Father for our sake, but he is no longer there and it was his entry into glory with the Father which gives the cross its validity. Otherwise, it would have been a journey into nothingness.

Because of the Resurrection, the disciples, who were at first paralysed with fear of being arrested as accomplices of Jesus, suddenly made a complete turnaround and began boldly to proclaim that Jesus, who died on the Cross, was alive and with them. And when, in fact, they were arrested, persecuted and imprisoned, it became a cause of rejoicing that they were now even more closely related to the life experience of their Lord, sharing in his sufferings that they might share in his glory.

A call for change
Easter, however, is not only concerned with recalling the resurrection of Jesus or its impact on the first disciples, but also with the meaning of this event for our own lives and for our faith. The celebration of Easter (and the days of Holy Week leading up to it) are a call for us to change—and perhaps change radically—as Jesus’ own disciples changed.

The sign that we are truly sharing in the risen life of Jesus is that our lives and our behaviour undergo a constant development. We not only believe, we not only proclaim, but we do what we believe and what we proclaim.

Proclamation and witness
The theme of today’s Mass includes both proclamation and witness. In the First Reading, we see Peter speaking after the baptism of Cornelius and his family, the first gentile Christians. He is speaking about his own experience and sharing that experience with the listening crowds. For the true disciple of Jesus, there is a close and indivisible relationship between experiencing and proclaiming. Because of Peter’s experience of knowing with utter conviction that Jesus, who died on the Cross, is now alive, he is so filled with joy that he simply must share that joy with others—so that it can be theirs, too.

We find a similar theme in both of the Second Readings (there is a choice of readings) and the Gospel. Paul was a Pharisee, a dedicated Pharisee and a man of integrity. He persecuted Christians because he saw in them a dangerous deviation from the Jewish Law and Jewish traditions. Then he, too, had that sudden experience when the Risen Jesus revealed himself while Paul was on his way to Damascus to bring the Christians (whom he saw as heretical Jews) into line.

That experience, as we know, brought about a total change in Paul’s life. It gave him a totally new vision of things and especially of the meaning of Jesus’ life and message. For the rest of his life, he used all his energies, the same energies he once used against Christians, to help others—Jews and non-Jews alike—to know, love and follow Jesus, his Lord.

Empty tomb
In John’s (and Luke’s) Gospel, we have the experience of the empty tomb as the sign of Jesus’ resurrection to life. Mary Magdalen saw the stone rolled back (it was so heavy; who could have managed to do such a thing?) and she went running to the disciples. Peter and the “other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved” went to see for themselves. They ran to the tomb and, although the “other disciple” got there first, out of deference, he let Peter go in before him. They saw, they understood, and they believed. Until that moment, John’s Gospel says:

…for as yet they did not understand the scripture [the Hebrew testament], that he must rise from the dead.

The disciples on the way to Emmaus will also be made to recognize that the positive meaning of the sufferings of Jesus can be found in the Hebrew Testament for those who can see and understand (see Luke’s Gospel for the afternoon Masses).

Not just resuscitation
It is important, however, to be aware that the Resurrection is not simply the resuscitation of the body of Jesus after he died on the Cross. No one saw the Resurrection because there was nothing to see. The crucifixion is a historical event, but the Resurrection is a faith event. The Risen Jesus enters a completely new way of living; the post-Resurrection texts all indicate that. He is not recognised at first by even his intimate friends; he is everywhere that his disciples happen to be, and his new Body—the means of his being visibly present among us—is the community of his disciples. We are, quite literally at this time, the Body of Christ.

We see the beginnings of this in the next part of John’s Gospel that we will read during the first week of Easter. Peter and the ‘beloved disciple’ went back to their companions to tell them of their discovery. But Mary Magdalen, from whom seven demons had gone out, and who was now totally devoted to Jesus as her Lord and Master, stayed behind. She was distraught. Her beloved Master was not only dead; his body was now missing. In the tomb she saw two angels, representing God’s presence, who asked her why she was crying.

A familiar voice
At that very moment, she turned and saw Jesus but did not recognise him. This is a constant feature of post-Resurrection apparitions. Jesus is not recognised; he looks just like an ordinary person, any person. In this case, Mary thinks he is the gardener, and wonders if he is the one who has taken away the body of Jesus. When he calls her name, “Mary”, she immediately knows who it is. Earlier in John’s Gospel Jesus had said:

The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.
(John 10:3)

Mary then begins to cling passionately to Jesus, not wanting to let him go. But she has to let go—she is clinging to the ‘old’ Jesus. The Risen Jesus is going into glory with the Father. He will return, but in a very different way. From now on he will be found in all those who call themselves his disciples and who are united together as one Body—the Church and all its constituent local churches.

And Mary, too, runs back to the disciples proclaiming her personal experience:

…[she] announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and she told them that he had said these things to her.
(John 20:18)

The Gospel doesn’t say that she had ‘seen Jesus’, but that she had “seen the Lord”, i.e. the Risen Lord. And that is what evangelisation is about: it is not just the handing on of doctrines, but the sharing with others our experience of having seen the Lord in our own lives and inviting them to have the same experience.

The same mission
The celebration of Easter reminds us that we have the same mission as Peter and Mary Magdalen and the other disciples of Jesus. First, as the optional Second Reading from the First Letter to the Corinthians indicates, Easter calls for a radical conversion, a radical purging on our part. In the celebration of the Pasch, the Jews used to throw out all the leavened bread they had and replace it with freshly baked unleavened bread.

Because of the fermentation process that leavened bread undergoes, yeast was regarded as a corrupting agent. So Paul tells us that we, too, as we celebrate our Christian Passover, are to become:

…a new batch of dough, as you really are unleavened [in other words, free from all the corrupting influences in our life]. Therefore, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

And, to go back to the First Reading from the Acts of the Apostles, Peter emphasises the importance of Jesus’ disciples not only experiencing the joy of their Risen Master and Lord, but also of sharing that experience and joy with as many people as possible. It is something we must do also. Not to share our Easter joy and what it means to us is to leave Easter only half celebrated. For the true Christian, in fact, every day is an Easter Day lived joyfully in the close company of the Risen Lord.

Witnesses
Peter says:

God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses…

They were those who witnessed Jesus’ preaching and healing, his arrest, execution and death, and also his being raised again to life.

And so Peter describes them as:

…[we] who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.

Is that not something that we, too, do every time we take part in the Eucharist—to eat and drink with the Risen Jesus? And what message comes from that? Have we satisfied our Christian responsibility just by being in church on Sunday?

He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead…that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.

There we have our mission.

Putting it in language that may be more easily understood today, Peter is saying that Jesus, and the way of life he proposes, is the yardstick by which people are to measure themselves, and not just as Christians, but as human beings. To attach oneself totally to the Way of Jesus, a way of Truth and Life, is to bring about a deep reconciliation with God and with all our brothers and sisters. It is to bring freedom, justice and peace into our world, and prepare us for the day when we all become one in our Creator God, the Father of Truth and Compassionate Love.

______________________________________________

*The Gospel was essentially written backwards. The trigger to its being written was the experience that Jesus the Rabbi had risen from the dead and was with God in glory. That experience, in turn, led to reflection on what at first seemed tragedy, disaster and failure—namely, the trial, suffering and death of Jesus. The resurrection threw a totally different light on the Passion and Death of Jesus and led to a very different understanding of what was happening.

These reflections, in their turn, led to a reconsideration of the public life of Jesus—his teaching and what was now seen to be part of that teaching: his healing, forgiveness of sinners, the expulsion of evil spirits and giving life to the dead.

Last of all, came the stories about the origins of Jesus, the Infancy Narratives.

The longest part of Jesus’ life, between his childhood and the beginning of his Public Life, remained totally hidden to us, apparently not relevant to the main story.

More

Commentary on Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; Luke 22:14—23:56

After five weeks of preparation we now enter the climax of the Lenten season and what we call Holy Week. In a way, the whole week from today until Easter Sunday should be seen as one unit—the presentation of the Paschal Mystery. This Paschal Mystery includes the suffering, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus into glory and the sending of the Spirit on the disciples of Jesus to continue the work he began. Although it is, for liturgical and catechetical reasons, spread over a period of seven weeks, it should also be seen as an indivisible single experience. This week sees the climax of the mission of Jesus Christ in which the deepest meaning of his life is unfolded, and in which his teaching becomes incarnated in his own words and actions.

Today’s celebration (for, strange to say, the terrible happenings we are about to listen to are truly a cause for celebration on our part) is divided into two distinct parts: the procession with palms and the Mass proper. (The particular Mass you attend may not include both parts, as many parishes will only do the first part at one of the day’s Masses.)

Joy and triumph
In the first part the prevailing atmosphere is one of joy, and the vestments in today’s liturgy are a triumphant red and not the violet which has prevailed during the other days of Lent. And the reading from the Gospel in this first part recalls the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem as King. He gets a rapturous reception from the crowd who acclaim him with words we still use in the “Holy, holy, holy…” of the preface to the Eucharistic Prayer. This scene is important, for in a few days’ time, the same triumphant Jesus will be reduced to a battered wreck of humanity:

So Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold the man!” [Latin, Ecce homo!].

As we process through our church, with our palms (or their equivalent) in our hands, we too may sing with enthusiasm:

“Christ conquers, Christ is king, Christ is our ruler”
(Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat).

There is a difference in our case for we know the end of the story and what is to come. Because of that, we sing with even greater conviction about the greatness of Jesus and a realisation of just why he is our King.

But even here there is shadow. For not all are spreading their clothes on the ground for Jesus to walk over or waving their branches. His enemies are watching and what they see only gives greater urgency to their desire to see the end of Jesus. In one way, they will succeed with a frightening ruthlessness to destroy Jesus. But of course, they will also fail utterly. Our presence here today is proof enough of that.

The mind of Christ
In a way, the real key to Holy Week is given in today’s Second Reading, which seems to be a hymn, incorporated by Paul in his letter to the Christians at Philippi, in northern Greece. It expresses the ‘mind’, the thinking of Jesus, a mind which Paul urges us to have also if we want to identify fully with Jesus as disciples:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus…
(Phil 2:5)

The key word in today’s passage from Paul is “emptied.” This kenosis, or emptying, is at the heart of Jesus’ experience during his Passion.

In spite of Jesus’ identity with the nature of God, he did not insist on his status. He first of all took on himself in the fullest sense our human nature:

…who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. (Heb 4:15)

But even more, he reached down to the lowest level, the lowest class of human beings—the servant, the slave. That was still not the end. He let go of all human dignity, all human rights; he let go of life itself to die, not any “respectable” form of death, but the death of a convicted criminal in shame and nakedness and total abandonment.

To understand the sufferings, death and resurrection of Jesus one must fully grasp what Paul is saying here and, not only grasp it, but totally appropriate it into one’s own thinking so that one would be prepared, with God’s help, to go exactly the same way. Our normal sensitivities over even trifling hurts show us just how far we have to go to have the “mind of of the Lord.”

With the focus of the first two readings, we are now—hopefully—prepared for listening to Luke’s version of the Passion of Jesus, up to, but excluding the climax of resurrection.

So much to reflect on
Although efforts are now made to make the listening to the Passion less of an endurance test, there really is too much to be fully digested as we stand listening to one or three readers. Perhaps we should set aside a short period later in the day to go through the dramatic telling more at our leisure. Or perhaps we could focus on a particular passage which speaks to us more at this time.

There is:

• the last meal of Jesus with his disciples—a bitter-sweet experience for all;
• Jesus’ struggle with fear (even terror) and loneliness in the garden, ending in a sense of peace and acceptance;
• Peter’s denial of ever having known Jesus, the same Jesus with whom he had just eaten and who had invited him into the garden;
• the kiss of Judas, another disciple, sealing the fate of Jesus, and leading to bitter remorse and suicide;
• the rigged trial before the religious leaders and again before the contemptuous, cynical Pilate and the brief appearance before the superstitious and fearful Herod;
• the torture, humiliation and degradation of Jesus;
• the way of Calvary—the weeping women and the reluctant Simon of Cyrene;
• the crowds, so supportive on Sunday, who now laugh and mock;
• the murderous gangster promised eternal happiness that very day;
• the last words of forgiveness and total surrender (emptying) to the Father.

The drama is truly overpowering and needs really to be absorbed one incident at a time. It would be worth reflecting in which of these scenes I can see myself—with which characters I can identify as reacting in the way I probably would.

 Jesus—the focal point
Through it all there is Jesus. His enemies humiliate him, strike him and scourge him. Soldiers make a crown with thorns, a crown for the “King of the Jews” (an element of contemptuous racism here?), and Herod mocks him. Pilate, Roman-trained, makes a half-hearted attempt at justice, but his fear for his career prevails.

Jesus, for his part, does not strike back; he does not scold; he does not accuse or blame. He begs his Father to:

…forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.

Jesus seems to be the victim, but all through he is, in fact, the Master. He is master of the situation because he is master of himself.

So, as we go through this day and this week, let us look very carefully at Jesus our Saviour. We watch, not just to admire, but also to learn, and to penetrate the mind, the thinking, the attitudes and the values of Jesus so that we, in the very different circumstances of our own lives, may walk in his footsteps.

If we are to be his disciples, he invites us to walk his way, to share his sufferings, to imitate his attitudes, to ‘empty’ ourselves, to live in service of others—in short, to love others as he loves us. This is not at all a call to a life of pain and misery. Quite the contrary, it is an invitation to a life of deep freedom, peace and happiness. If it were anything else, it would not be worth considering.

More

Commentary on Isaiah 43:16-21; Philippians 3:8-14; John 8:1-11

God has a very bad memory. That is one way we might express the theme of today’s readings. For the Scripture of today’s Mass speaks of how God is always compassionate to his people. No matter how many times the Israelites abandoned their God, no matter how many times they became ‘stiff-necked’ and refused to do his will, he always came to call them back.

In the whole of the New Testament we see God, in the person of Jesus, calling his sinful people to be converted, to put their whole trust in the message he brings and to follow his Way, as the way of truth and life.

Jesus can be called the Sacrament of God among us. A sacrament in general is a visible manifestation of the power of God working among us. So when we see the man Jesus, we are seeing God (though imperfectly, because what we actually see through Jesus’ humanity is not, cannot be the totality of a transcendent God). When we hear Jesus, we are hearing God. When Jesus acts, a human being like ourselves is acting and speaking, but it is also our God acting and speaking. So in reading today’s Gospel, when we see Jesus with the sinful woman, we are also seeing God.

Two kinds of sinners
We might say there are two kinds of sinners in today’s Gospel passage. First, there is the woman who was caught in the act of adultery, a very serious matter. But there is no mention of the other party—the man. It takes two people to commit adultery. One person committing adultery—unless it is purely in the mind—is like the Japanese concept of one hand clapping. Of course, in Jewish as in other societies where purity of the family line was vital, because the woman was the one who bore the child, the stigma of adultery and the birth of an illegitimate child was laid on her. Moreover, when a married woman commits adultery, it may not be certain who is the real father of the child she bears. An adulterous man, on the other hand, may produce an illegitimate child, but from this perspective, it is the problem of the woman and her family and not him or his family.

But in this story, the scribes and Pharisees are also sinners. Not in their own eyes, of course, but in the eyes of Jesus and his Gospel they are totally lacking in the compassion that God displays and which he expects his followers to have:

Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. (Luke 6:36)

The Pharisees and the scribes are proud and arrogant; they give themselves the prerogative to sit in judgment on others. They have no idea how to love or how to forgive—only how to keep the Law. They are thus far from God. They do not love the people that God loves.

But before we ourselves sit in judgment on them, we might sincerely ask how many of us would have acted differently than they did in this particular case? How would many of us react if we discovered a spouse, a son or daughter, not to mention a stranger or public figure, in an adulterous relationship?

Representing all of us
The woman in this story is not just an isolated sinner. She represents all of us. She represents every person who has sinned. She represents you and me. And the scribes and Pharisees, who were sinners too, also represent you and me. We sin in both ways: when we hurt others by indulging our desires at their expense and when we hurt others by setting ourselves up as superior and better than they. If we had been there that day, what would we have done? Would we have condemned the guilty woman too? Even during the past week, how many people have we condemned in our hearts or in our words? Are we regular readers of newspapers or watchers of TV programmes which delight in rubbishing people and destroying their lives? How many people have we ourselves passed judgement on? On the other hand, to how many have we extended a hand of love and compassion?

How Jesus treats people
Now let us look at Jesus in this scene. First of all, Jesus does not deny the woman’s sin. She has sinned, and very seriously. Adultery involves an intimate sexual liaison between two people, at least one of whom is already married. It is a serious breach of trust in the marriage relationship and a serious act of injustice to the innocent partner in the marriage. The seriousness is really in this breach of trust and the injustice to one’s partner rather than the sexual activities, which, in this case, are secondary. The story does not tell us whether the woman was married or not. What is admitted by all—by Jesus, the Pharisees and the woman herself—is that she sinned.

Pawn in a game
However, there is another element in the story which is not explicitly mentioned, but is strongly implied. The woman has been dragged before Jesus as a pawn in a game. The game is one of entrapment. The Pharisees say:

Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?

They hope to put the rabbi who eats and drinks with sinners on a collision course with the sacred traditions coming from Moses. They hope to condemn him from his own mouth. They reason that if he agrees with Moses, he belies his own teaching and behaviour with sinners; if he rejects the Law of Moses, he can be denounced as no man of God.

Jesus at first ignores their question, which reveals how far they are from understanding what he has been teaching and doing. He bends down and writes with his finger on the sandy ground. There has been much speculation about what he might have been writing, but it seems to be a way of refusing to walk into their all too obvious trap. When they persist, he says:

Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.

To their credit, not one of them took up the challenge. One by one, beginning with the most senior, they slipped quietly out of his sight. This is the first teaching of today’s Gospel: only one without sin (i.e. God) can sit in judgment on another person. To put it more colloquially: people in glass houses cannot throw stones. Yet, do we not do this all the time?

No condemnation
Now only Jesus and the woman are left. Her accusers are gone and the one person remaining is not going to accuse her. He says to her:

Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?….Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.

Unlike the Pharisees and scribes, upholders of the Law, Jesus refuses to condemn her. Rather he gives her an opportunity to repent, to convert and change her ways. Jesus came not to condemn, but to save, to rehabilitate and to give new and enduring life. Jesus always leaves a door open.

Our instinct is to punish and even destroy the wrongdoer. Every day we see the media condemning and even claiming to be ‘shocked’ by the misdemeanours of the famous and the not so famous. How do we think Jesus would deal with such people?

If God acted like the Pharisees, how many times would I myself have been condemned or destroyed? But no matter how many times I sin, no matter how seriously I sin—even if the whole of society condemns me and expresses horror and revulsion at my behaviour—God calls me to start over again, to change my ways of seeing life and other people. How often does he do this? Once or twice? No, he does this “seventy times seven times”—in other words, indefinitely!

One popular Sunday missal offers these comments on today’s Mass:

“The utter completeness of Christ’s forgiveness is almost incredible. When he says to us Neither do I condemn you, the past is dead, snuffed out like a wick, forgotten.”

That is what is meant when one says that God has such a poor memory. He only sees and knows the person actually in front of him at this moment. Says Isaiah in today’s First Reading:

Do not remember the former things
or consider the things of old.

Seeing the real person
In today’s Gospel story, Jesus saw a lonely, frightened woman, manipulated by cruel, self-righteous men for their own sinister ends. He saw the potential for change and he accepted her totally.

This was also the experience of Paul, once a zealous Pharisee. Paul knew that God had forgiven his sin, the sin of persecuting the disciples of Jesus (in the name of God and religion, it may be noted). Paul realises now that it is not a question of becoming a morally perfect person by his own efforts. For him to have a close relationship with Jesus is the most precious thing in life. All the rest is just garbage. As a Pharisee he thought he was a perfect person by keeping the Law meticulously and hating all those who did not. Now he knows he is a good person because he has become filled with the love of Jesus. Now he hates no one—he loves, he forgives and, like God, he forgets.

We will find a great deal of happiness and peace in our lives if, on the one hand, we can really grasp the attitude of God to the sinner, and if, on the other, we can make that attitude our own in our relationship with others.

More

Commentary on Joshua 5:9,10-12; 2 Corinthians 5:17-21; Luke 15:1-3,11-32

Lent is a time for renewal. Part of that renewal requires that we become aware of the disorder, the disharmony and the distortions in our life, in other words to become aware of the areas of sinfulness and of the evil in our behaviour. We cannot change unless we are first aware of what needs to be changed. Many of us go through life not prepared to take a really objective look at the kind of people we are, although we may spend a good deal of time being very aware of what is wrong with others.

Once aware of the areas of our lives which are ruled by negative forces like hate, anger, resentment, greed, vindictiveness, injustice or violence we need to repent. ‘Repentance’ in the Gospel calls not only for expressions of regret and sorrow; it also demands a radical change in my future behaviour and a profound change in the way I see God and people and other things. It calls for a re-ordering of my relationships with God, with Jesus, with other people and with myself. It means a real turning round of my life, a real conversion.

Looking to the future
Many have the good habit of making a serious confession during Lent or before Easter. However, we must be aware that such a confession entails not just clearing the decks of past wrongdoings; it also involves a genuine desire for a reform of life and a real change in our behaviour. If my confessions over the years do not seem to change very much, it may well be that in making them, I have paid too little attention to the present and the future. As we will see, God is not really interested in our past.

Part of the renewal experience of Lent is to try to become more truly disciples of Jesus and to share more deeply his values, his outlook and his attitudes. As St Paul told the Philippians, we are to have the same mind and same way of thinking as Jesus had.

God’s way of thinking
In today’s Mass, we have one of the most graphic descriptions of Jesus’—and therefore of God’s—thinking. We are confronted with the attitude of God to the wrongdoer, i.e. his deep desire to forgive and to be totally reconciled with the one who has severed relations with him.

The context of today’s passage is important. Luke tells us:

…all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him.

The Pharisees and Scribes, who were the ‘good and religious’ people, were shocked and disturbed:

This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.

By their standards, a ‘good’ person avoids ‘bad company’. To be quite honest, don’t we think the same? If so, then we are not thinking like God or like Jesus.

Jesus answers the Pharisees by telling three parables, only one of which is given in today’s Gospel. The first parable is about a shepherd who has lost one of his sheep. He goes to extraordinary lengths, even leaving all the other sheep, to find that single one that has gone astray. That is a picture of God and the sinner. When he finds the sheep, he has to share his joy with all his companions. The second parable is about a poor woman who loses a coin. It may be only one coin, but it means a lot to her. She turns her house upside down till she finds it and when she does, she joyfully tells all her neighbours.

The Prodigal Son’s Father
But the most striking story is the third parable. While it is normally referred to as the parable of the “Prodigal Son”, in fact, the emphasis is less on the son than on the father, who clearly represents God and Jesus.

No one can deny the appalling behaviour of the younger son. He took all that his father generously gave to him as his inheritance and used it in leading a life of total debauchery and self-centred indulgence. Eventually, he had nothing. He was reduced to living with pigs and even sharing their slops—something utterly abhorrent to the Jewish mind and something even we would find appalling. The reaction of many, especially the ‘good and morally respectable’, might be, “It served him right.”

This, however, is not the reaction of the father, who has only one thought in his mind—how to get his son to come back to where he belongs. The father does not say: “This son has seriously offended me and brought disgrace on our family. May he rot in hell.” Instead, we can almost see him standing at the door of his house watching and waiting for his son to return. And we can almost hear him say, “My son went away and is lost, and I want so much to have him back.” His love for his wayward son has not changed one iota.

No force
There is no force involved. The police are not sent out. Servants are not instructed to haul him back. No, the father waits. It is up to the son himself to make the crucial decision—does he want to be with his father or not?

Eventually the son “came to his senses”, that is, he realised the wrongness of what he had done. He became aware of just how good his father had been. The process of repentance had begun. He felt deeply ashamed of his behaviour and then, most significantly of all, he turned round to make his way back to his father.

The father, for his part, filled with compassion for his son’s experiences, runs out to meet him, embraces him and brushes aside the carefully prepared speech the son had ready. If the son had known his father better, he would have realised that such a speech was unnecessary. Immediately, orders are given to bring the very best things in the house and a banquet is laid on.

This is forgiveness, this is reconciliation and, on the part of the son, this is conversion and repentance, a real turning around of his life and a return to where he ought to be.

All this, it is important to remember, is in response to the comments of the Pharisees and Scribes about Jesus mixing with sinners. This story reveals a picture of God which, on the one hand, many of us have not yet fully accepted and, on the other, illustrates a way of behaving that does not come easily to us in our own relationships with others.

No understanding
And this is where the elder son comes in. He simply cannot understand what is happening. He was never treated like this and he had always been a ‘good boy’. What kind of justice is this? One brother stays at home keeping all the rules (i.e. Commandments) and seems to get nothing. His brother lives riotously with prostitutes in a pagan land, and when he comes back, he is treated like royalty. The elder son could not understand the mind of his father, and some of us may have such a difficulty as well.

In some ways God is very unjust—at least by our standards. He is corrupted by love! But fortunately for us, he is like that. Supposing we went to confession one day and the priest said, “Sorry, that’s it. There can be no more forgiveness, no more reconciliations. You’ve used up your quota. Too bad.” Of course, it is not like that. There is no limit to God’s forgiveness.

As was said earlier, God is not interested in the past, but only in the present. I am judged not by what I have done or not done earlier. Nor need I be anxious how I will behave in the future. I am judged by my relationship with God here and now. It was on that basis that the murderer crucified with Jesus was told:

Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.
(Luke 23:43)

Despite all he had done, he is promised eternal life that very day. It was on the same basis that the ‘sinful woman’, presumably a prostitute, becomes totally reconciled with Jesus, and there and then all her past behaviour is forgotten:

Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. (Luke 7:47)

All I have to worry about is whether, right now, I have a loving relationship with God and with all those around me through whom I come in contact with him.

What limits do we set?
There is clearly much to reflect on in today’s readings as to how we deal with those we feel have ‘offended’ us. In wanting to experience God’s forgiveness, we also need to learn how to be forgiving to others. Do we set limits to our forgiveness? To be reconciled with God, we need to learn how to be reconciled with all those who are sources of conflict or pain in our lives.

We thank God that we have a Lord who is so ready to forgive and welcome us back again and again, but we cannot stop there. We have to learn to act towards others in the same way:

…forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us…

We, too, need to see a person in the here and now and not continue to dredge up past hurts and resentments, anger and hatred.

By imitating Jesus more, we find that our relationships improve. In so doing we are coming closer to having the mind of Jesus, but we are doing something else as well. We will find that life will become a far more peace-filled and harmonious experience. It is a perfect win-win situation.

More

Commentaries on Exodus 3:1-8,13-15; 1 Corinthians 10:1-6,1-12; Luke 13:1-9

One of the recurrent themes throughout the Lenten season is the compassion and mercy of our God. It is something that we constantly need to be reminded about. Our God is always faithful and consistent. His love for us never changes, no matter how we behave, no matter how serious our sins may be. It has to be that way because our God not only loves, he IS love. Love is of the very essence of his being; he cannot not love.

His love is like the sun which gives its warmth to good and bad alike; like the gentle nurturing rain which falls on good and bad alike. And we are called, as far as possible, to imitate him in this—to love always and unconditionally. Because we find that difficult, it is hard for us to think of God loving that way. We do need to get rid of the idea of an angry, disappointed, vengeful God threatening catastrophe on a wicked world—an idea still being fostered by those who claim to have had special revelations.

Does anything matter?
If God’s love for us is so constant and unchanged by our behaviour, does that mean we can do anything we like? Does it matter whether we lead good or bad lives or whether we sin or not? It is very doubtful if we would be justified in drawing that conclusion.

Today’s readings seem to be saying three things to us:

1. We cannot find our salvation and wholeness as persons without the love and the help of God.
2. God does not punish people because of their bad behaviour.
3. God will not save us against our will or without our co-operation.

It is absolutely true—and we should never have doubts about this—that if we sin, God continues to love us as he always did and does. But it is also true that, if we sin, we are not loving him. And so we become separated from him. Love is essentially mutual; it is a two-way process—a bonding. Love is not complete until it is reciprocated on both sides. So God’s love is not perfect, is not fully effective in me until I have opened myself to receive it and to give mine in return. When we sin, God does not stop loving us; it is we who stop loving him. It is we who break the relationship—always.

Does God kill people?
In today’s Gospel, some people approach Jesus and tell him of how some Galileans had been killed by Roman soldiers in the Temple sanctuary. Did they want Jesus, as a Galilean himself, to denounce the Roman authorities? Jesus responds by taking another tack altogether. Instead, he mentions another incident, apparently a sheer accident when a building fell on some purely innocent people and killed many. Jesus asks his questioners:

…do you think that they were worse offenders than all the other people living in Jerusalem?

It is quite common to meet people who believe that such events are acts of punishment by God. Perhaps even more frequently one meets people who ask why a loving God does not prevent such things happening—as if God was a kind of puppet master who rules the world by pulling strings.

When an airplane crashes and everyone is killed, is it because those passengers were more deserving of death? When thousands are killed or made homeless as the result of some terrible natural disaster, an earthquake or a cyclone, are we to read it as an act of punishment for those people or even for the whole country?

Does God love some people more?
Does God love those victims less? Are those who escape such disasters more loved by him? Maybe it is the other way round. Those who died may have been ready to meet their God, while those who survive are being given an opportunity to put things right with their lives. Jesus gives a clear warning:

I tell you, but unless you repent you will all perish just as they did.

‘Repent’ (Greek, metanoia) implies not just regret for the past, but a radical conversion and a complete change in our way of life in responding to and opening ourselves to the love of God.

What Jesus is saying is:

• If I am regarded as very ‘successful’ in my life (e.g. I have money, career or status), it does not at all mean that I am a good person, a person without sin or that God somehow loves me more. Jesus makes that quite clear in the Gospel.
• If I suffer in my life, it does not at all mean that God does not love me or that I am more sinful than others.

In fact, every single experience I have is a sign of God’s love. If I am showered with blessings—spiritual, emotional or material—they are given that I may share them with others, so that I become a channel of God’s love to others. If I am struck down with disaster, disease, pain or failure, it is again a message for me to seek and find there the presence of a loving God. Paradoxically, it is often only through such experiences that we can grow and come closer to God and others. Disease and serious illness can draw out of relatives and friends extraordinary depths of compassion and care. Unhealthy behaviour and material prosperity can often lead to selfishness, individualism and neglect of others. Where there is love, there is God. Where there is no God, one is not likely to find much real loving.

No unconditional guarantees
Jesus is also saying that, just because I am a baptised Christian and call myself ‘Catholic’, it is of itself no guarantee that I will experience salvation and wholeness as a person. In today’s Second Reading, Paul, speaking of the Israelites in the desert with Moses, says:

…[they] were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness.

Having an identity card or passport is no guarantee that I am a good and responsible citizen. Being baptised, even my presence at Mass or my going to Confession is again, of itself, no guarantee that I really love God and love my brothers and sisters. For we know well we can go through these rituals in a very mechanical and meaningless way. After years of attending Mass or ‘going to Confession’ our lives may show little sign of progress in spiritual or interpersonal growth and responsibility. So, if I find myself consistently giving out the same laundry list in Confession or if I don’t go because I have nothing to say, then it may be time for me to ask myself what exactly is happening in my Christian life.

Taking a close look
So today’s readings are asking us to take a good look at ourselves. We are like that fig tree that Jesus speaks of in the parable in today’s Gospel. It is alive but it bears no fruit. It should be cut down. The man responsible for the tree asks the owner to give it one more year. If after that, there is no fruit, it should be cut down.

Every Lenten season is our chance to fertilise our tree and to see how it can be more fruitful. For some reading this, it may indeed be their last year, their last Lent to take care of their tree.

I am being called not merely to survive personally as a Christian, to ‘hang in there’ (just staying out of sin and being in the ‘state of grace’). I am being called to grow continually in being a truly loving person, loving God and loving all those around me.

For instance, let us look at a few examples:

• What kind of influence am I within my family circle?
• In work, how do I relate with my colleagues and is my presence a positive element in our workplace?
• What is my attitude towards strangers, that is, people I do not know and who are not ‘useful’ to me?
• What kind of contribution (apart from giving money and being physically present in church) do I make to the life of the Christian community in that part of the world where I live?
• In general, what kind of contribution could I be said to be making in my society, or do I expect society to satisfy only my needs and those of my immediate family?

Two-way love
On the one hand, I need to realise that God always and everywhere loves me. But that love is only fully completed in me when I become a genuinely loving and caring person, one who loves both God and others in word and action.

There is no need for us ever to be afraid of God. He will never directly punish us or the world around us. But we do have the choice to come closer to him, to experience that love he is reaching out to us, to open ourselves to that love or, like the Prodigal Son, go our own way, separate ourselves from him and wallow in the cesspools of life. The choice is up to us. God’s love is there for the taking. What are we waiting for?

More

Commentary on James 2:1-9

There is some very straight speaking from James today and there will be few of us who will not feel a twinge of conscience as we read or listen.

He begins by reminding us that our faith in, our commitment to Jesus Christ means that all forms of favouritism or discrimination must be removed from our hearts.  God himself shows no favouritism.  “He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous… Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt 5:45-48).

He gives a very practical example in the way that the rich and powerful are treated in contrast with the poor and uneducated.  The scene is the place where Christians meet.  The word used is ‘synagogue’.  James is writing to Jewish Christians so it is possible they may even have still been attending Jewish synagogues, or it may be his word for the Christian ‘assembly’ for liturgical worship.  The word ‘synagogue’ (from the Greek sunagwgh) literally means a place where people gather together.

Two people walk into the Christian assembly at the same time.  One is rich and well-dressed, the other is poor and shabby.  The rich person is treated with a great deal of respect and deference while the poor person is ignored or shoved into a corner.  A very similar situation is described very critically by Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians: “When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s Supper.  For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk… Do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing?… For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgement against themselves” (1 Cor 11:20-21,22,29).  Have we not seen this happen umpteen times?  Have we not done something like that ourselves?  Do we not associate wealth with respectability and poverty with fecklessness and crime?  When we act like this, James asks, are we not practising discrimination and setting ourselves up as judges purely on the basis of external appearance?

James then gives three arguments against our bias towards the materially rich.  The third reason does not appear in our reading.  The three reasons are:

1. the rich persecute the poor – who are specially loved by God;

2. favouritism violates the royal law of love and thus is sin;

3. favouritism will be judged.

From 1, “in God’s eyes are not the poor called blessed” (happy, fortunate)?  They have nothing to give but everything to receive.  They have no sense of self-sufficiency which the rich can sometimes boast of, thinking they are independent.  “‘Lucky man!  You have all the good things you need for many years. Take life easy, eat, drink, and enjoy yourself!’ But God said to him, ‘You fool!  This very night you will have to give up your life; then who will get all these things you have kept for yourself?’” (Luke 12:19-20)  Yet, it is the poor that we look down on and treat so badly.

But Paul told the Christians of Corinth: “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” (1 Cor 1:28-29). It is a fact that the Christian faith originated from people who had no power or status in their society.

The poor, as poor, have nothing to be ashamed of; the rich, as rich, have nothing to boast about.  The poor may be poor materially but they can be rich in faith.  And, of course, in the kind of situation James calls for in this letter, their real needs will be taken care of.

In 2, “Are not the rich oppressing you?” are not those very people we treat with such courtesy, the rich and powerful, the ones who really exploit us?  How come so many of them become rich in the first place?  Often by taking and keeping to themselves what in justice belongs to others.  In the Scripture that is the real definition of a rich person – not just one who has a lot of material wealth, but one who holds on to that surplus wealth while surrounded by many who are denied the most basic needs.

“Do they themselves not haul you off to court?”  They are the people who can afford the big lawyers to crush their opponents and use every legal technicality to avoid punishment for their own most serious and damaging behaviour?

Is it not the rich “who blaspheme the noble name that was invoked over you”?  In the Old Testament the name of Yahweh pronounced over someone dedicated him to the divine protection.

Also from today’s Gospel, it is the poor, the needy, the unjustly deprived who have God’s name over them.  But it is a protection the possessive rich do not recognise, although they are the ones most in a position to give it.

It is for all of us then to observe the “royal law”: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”  It is called ‘royal’ because it is the supreme law that is the source of all

More

Commentary on James 1:19-27 Read Wednesday of Week 6 of Ordinary time – First Reading »

More

Commentaries on Genesis 15:5-12,17-18; Philippians 3:17—4:1; Luke 9:28-36

We are faced in today’s readings with a paradox of our Christian faith—we belong here and we do not belong here. It is in this world and through this world that we are to find our God. Yet, this is not our permanent home; we are pilgrims on a journey to a more permanent dwelling place, a place of total union with our God of Truth and Love. That is the goal of living and we need to keep it constantly before our eyes. It is so easy to get obsessed with things on the way: our career, our financial security, the education of our children, the house we want in some desirable area or other needs or luxuries. These are mere stepping stones to a life beyond. We must not, like Lot’s wife, look back nostalgically at the past and become petrified into stone.

Life, as one writer put it, is like watching a movie in a cinema. One cannot cry out: “Stop! I want to stay in this scene!” No, the movie goes on. And life goes on. And it is important to know where it is headed. Both the First Reading and the Gospel speak of striking interventions by God in people’s lives. Let us take the Gospel first.

A moment of truth
Luke today gives the story of the Transfiguration, a story that can be found also in Mark and Matthew. It is important to be aware of where it comes in the Gospel account.

Just before this, Peter, in the name of his fellow-disciples, had made the dramatic acknowledgement that Jesus, their teacher, was the Messiah, the Christ, the Saviour King expected by Israel. It must have been an awesome and heady moment for them all to realise that they, among all their fellow-countrymen, should be privileged to be his chosen companions. One can imagine how they began to have visions of power and glory because of this relationship (not altogether unlike rebels on the run who suddenly find their leader is now president of the country).

But almost immediately afterwards, they are brought very rudely down to earth. Jesus begins to instruct them about what it will mean to be companions of the Messiah. There will be no great palaces; there will be no prestigious offices. On the contrary, things will from that very moment seem to go very wrong. The Messiah, their Jesus, will become a hunted figure, hunted not by foreigners, but by the rulers of his own people. He will be arrested, tried, tortured and eventually executed.

This was not the expected scenario for the Messiah’s appearance on the world’s stage and it quite clearly left the disciples in a state of shock and total incomprehension. It just did not make sense and Peter, surely reflecting the feelings of his companions, objected strongly. In return, he got a good scolding:

Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things. (Mark 8:33)

A privileged experience
It is in this context that the scene in today’s Gospel takes place. Three of Jesus’ most intimate disciples are brought to “the mountain”. We do not know which mountain, but in general, mountains in Scripture are holy places, places where God is especially felt to be present. Although traditionally Mount Tabor is identified as the mountain in question, it really does not matter. Here Peter, James and John have an experience of Jesus totally transformed in his appearance. The light of God shines through him.

Suddenly he is accompanied by Moses and Elijah, two pillars of the Hebrew Testament, representing the Law and the Prophets, the whole Jewish tradition. Luke says they spoke with Jesus of his coming experiences in Jerusalem. What is obviously implied is that Moses and Elijah fully recognised what would happen to Jesus as totally in conformity with the tradition they represented.

The disciples, however, are still not fully understanding what is happening; they were “weighed down with sleep” (as they would be later in the Garden), but just managed to keep awake (which they failed to do in the Garden). Note that their sleep is paralleled by the experience of Abram in the First Reading.

As Moses and Elijah seemed to go away, Peter—impetuous as ever—blurted out:

Master, it is good for us to be here; let us set up three tents [‘shrines’]: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah…

The Gospel comments that Peter did not know what he was saying. Clearly, this scene was not for keeps. It was wonderful for them to be there, but there was another world, another reality awaiting their Master—and them also.

Then, even as Peter spoke, a cloud came and covered them with a shadow and the disciples “were terrified as they entered the cloud”. Naturally! This was no morning mist. They recognised the cloud immediately as the close presence of God himself. And they heard God speak from the cloud:

This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!

First, there was the support of Moses and Elijah and now Jesus gets the solemn endorsement of the Father himself!

Listen!
“Listen to him”—they are being told to remember the words Jesus just told them about the Messiah, who would be rejected, suffer and die shamefully. If they cannot understand and accept those words, they do not know the real Jesus, then they cannot be his disciples. As Jesus will say later:

Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies it bears much fruit. (John 12:24)

The suffering and death of Jesus are the seeds of new life for all of us.

After the “voice” had spoken, they found themselves with Jesus alone, the same ‘ordinary’ Jesus they always knew. But they kept silent. They had nothing to say, but much still to learn and to understand about the Person and the Way of Jesus. What they needed was the gift of faith and total trust in Jesus and in God.

Abram’s experience
There are some parallels in the experience of Abram. Abram (later to be called Abraham) had been asked to leave his homeland and to go and live in a strange place. If he did so, he was promised a great future for his family and descendants. Without any further guarantees, Abram sets out. His readiness to put his trust in God’s word became legendary in the tradition of Israel and is echoed again in the New Testament. We are told that Abram:

…believed the Lord, and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.

That is, Abram was ‘put right’ with God.

But although ready to do what God asked of him, Abram asked for some confirmation. He was told to make an offering of some animals and to cut the animals in half, putting one half on each side. At sunset, as Abram fell into a deep sleep and as the sun set and darkness came on, a blazing furnace and a firebrand (signs of God’s presence) came between the divided offerings. From this experience Abram knew his trust in God was justified. He never lived to see the day when his descendants were as numerous as the stars, but if only he could see now how his God is worshipped “from the rising of the sun to its setting” (Third Eucharistic Prayer) by countless people in every corner of our planet!

Our transfiguration
There is still one thing we need to consider and that is how these Lenten readings are to touch our own lives. The key linking the First Reading and the Gospel is a passage from the Letter to the Philippians in the Second Reading. The transformation or transfiguration of Jesus that the disciples experienced was not simply something they were to see and experience as happening to him alone. It was also an invitation for them to undergo a transformation and transfiguration of their own.

Paul says in today’s reading:

…our citizenship is in heaven…

The goal and destination of our life is to be one with God; there is no other goal.

And, Paul continues:

…it is from there [i.e. heaven, meaning from God] that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.

How is that transformation or transfiguration to take place? It is possible if we listen to Jesus and cooperate with all that he invites us to be and to do, however much it may seem to go against the conventions we were brought up on. It means especially listening to those words which caused such difficulty for Peter and his companions and integrating them into our own vision of life. It means having a total trust in walking his Way, a total trust that only his Way brings us into full union with God, the source of all Truth, Love, Happiness and Peace.

More

Commentary on Jeremiah 17:5-8; 1 Corinthians 15:12,16-20; Luke 6:17,20-26

Today’s Gospel says:

Blessed are you who are poor…But woe to you who are rich…

Maybe in church this is very nice to hear, but is it a practical teaching in the real world? The Gospel says that many people from many places came to hear Jesus preach. But these words, we are told, though clearly relevant to all, were meant especially for Jesus’ disciples. Who are his disciples? They are those who have identified themselves fully with Jesus’ mission, with his vision of life. They are those who believe in him, who listen to him, and follow him.

What Jesus says in Luke’s Gospel today is similar to Matthew’s eight beatitudes. When we first hear them they seem like a contradiction: the poor are happy; the rich are to be condemned. Does not the Church always condemn the world’s poverty? And our societies always say that to make a lot of money is the sure sign of a successful life.

A matter of the Kingdom
If we want to understand Jesus’ words, we need to know he is speaking of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom is the society that Jesus wants to establish—and not just in some future life. (Matthew’s term ‘kingdom of heaven’ can be misleading in this context.)

When Jesus was beginning his public life, he announced his mission in the synagogue at Nazareth:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to set free those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 4:18-19)

In the Kingdom, for the poor and the hungry there is only good news, because they enter a society which will protect and care for them. We have still a long way to go in making that Kingdom a reality.

Why so hard on the rich?
On the other hand, it is “woe to you who are rich”. Why? Perhaps the answer is in the First Reading from the prophet Jeremiah:

Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals
and make mere flesh their strength,
whose hearts turn away from the Lord.

The rich sometimes feel they are very independent, that they can use their money to control and manipulate others, and they do not need God. If they pray, it is to ask him to help them earn even more money, or to protect the riches they have amassed, or even to console a lonely God—remember the Pharisee praying in the Temple, saying “Thank God I am not like the rest of men.”

On the contrary, Jeremiah says today:

Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
in the year of drought it is not anxious,
and it does not cease to bear fruit.

Neither rich nor poor
In fact, in the Kingdom, there is really no place for either rich or poor. To be a rich person means that one has more than others—more than one needs and some of what one has belongs to those in need. To be poor means one does not have enough to eat or wear; one does not have a place to live and in general one’s life is lacking in proper human dignity. In the Kingdom, there can be no rich or poor in this sense, because those who have more will share with those who do not have enough.

It is not just a question of ‘charity’, but one of justice, each one having what is properly due to him. In ‘charity’ I give what I can easily spare; in justice I share what I have. It is not just a matter of pity for the poor, but of seeing them as truly brothers and sisters and sharing with them.

The bottom line is not poverty or wealth, but where we put our security. That is the meaning of the First Reading. Do I put my security in what I have or in an interdependent community where each supports the other and thus all are taken care of? This is the ideal, the vision of the Kingdom; it is the mission of the Church. It is the responsibility of every disciple of Jesus. If we can implement this, everyone will be able to enjoy the happiness of the Kingdom—not only in some future life, but in this world and in this society.