Friday in the 28th Week in Ordinary Time, October 18, 2024

2 Timothy 4, 10-17

Beloved: Demas, enamored of the present world, deserted me and went to Thessalonica, Crescens to Galatia, and Titus to Dalmatia. Luke is the only one with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is helpful to me in the ministry. I have sent Tychicus to Ephesus. When you come, bring the cloak I left with Carpus in Troas, the papyrus rolls, and especially the parchments. Alexander the coppersmith did me a great deal of harm; the Lord will repay him according to his deeds. You too be on guard against him, for he has strongly resisted our preaching.  At my first defense no one appeared on my behalf, but everyone deserted me. May it not be held against them! But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the proclamation might be completed and all the Gentiles might hear it.

St. Luke is thought to have been born in Roman-occupied Syria at about the same time St. Paul was born in Tarsus.  Luke must have come from a well-to-do family because he received a good education, as is evidenced by the very correct Greek of his Gospel and his interest in history.  Paul calls him “the beloved physician” in Colossians 4, 14, so his father might well have practiced medicine, leading him to follow in his footsteps.  Born and raised a Gentile, Luke became a Christian around the time that St. Peter was preaching in Antioch, his hometown.  He became associated with the Apostles after that, and especially with other early converts such as St. Barnabas and St. Mark.  When St. Paul began his missions outside Israel, Luke went with him.  He wrote his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles during this time.  After Paul was beheaded in Rome, Luke continued to preach in Greek-speaking lands.  He is believed to have died in the city of Thebes.

His Gospel is very deliberately aimed at a Gentile-Christian audience, having as its stated purpose the fortifying of the faith of these early believers.  These folks had a great interest in portents, and so Luke spends much time on the beginnings of the lives of John the Baptist and the Lord Jesus.  Because the people for whom he was writing also came from a culture that appreciated Plato’s Dialogues, he included very many of the Lord’s parables, especially the longer ones.  Luke also paid great attention to getting the chronology of the Lord’s life right.  He says himself in his prologue to his Gospel that he had studied earlier accounts of the life of the Lord in preparing to write his own.  Doing so, he would have noticed how the Jewish Christians tended to write their “lives of Christ” according to topic rather than according to the preferred Greek method of correct chronology.  We find this very pronounced in St. Matthew’s Gospel, for instance.  Putting the words and deeds of the Lord Jesus in order and in good Greek would have gone far to captivate his readers and to lead them to a greater devotion to the Lord.

It is very much worthwhile sitting down and reading the Gospel of St. Luke straight through.  It would only take a couple of hours and this is a small price to pay for what we will experience in reading it.

 Thursday in the 28th Week of Ordinary Time, October 17, 2024

Luke 11, 47-54

The Lord said: “Woe to you who build the memorials of the prophets whom your fathers killed. Consequently, you bear witness and give consent to the deeds of your ancestors, for they killed them and you do the building. Therefore, the wisdom of God said, ‘I will send to them prophets and Apostles; some of them they will kill and persecute’ in order that this generation might be charged with the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah who died between the altar and the temple building. Yes, I tell you, this generation will be charged with their blood! Woe to you, scholars of the law! You have taken away the key of knowledge. You yourselves did not enter and you stopped those trying to enter.” When Jesus left, the scribes and Pharisees began to act with hostility toward him and to interrogate him about many things, for they were plotting to catch him at something he might say.

A tomb was cut into the rock on the side of the Mount of Olives.  To enter it, a person descends a staircase also cut from the rock.  The burial chamber itself contained thirty-eight niches where the remains of the deceased were laid.  According to custom, once the bodies had sufficiently decayed, the remaining bones would then be placed in a stone jar called an ossuary, and this would be placed in another part of the tomb.  The niche could then be reused.  This particular tomb is called The Tomb of the Prophets, and was the burial place of the three last Jewish Prophets: Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.  They had originally been buried elsewhere in less significant tombs, but the Jews, around the time of Jesus, constructed this new, much grander tomb just outside Jerusalem, and then moved the remains of the Prophets there.  Subsequently, other Jews and, later, Christians, were also buried there.  The site can be visited today.  Also at that time and near Jerusalem there existed the tomb of the Prophet Isaiah (now part of a mosque) and that of Jeremiah.  These tombs are the “memorials” of the Prophets which Jesus mentions in today’s Gospel Reading.

“Woe to you who build the memorials of the prophets whom your fathers killed.”  The Lord does not condemn the construction of these tombs but rather the identity of those who were financing and carrying out their construction, for although they themselves had not killed the Prophets, they bore witness and gave consent to the deeds of their ancestors.  They did this through their refusal to denounce their ancestors for their crimes and to build the tombs not out of remorse and grief but out of family pride.  In fact, they wanted both to be known as belonging to the illustrious families of old, who had killed the Prophets, but also as those who honored in death these same Prophets.  The Lord Jesus shows that the killing and the building of the tombs is practically the same action: “They killed them and you do the building.”  They do not go about in torn clothing and covered with ashes, but with their heads held high.

“I will send to them Prophets and Apostles.”  Even knowing that the murderers of the Prophets and their descendants would kill all the Prophets and Apostles sent to them, God continues to send them so that either they would convert or that they could not complain on the day of judgment that they had not been accorded enough chances to convert.  The Lord Jesus shows that the Father does this in the Parable of the Wedding Feast: “Again he sent other servants, more than the former; and they did to them in like manner” (Matthew 21, 36).  Jesus shows that he does this as well in all the opportunities given to Judas at the Last Supper and even in the Garden of Gethsemane to repent.

“Yes, I tell you.”  The Lord Jesus makes a solemn declaration with these words: this indeed will happen. “This generation will be charged with their blood!”  The Lord charges these builders of the tombs of the Prophets with the murders committed by their fathers because they did not repudiate their crimes.  To be fair, the Lord demands that they essentially cut themselves off from their heritage in doing this, but, by far, “it is better for you that one of thy bodily members should perish, rather than your whole body be cast into hell” (Matthew 5, 29).   The Lord teaches us to hate evil no matter who commits it and to have nothing to do with it, whatever we must do.  

“The scribes and Pharisees began to act with hostility toward him and to interrogate him about many things, for they were plotting to catch him at something he might say.”  The scribes and Pharisees cannot endure the idea that they must repent of anything and so they attack the one who points out their sins and tells them what they already knew, that those with sin cannot be saved.  In the end, their pride would keep them out of heaven.

 Wednesday in the 28th Week of Ordinary Time, October 16, 2021

Luke 11, 42-46

The Lord said: “Woe to you Pharisees! You pay tithes of mint and of rue and of every garden herb, but you pay no attention to judgment and to love for God. These you should have done, without overlooking the others. Woe to you Pharisees! You love the seat of honor in synagogues and greetings in marketplaces. Woe to you! You are like unseen graves over which people unknowingly walk.”  Then one of the scholars of the law said to him in reply, “Teacher, by saying this you are insulting us too.” And he said, “Woe also to you scholars of the law! You impose on people burdens hard to carry, but you yourselves do not lift one finger to touch them.”

“You pay tithes of mint and of rue and of every garden herb.”  In Leviticus 27, 30-32 and Deuteronomy 14, 22-29, the Law commanded the Israelites to tithe — to give up a tenth — certain kinds of produce, but this did not include “of mint and of rue and of every garden herb”.  This is an example of how the Pharisees went beyond the Law in their zeal to obey it.  We see other examples of this in their overly restrictive interpretation of what could and could not be done on the Sabbath and on their insistence that all Jews had to follow the purification laws that the Law only applied to the priests on duty in the Temple.  The Lord concedes the tithing of these little things (“These you should have done”) in order to make his point (“without overlooking the others” — judgment and love for God).  Jesus is accusing the Pharisees of loving their interpretation of the Law while ignoring justice and of not loving God — the God who gave the Law.

“Woe to you Pharisees!”  The Lord delivers these words twice on this occasion, according to St. Luke.  The Lord is using a Hebrew literary device to employ emphasis.  The Greek word translated as “woe” can also be translated as “alas”, implying that the Lord Jesus already foresees their doom.  “You are like unseen graves over which people unknowingly walk.”  Walking over a grave caused a person to become ritually unclean, to the Jewish understanding.  An unclean grave was an especial peril because a person would not realize his condition and so wind up breaking other laws.  By characterizing the Pharisees as “unseen graves”, Jesus is teaching that not only do they not help others to live according to the Law, but insidiously they cause people to break the Law.

“Teacher, by saying this you are insulting us too.”  This scholar of the Law was not telling Jesus something he did not know, for most of these scholars were Pharisees, but rather is offering support to the Pharisees whom Jesus had accused of godlessness.  The Lord now turns to these: “You impose on people burdens hard to carry, but you yourselves do not lift one finger to touch them.”  In their obsession with the Law, they had completely put out of their minds its Giver and the reason for the Law in the first place, which was to enable the people to serve their God.  

With their rulings and interpretations the Pharisees and the scholars of the Law had made the Law an obstacle to the service of God.  The Lord came in part not just to restore it but to fulfill it, revealing its full meaning, as he does in the Sermon on the Mount, for instance.  In doing so, he shows how the Law can now not only show how to serve God here on earth but also how it can lead us to virtue and to heaven.

It is so easy for us in living our lives to lose sight of the God who gives us life and to forget the purpose for which he gives it to us.  We should place reminders of him — holy pictures, statues, crucifixes all over, especially in the bedrooms, living rooms, and dining rooms of our houses.  We can also wear crucifixes, scapulars, or blessed medals around our necks and carry rosaries in our pockets and purses.  Most of all, we should cultivate our minds so that we remember God regularly throughout our day.

 Tuesday in the 28th Week of Ordinary Time, October 15, 2024

Luke 11, 37-41

After Jesus had spoken, a Pharisee invited him to dine at his home. He entered and reclined at table to eat. The Pharisee was amazed to see that he did not observe the prescribed washing before the meal. The Lord said to him, “Oh you Pharisees! Although you cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish, inside you are filled with plunder and evil. You fools! Did not the maker of the outside also make the inside? But as to what is within, give alms, and behold, everything will be clean for you.”

“A Pharisee invited him to dine at his home.”  The Pharisee here had listened to the Lord preach and was sufficiently impressed with him that he asked him over for dinner.  He issued no casual invitation, for providing hospitality for an honored guest, as Jesus was, meant a small feast that would have entailed hard work to prepare.  The invitation may in fact have been meant for dinner on the following day, the main meal of the day coming, as it did, in the afternoon.  The Lord Jesus accepted the invitation.  He always accepted invitations.  He even made as though to go to places to which a Jew did not go, the house of the centurion who had the dying slave, for instance.  He went to houses where he knew he would be treated poorly.  He went to great feasts offered in thanksgiving, as when he dined with Simon the (former) Leper after the raising of Lazarus.  A formal dinner offered the host the opportunity to gain in social status among his peers by the dignity of the guest and by that guest’s approval of the hospitality shown.  The guest gained from the honor shown to him and by the connections and friends he was able to make at the host’s house.  In pursuit of this, the guest tended to adopt an attitude favorable to host and fellow guests alike.  The Lord Jesus, however, is not interested in pleasing anyone or in conforming to any model.  His desire is to save souls.  He does not curb his zeal for souls nor does he moderate his teachings according to the occasion.  Setting ourselves before him is risky to our complacency. 

“He entered and reclined at table to eat.”  These words might seem to describe a very ordinary action, but we must keep in mind that the One who enters this house and reclines at table as though one of us is the Living God, who created heaven and earth, who himself upholds all the universe and provided the food for this dinner.  The others may gaze at him and wonder who he is, but he looks at them and knows them down to their atoms.

“The Pharisee was amazed to see that he did not observe the prescribed washing before the meal.”  Stone water jars held the water thought necessary for the ritual cleansing the Pharisees taught as necessary before eating.  Yet the rule they taught as normative for all Jews did not in fact apply to them.  It applied to the priests in the Temple.  The Pharisees deliberately interpreted this law and many others in order to make the Law seem to confirm their theology.  They thought they were right in doing this because of their certainty in their beliefs.  Down through the ages, humans have poked and prodded, twisted and torn at the Law of God in order to make it justify their ends, but they do this to their own eternal loss.  We are so blessed to know God’s commandments, for him to have revealed them to us, and to be given the grace to follow them.

“Although you cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish, inside you are filled with plunder and evil.”  The Lord compares the Pharisees with cups and dishes, implying that he himself is their potter, who can rightfully judge them.  Cleansing the “outside” means the skin of one’s hands, and, in the spiritual sense, the whole physical body of a person.  “Inside” means one’s interior life, the heart, mind, and soul.  The Lord says in general of the Pharisees that they “are filled with plunder and evil.”  He says “plunder”, that is, taking that does not belong to them — their position as teachers, primarily, but this also refers to their greed.  “Evil”, that is, an evil disposition whereby they look for ways to harm others and build themselves up.  “You fools!”  The Greek here can mean, You senseless men, foolish men, inconsiderate men.  In the context, all three meanings fit.  “Did not the maker of the outside also make the inside?”  That is, God knows the whole of each vessel he makes and that when he has finished it and set it down, it is good.  If he looks at it again, so to speak, and sees filth within it, he knows where this has come from.  “But as to what is within, give alms, and behold, everything will be clean for you.”  The Lord closes his remonstration with this aid.  Perhaps these words brought to the Pharisee’s mind a familiar verse of the Scriptures: “He who has mercy on the poor, lends to the Lord: and he will repay him” (Proverbs 19, 17).  The Lord says, “Everything will be clean for you” — referring back to the water for the ritual cleansing.  The practice of giving alms, whether physical or spiritual, acts as a bath for the soul.  Alms makes sanctity possible for us.

 Monday in the 28th Week of Ordinary Time, October 14, 2024

Luke 11, 29-32

While still more people gathered in the crowd, Jesus said to them, “This generation is an evil generation; it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it, except the sign of Jonah. Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. At the judgment the queen of the south will rise with the men of this generation and she will condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and there is something greater than Solomon here. At the judgment the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation and condemn it, because at the preaching of Jonah they repented, and there is something greater than Jonah here.”

According to the Greek text of Matthew 12, 40, the Lord spoke of Jonah as being swallowed by a “huge fish” or “sea monster” for three days, and it is easy to see this as a sign of the Lord’s three days in the tomb before he rose.  Indeed, St. Matthew quotes him as making this connection himself.  St. Mark leaves this out of his account in order to focus on what Jesus says about Jonah as a sign to the people of pagan Nineveh, who had no way of knowing about his time in the fish.  The sign to the Ninevites was that of a foreigner who dared to stand in the streets of their proud city and call upon them to repent or face disaster.  And while the Israelites had a long history of prophets doing much the same thing, this was completely new to the Ninevites.  And, as learn from the Book of Jonah, the king ordered his people to do severe penance so that God might have mercy.

The Lord Jesus points to this sign as the answer to the request of the Pharisees for a sign.  He points to the past to explain the present.  A man, the Incarnate Son,  sent by God the Father from his own country, heaven, to earth in order to preach repentance for sin.  Jesus himself is no sign — he is the reality which the signs of the Old Testament pointed to: “There is something greater than Jonah here.”

Jesus says that an “evil generation” seeks a sign.  It seeks a sign because a sign means the reality has not yet arrived and so there is still more time for sin.  We are living in that “evil generation” even now, the generation that began with the coming of the Lord in the flesh and which will end only when he comes again.  

Let us ever keep before us the reality of the Lord Jesus Christ, who handed himself over to death to save us, fulfilling the sign of Jonah, who allowed himself to be thrown overboard to save the sailors on the boat carrying him across the stormy sea.

 The 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 13, 2024

Mark 10, 17–30

As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before him, and asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answered him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; you shall not defraud; honor your father and your mother.” He replied and said to him, “Teacher, all of these I have observed from my youth.” Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, “You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” At that statement his face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” The disciples were amazed at his words. So Jesus again said to them in reply, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” They were exceedingly astonished and said among themselves, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “For human beings it is impossible, but not for God. All things are possible for God.” Peter began to say to him, “We have given up everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the gospel who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come.” 

“Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” St. Mark translates into Greek the the Aramaic or Hebrew words the Lord, his Apostles, and others in his Gospel used.  Here he tells us the young man who came to Jesus used a word that should be translated using the Greek agathos, which means “(intrinsically) good”.  He does not call the Lord a “skilled” or “helpful” teacher, but something more like “holy” teacher.  The Lord questions him as to his use of good, not denying that it rightfully applies to him, seeking to draw the man out and cause him to verbalize his meaning, but the young man seems to reconsider his statement.  That there is a pause during which the Lord gave the young man a chance to answer him, is clear from the change in subject in the Lord’s words: “No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments.”

The young man addressed Jesus as “good” but then refrained from explaining what he meant.  The Lord shows, in his answer, what it means for a person to be good.  He begins by quoting the Jewish Law: “You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; you shall not defraud; honor your father and your mother.”  Obeying the Law makes a person good.  This “goodness” is sufficient for eternal life.  But the young man feels a deeper calling: “Teacher, all of these I have observed from my youth.”  St. Mark tells us that “Jesus, looking at him, loved him.”  The Lord looked upon him with evident affection, the way we would at a child trying his best to do something for a little brother or sister.  And then he said to the man, “You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”  Obeying the commandments may make a person good, but voluntary poverty for the sake of following the Lord allows a person to become perfect, as we see Jesus saying in St. Matthew’s account of this event (cf. Matthew 19, 21).  

When the young man walked away sadly because of his attachment to his possessions, the Lord commented, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!”  This seriously alarmed the Apostles who had been taught by the Pharisees that wealth was a sign of God’s favor, leading to the widespread belief in Israel that those who would be saved were wealthy.  The Apostles, to this point, had expected that in following the Messiah the temporary poverty they incurred for his sake would be rewarded, when Jesus, as Messiah, came to power.  At that time, they would wield wealth and power, and these would serve as signs of God’s favor of them.  Thus, Peter’s heartfelt cry: “We have given up everything and followed you!”

“There is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age, etc.”  The Lord reassures Peter and the others in terms they understand, yet he means inconceivably more in spiritual terms.  The poverty the Apostles have voluntarily accepted makes them capable of receiving far greater things than what they had given up.  They are called not to mere goodness, but to perfection.

We should never be satisfied with being good, but to seek perfection.  Since it is in our giving up that we are able to receive, we ought to drop what we cling to here and now in order to embrace the Lord with both arms, in the same way he embraces us.

 Saturday in the 27th Week of Ordinary Time, October 12, 2024

Luke 11, 27-28

While Jesus was speaking, a woman from the crowd called out and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed.” He replied, “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.”

This exchange between a woman and Jesus took place while he was teaching.  On the face of it, the woman offers the Lord praise using an Ancient Middle Eastern idiom of honoring the mother in order to praise the son, and then the Lord replies offering honor back at the person who had spoken to him, in line with the custom of the time. But this honor is conditional: Blessed are you provided that you observe the word of God which you have heard.  For, it is not enough to hear the word of God.  One could happen by the place where the Lord was teaching and hear him but he is not really listening.  It is observing it, the carrying out of the word of God, that brings blessedness.  

The woman and Jesus use the same word “blessed” but they mean it in very different ways.  It was usually used to wish material prosperity upon a person.  By contrast, Jesus means it according to its supernatural meaning, the bestowal and enjoyment of grace, since those who are hearing the word of God and are keeping it are acting out of faith in the word of God.  Jesus says “who hear” and not “who read” because he himself was teaching with his voice the word of God and doing so in a way that people could understand him.

The woman in this Reading seems to praise the Blessed Mother, who bore Jesus in her womb and nursed him, and then, it seems, Jesus takes the praise from her and applies it to others instead.  This idea is fostered by the translation of the Greek menoon as “rather”: “Rather, blessed are those, etc.”  However, the word can also be translated as “indeed”, and “yea, verily”.  Thus, we can understand the Lord is confirming that his Mother is indeed blessed through her bearing and nursing him — for nurturing and raising him — and, beyond that, for hearing the word of God, delivered to her by the Angel Gabriel, and keeping it: “Let it be done to me according to your word.”  And in saying “those”, he means all who, following the example of the Blessed Virgin, nourish their faith through prayer, and then listen to the word of God in the Gospels, and carry it out in their actions.