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Commentary on John 11:19-27 and Luke 10:38-42

There is a choice of Gospel readings for today’s Memorial, each one featuring Martha and Mary and one focused around the death of Lazarus.

The first is from Luke’s gospel and describes an occasion when Jesus went to visit the family’s house in Bethany. It was not far from Jerusalem and it seems that Jesus was a regular visitor there. On this occasion we are told that Mary was sitting at the feet of Jesus and listening to him. Martha, on the other hand, was fussing about in the kitchen getting the meal ready. After a while, Martha complained (perhaps there was there a slight hint of jealousy and resentment here) that her sister was leaving all the work to her. “Tell her to help me.”

Jesus replied:

Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing…Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.

Jesus had said elsewhere that his followers should not be anxious or worried:

Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides.

As Fr Anthony de Mello used to say: “Why worry? If you worry, you will die. If you don’t worry, you will die. So why worry?” Martha gives the impression that Mary is just sitting there doing nothing. But, in fact, she is listening to Jesus, listening to the Word of God.

Many of us are very busy, run off our feet from dawn to dusk. But what are we busy about? What was Martha busy about? We need to stop and listen, as Mary did. Busy-ness is not a virtue. The important thing is to be active about the right things. And to know what is the right thing to do, we have to stop and listen.

The alternative Gospel reading is from John. It is story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead. Lazarus was the brother of Mary and Martha. Jesus had been told some days before that Lazarus was seriously ill but did not immediately respond. By the time Jesus reached Bethany, Lazarus was already dead for four days.

When the sisters heard that Jesus had arrived, Martha, typically, rushed out to greet him while Mary stayed mourning in the house. As soon as she saw Jesus she told him that if Jesus had been there earlier, Lazarus would not have died. But she was confident that any prayer Jesus would make to his Father would be answered.

Jesus said to her:

“Your brother will rise.

Replied Martha, expressing her faith in a future life:

Yes, I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.

In so speaking she draws from Jesus one of the great sayings of John’s gospel:

I AM the Resurrection and the Life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?

In other words, those who believe in Jesus as Lord and follow his Way immediately enter a life that will never end, although the body, of course, will pass away.

This, in turn, draws a great profession of faith from Martha:

Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.

It is a statement on a par with that of Peter at Caesarea Philippi earlier on.

And that, of course, is what this whole chapter is about. Jesus, the Son of God, as the Source of Life. It is also a preparation for Jesus’ own death from which he will rise in glory and be reunited with his Father. The same future is promised to us.

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Commentary on Matthew 10:34 – 11:1 Read Monday of Week 15 of Ordinary Time – Gospel »

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Commentary on Matthew 8:28-34

Matthew’s version of this strange story is quite different from and much shorter than Mark’s. It is usual for Matthew to pare down stories to just the essential details, while Mark tends to give a more dramatic presentation. In Matthew’s version, too, there are two possessed people instead of just one (similarly in his version of the Bartimaeus story told by Mark (see 10:46), Matthew (20:29) has two blind men.)

In the previous story about the calming of the storm, we saw that Jesus and disciples were crossing the lake. They now come to their destination, a place known as the Gadarenes. It got its name from the town of Gadara on the south-east side of the lake.

Here Jesus was met by two people possessed by demons who completely controlled them. Unlike many of the ordinary people, the demons in these two men have an insight into Jesus’ identity although they may not recognise it fully. “What do you want with us, Son of God?” Jesus usually refers to himself as Son of Man and never as Son of God. “Have you come here to torture us before the time?”

There was a belief that demons would be free to roam the earth until the Judgment Day came. They did this by taking possession of people. This possession was often associated with disease, because disease was the consequence of sin and a sign of being in Satan’s power. That is why when Jesus expels a demon there is often a cure as well. By driving out these spirits, Jesus inaugurates the Messianic age which many of the people do not recognise, but which the demons do. Later Jesus will hand over this exorcising power together with the ability to effect cures to his disciples. We will see that in the discourse in chapter 10.

The demons then begged Jesus to let them go into a nearby herd of pigs. Jesus consented to this. As soon as they had entered the pigs, the whole herd rushed headlong over a cliff and into the water below. The swineherds rushed off to the nearest town to tell what had happened.

The townspeople immediately came out in search of Jesus and, not surprisingly, begged him to go somewhere else. It might seem rather high-handed of Jesus to destroy a whole herd of pigs in this way. We have to remember, however, that in Jewish eyes these pigs were abominably unclean. There was not a better place to put demons, and it was they who really brought about the destruction of the animals. But understandably, the owners of the pigs found it difficult to see things in the same way.

The purpose of the story, of course, is to focus on Jesus’ power to liberate people from evil influences which were destroying their lives. What these men were suffering could not be compared to the loss of the pigs’ lives and the pigs would have ended up in a cooking pot anyway!

We, too, need to ask Jesus to liberate us from any evil influences or addictions which enslave us and prevent us from being the kind of persons he wants us to be.

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Commentary on Matthew 8:5-17 Read Saturday of Week 12 of Ordinary Time – Gospel »

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Commentary on Matthew 8:1-4 Read Friday of Week 12 of Ordinary Time – Gospel »

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Commentary on Matthew 7:21-29

We come today to the final reading from the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus spells out the essential quality of the true disciple. He or she is not to be measured merely by external activities. It is not enough, for instance, to keep saying “Lord, Lord…” That by itself will not bring a person under the kingship of God. It will not be enough even to be able to perform wonders like casting out demons or working other miracles even in the name of Jesus. The true disciple is someone who is totally united to God in heart, soul and mind. Such a person is one who listens to Jesus’ words and carries them out. As we have said elsewhere, listening here means a number of things:

When we have fully assimilated as part of our own thinking what we have heard and understood, we will naturally act accordingly. It is only when all this becomes a reality in our lives that we can say we are truly disciples of Jesus and, as he says, that is the only sure foundation on which to build our lives.

To live a Christian life only on the surface, that is, only with words and externally conforming behaviour, is like building a house on sand. Once we come under attack, we will collapse because we have no deep foundation inside. We see that happening frequently when people who have lived in an outwardly Christian environment move to a purely secular situation – they fall away very quickly.

So let us be like that sensible man who builds his house on rock, the firm foundation that is Christ with the vision of Christ also the vision of our own life, a life built on truth and love. With this we come to the end of the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew clearly indicates the end by saying, “Jesus had now finished what he wanted to say..” He adds that Jesus’ teaching made a deep impression on the people, mainly because he spoke with authority – “You have heard it said, but I say…”. That is, he spoke in his own name, unlike the Scribes who could only be interpreters of God’s Law.

As mentioned at the beginning, the Sermon on the Mount is the first of five major discourses. It deals mainly with the qualities that are to be found in the individual follower of Christ. Let us pray that those qualities may be found increasingly in each one of us.

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Commentary on Matthew 7:1-5 Read Monday of Week 12 of Ordinary Time – Gospel »

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The beautiful and insightful Living Space scriptural commentaries were originally written by Father Frank Doyle, SJ. Prior to his death in 2011, he wrote over 1500 of these inspirational reflections, covering almost every day of the liturgical year. Sadly, within our current liturgical Year A, the Sundays of Week 11 through 13 of Ordinary Time lack commentaries. However, the commentaries for the daily Mass readings during those weeks are available, and the Sunday scriptural commentaries will begin again on Sunday of Week 14 of Ordinary Time.

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Commentary on Matthew 5:1-12

Today we begin reading from Matthew’s Gospel and will continue to do so for several weeks to come. We begin with chapter 5 and the Sermon on the Mount.

In reading Matthew’s Gospel, we need to remember that it was directed primarily at a readership with a Jewish background, and in this it differs greatly from Mark. One of Matthew’s aims is to present Jesus as the new Moses, transcending, but not putting aside the law given to the Israelites by the first Moses. And, as the law of Moses is contained in what we call the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible), the law or teaching of Jesus is presented uniquely in this Gospel by five long discourses.

The first of these is the Sermon on the Mount and it consists mainly of the qualities which are expected of a follower of the new Law, and the new Moses – Jesus. It begins with what we call the Eight Beatitudes. It could be said that these have been greatly under-rated in the life of the Christian churches, Catholic and otherwise. Most people tend to see the centre of Christian living in the Ten Commandments, and yet they really belong to the Hebrew (Old) Testament, they are part of that Law which the coming of Jesus did not nullify, but transcended. They are, of course, still valid as moral guidelines but, in many ways, they fall far short of the expectations presented by Jesus in the Beatitudes.

It would seem, in fact, that Matthew is presenting the Beatitudes as taking over the role of the Commandments, and this is indicated by the prominent place they have in forming the opening of the first discourse. They are, as it were, a manifesto of Jesus’ message and his call to see the world in his way. They express the necessary attitudes of those who belong to the Kingdom. Those who have these attitudes already have entered that Kingdom.

Perhaps a few words about the ‘Kingdom’ are in order. In many ways, Matthew’s Gospel can be called ‘a Gospel of the Kingdom’. The phrase that Matthew consistently uses, however, is ‘Kingdom of heaven’. For many people this can be misleading because it causes them to think that Jesus is talking about the next life, our life in ‘heaven’. So that the Beatitudes are interpreted as conditions to be observed by those who want to go to heaven after they die.

This may be a serious misreading of the text. Matthew uses the term ‘kingdom of heaven’ because, mindful of the Jewish background of his readers, he does not like to mention the name of God directly. He uses other circumlocutions in the course of his Gospel to get around using God’s name. As when he has Jesus say:

If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them…

By using the passive in the second half of the statement, he avoids mentioning the Doer, God. The other Gospels have no hesitation in talking about the ‘Kingdom of God’, and it is important to understand that is also what Matthew means.

What is this kingdom? It is not a place. The Greek word, basileia, is an abstract word which means ‘kingship’ or ‘reign’ rather than ‘kingdom’, which suggests a territory. ‘Kingship’ or ‘reign’, on the contrary, suggests power. To belong to the Kingdom or Kingship of God, then, is to put oneself fully, consciously and deliberately under the power of God – to experience that power and be empowered by it. That power is above all the power of agape – love.

When we say in the Lord’s Prayer, “Your Kingdom come”, we are not talking about a future life after death, but praying that people everywhere put themselves under the loving power of God in the here and now. That is made clear by the petition immediately following: “Your will be done on earth…” Our first call as Christians is to belong to, to enter that Kingdom, and not just to be a member of the Church.

The Church is, in so far as it is faithful to the call of Christ, part of the Kingdom, but the Kingdom extends far beyond the membership of the Church. The Church is, as it were, the sacrament or visible sign of the Kingdom. There are many examples in our present time of people, who are not even Christian, who are very much full of the spirit of the Kingdom, more so, perhaps than many who are baptised. An example from the past is Mahatma Gandhi, who was particularly fond of the Beatitudes and identified with them.

Today’s text begins with Jesus seeing the crowds and going up a hill. Moses, too, delivered God’s law from an elevated place, Mount Sinai. In neither case can we identify the actual mountain or hill, although traditionally, of course, there is a hill in near the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee that has been called the Mount of the Beatitudes.

In the traditional way of a teacher, Jesus sits down to teach. We see him doing the same in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4:20). He is joined by his disciples, and it is not clear whether they were the primary object of his teaching, or that the crowds were also included. The teaching, of course, is directed to followers and, in particular, to those reading the Gospel.

Jesus begins the discourse with the wonderful words of the Beatitudes. There are eight of them, each one beginning with the words, “Blessed are those…” ‘Blessed is also translated as ‘Happy’ and is from the Greek adjective makarios which includes not only the idea of happiness, but also of good fortune, of being specially blessed. So we can also translate it as “Happy are those…” or “Fortunate are those…” It is important to realise that being a follower of Christ is intended to be a source of deep happiness and a realisation that one is truly fortunate to have discovered this vision of life.

At a first reading, the Beatitudes seem to fly in the face of commonly accepted ideals of the good life. It takes a deeper reading to see their inner truth.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
The Gospel in general shows great concern for the poor, that is, all those people who are deprived of what they rightfully need to lead a life of decent dignity. Why should the poor be particularly blessed? As people living in deprivation, obviously they are not. But in terms of the Kingdom, they are blessed because in the Kingdom, where love, compassion and justice prevail, there is no place for such inequality. The Kingdom is an environment of interlocking relationships where people take care of each other, and where the resources of all are shared according to the needs of all. The Kingdom is a place of blessings and happiness for the poor because it spells the end of their poverty. The poor are the “little ones” that Jesus speaks about as qualification for entering the Kingdom. They are the “last” who will be first. And, while ‘poverty’ in a wider sense can be applied to all, Jesus is thinking especially of the material simplicity that he expects from his disciples, a poverty which he himself experienced with “nowhere to lay his head”. Wealth can only mean depriving the needy of what they should have.

Matthew is unique in using the term “poor in spirit”. It is a significant addition. While the Gospel in speaking of the poor is mainly and rightly concerned with the materially poor, Matthew’s phrase can broaden the concept. Because, in reality, there are many other ways in which people can be deprived and regarded as poor. We are more sensitive to this in our own day with our deeper insights into psychological and sociological factors. People can, although materially well-off, be literally poor in spirit. That is, they have little spirit, very little happiness, lives of full of stress and anxiety and anger and resentment. These are all the result of our highly competitive, each-person-for-himself society which is everything that the Kingdom is not. Taken in that sense, the Beatitude applies to a very large number of people.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
The word “meek” is variously translated as ‘gentle’, ‘lowly’, ‘humble’. The Greek word comes from the noun prautes. The beatitude is reminiscent of a phrase in Psalm 37:

But the meek shall inherit the land
and delight themselves in abundant prosperity. (Ps 37:11)

Perhaps ‘gentle’ is the better rendering. It suggests someone who is kind and caring and not particularly assertive and dominating. In our rough and tumble society, such people normally get pushed aside and can thus be classed among the ‘lowly’ and the ‘humble’.  But they are not necessarily ‘meek’, which suggests people who allow themselves to be trampled on. Rather, they belong to those who subscribe to active non-violence. That is, they will never resort to any form of violent behaviour to achieve their goals, but they are active and pro-active, not passive – or meek. We might think of a person like Martin Luther King. To be ‘gentle’ in this sense requires a great inner strength and, of course, in the Kingdom there is a very desirable need for such people. It is there that they will come into their own.

In some texts this Beatitude is interchanged with the following and sometimes it is presented as an addition to the first about the “poor in spirit” where ‘gentle’ is understood as ‘lowly’. In this case there would only be seven Beatitudes, a more biblical number.

Blessed (Happy) are those who mourn, for they will be comforted
Mourning and happiness would seem to be contradictory to each other. It does not say what the mourning might be about. It could be the death of a family member or a loved one, but it could be something quite different altogether.

Again we have to see the beatitude in the context of the Kingdom. There, those who mourn – for whatever reason – can be sure of experiencing the comfort and support of their brothers and sisters. That is something that they cannot be always sure of in a world where people are too busy taking care of their own immediate interests. Mourning by itself is never a happy experience, but it can become a blessing when surrounded by the right people as their love and concern are poured out.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled
‘What is right’, ‘what is just’? Justice is done when each person is accorded what ‘belongs’ to them. A just world is a world of right relationships; in the Kingdom that is realised. And so, those who truly hunger and thirst to see justice done in our world for every single person will see their dreams and hopes come to fruition.

It is a hunger and thirst which everyone of us should pray to have. Only when we all have that hunger and thirst will justice be achieved and the Kingdom become a reality. We have made progress over the years, but we still have a long, long way to go.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy
Mercy, compassion, the ability to forgive fully. The Kingdom is a world full of mercy and forgiveness. And just as we will be ready to forgive others, we will find that others will be ready to forgive us when we fail in our responsibilities towards others. In the Lord’s Prayer, which is a prayer of the Kingdom, this is what we ask for:

Forgive us our sins because we forgive the sins of those who have offended us.

In fact, it is impossible for those who belong to the Kingdom to be offended, and forgiveness comes easily to them. That does not mean, of course, that we condone every wrong. The question of justice always remains. But condemning wrong does not exclude healing wounds caused by the hurt which wrongdoing causes. And mercy understood as compassion is a particularly desirable quality in a Kingdom person. Such a person not only experiences pity for those who suffer, but knows how to enter into and empathise with what they are going through. This was a quality found again and again in Jesus himself.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God
‘Pure’ here is not referring primarily to sexual purity. The pure in heart are those whose vision is totally free of any distortion or prejudice. They see things exactly as they are. As a result, they have little difficulty in recognising the presence and the action of God in the people and the environment around them. This purity of heart, this ability to be able to see with perfect clarity, is truly a gift. It requires a high level of integrity on our part, but the rewards are enormous.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God
Surely one of the most beautiful of the beatitudes and the one we would all love to have applied to ourselves. In a world so full of divisions and conflicts of all kinds, the role of the peacemaker is so much needed. It is something we can all do, starting in our own homes, then in our working places and the wider society. It is something we can do as individuals and in groups, as parishes and churches. And, how true that, as peacemakers, we can be called “children of God”! The Letter to the Ephesians speaks beautifully of Jesus as making peace, breaking down walls between people, by his death on the cross (see Eph 2:14).

Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven
Most people would hardly regard being persecuted, which could involve prison, torture and death, as a source of blessedness in the context of ‘happiness’. But it is not the persecution that triggers the happiness, it is the reason why it is willingly undergone.

Right from the beginnings of the Church, as described in the Acts of the Apostles, Christians rejoiced to be found worthy to suffer with and like their Lord in the proclamation of his message and way of life. That way of life was so precious to them, such a source of meaning, that they were more than willing to give their lives to defend it.

In prison, they sang songs and prayed, as did many civil rights leaders of our recent past (most of them committed Christians) in the United States who would sing “We shall overcome” as they rode the paddy wagons to jail. It is a much more painful experience to compromise with our deepest convictions in order to avoid criticism or physical suffering. They are indeed, as Jesus says, the successors to the great prophets of the Hebrew Testament. Truly happy are those, who with integrity, can stand by their convictions whatever the cost.

Some people have seen in these Beatitudes a portrait of Jesus himself, and certainly The Beatitudes should be the portrait of every Christian and of every Kingdom person. They are the charter people everywhere (and not just Christians) are called to follow. They go far beyond what is demanded of in the Ten Commandments. The Commandments are not so difficult to follow and, in so far as several of them are expressed in the negative (‘Thou shalt not…’), they can be observed by doing nothing! There is no way, however, that people can ever say they observe any Beatitude to the fullest. They always call us to a further and higher level.

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Commentary on Mark 12:38-44

We come today to the end of our readings from Mark’s gospel. We stop just on the threshold of prophecies about the end of Jerusalem and the final coming of Jesus and the story of his passion and resurrection. There are two related passages today serving as entry points for this last phase of Jesus’ life and mission among us.

First, Jesus hits out at some of the scribes, the expert interpreters of the law. As such, they feel that they are expected to be perfect models of that law down to its smallest details. Jesus says they go around in long, flowing robes (the working poor could not afford to dress like that) and that:

…they expect to be “greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets!

Sadly, such behaviour, we have to confess, is still not unknown among Christian clergy and other religious leaders.

At the same time, Jesus says, these leaders were rapacious hypocrites. They did not hesitate to “devour widows’ houses” while, at the same time, making a show of lengthy prayers. They were the opposite of everything that Jesus was proposing as the way to love and serve God. They emphasised the external appearance rather than the inner spirit; they were concerned about being served rather than serving others; they thought only of what they could get through their privileged position rather than what they could share, especially with those in need.

Jesus warns that, precisely because of their greater knowledge of the law, their responsibilities in not keeping its real spirit will be all the greater – to whom more is given more is expected.

The mention of widows leads on to the second part of the reading. Jesus was sitting facing the treasury of the Temple and watching the people putting in their offerings. A poor widow – and at the time, widows were almost by definition poor and, because they could no longer produce children, regarded practically as non-persons – rejected by their husband’s family. They were often reduced to poverty. Yet, it is a poor widow who approaches the treasury box and drops in two coins of negligible value.

Jesus draws the attention of his disciples who were with him and points out that the poor woman had put in more than all the others combined. They were contributing what they could easily spare while she put in her whole livelihood. It was an act of total trust in God’s providence and care for her.

It has been pointed out that she put in two coins. In other words, given her situation and under the law, she would have been more than justified in putting in just one. Compare her to the rich man who could not part with his wealth to follow Jesus.

It has also been pointed out that this anonymous woman is, in a way, a symbol of Jesus himself. He also will “empty himself”, give away everything, including his life, out of love for his Father and for us. It seems no accident that the story is placed just here as Jesus enters on his final days.

Today’s two incidents both provide matter for us to reflect on. Do we wear our Christianity just on our sleeve? Do we tend to assert our “rights” over others and expect due deference from them e.g. in our working place? How much of what we have are we willing to share with others? Let us pray as St Ignatius prayed:

Teach us, Lord, to be generous.