Tuesday in the Twenty-Second Week of Ordinary Time, September 1, 2020

Luke 4:31-37

Jesus went down to Capernaum, a town of Galilee. He taught them on the sabbath, and they were astonished at his teaching because he spoke with authority. In the synagogue there was a man with the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out in a loud voice, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are–the Holy One of God!” Jesus rebuked him and said, “Be quiet! Come out of him!” Then the demon threw the man down in front of them and came out of him without doing him any harm. They were all amazed and said to one another, “What is there about his word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out.” And news of him spread everywhere in the surrounding region.

A distance of a little over twenty miles, as the crow flies, separates Nazareth from Capernaum, certainly not far by modern standards, but the road between the two towns ran through the hilly, rocky country of southern Galilee to the lusher land around the Sea of Galilee.  About 1,500 souls populated Capernaum in those days, while Nazareth held some 400.  Jesus set up his headquarters here, early in his ministry, evidently at the house of his Apostle Peter.  Set along the shore of the sea, the little town bustled with the catching and selling of fish.

“Jesus went down to Capernaum, a town of Galilee.”  Luke assumes his readers would know in general where the Galilee region was located.  Matthew writes more specifically, “He came and dwelt in Capharnaum on the sea coast, in the borders of Zabulon and of Nephthalim” (Matthew 4, 13) for the benefit of Galileans who knew the area but not the town.

“He taught them on the sabbath.”  The Lord was teaching the Jews of the town in the fine synagogue whose recent construction was financed by the local centurion and in which the people took great pride.  “They were astonished at his teaching because he spoke with authority.”  The Greek word here translated as “astonished” has more of the character of “thunderstruck”.  The word translated as “authority” also means “power” and “weight”.  This “authority” was not given to him by the Pharisees or the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem, in that he was “authorized” to teach, but his teaching possessed such force of wisdom as to stagger his hearers.  

“What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are–the Holy One of God!”  The possessed man would have been well known to the community, and traveling rabbis may have have already attempted to exorcise the demon who held him captive.  Probably the townspeople would have simply let him wander around and go in and out of buildings such as the synagogue, leaving him alone as long as he left them alone.  Probably he wandered around the countryside too, sleeping out of doors, disappearing from the town for days or weeks at a time before returning, ever restless.  “What have you to do with us?”  The Greek here is nearly the same as the question Jesus asked his Mother at the wedding in Cana, except that it is, What to us and to you”, rather than, “What to me”.  The demon is mocking the Lord by turning his words around.  Perhaps the demon thought to bring up Cana as an affront to the Lord’s pride, in that Jesus had let a “mere” woman “push him around” after first refusing to do her bidding.  Perhaps.  The wedding at Cana would not have occurred very long before this.  The similarity in the Greek wording of both questions is very striking.  (The demon says “to us” because, as with Legion, several demons possess this man, a common trait in cases of this kind).

“Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are–the Holy One of God!”  To this point, Jesus has not performed any exorcisms.  He has, however, faced Satan and rebuked him and sent him away.  The devil, then, knew that Jesus possessed great power but he did not yet know what Jesus intended to do with it.  Note how the demon addresses the Lord: “Jesus of Nazareth . . . the Holy One of God”.  Only later will the demons address him as “the Son of God” and have an understanding of what that means.  “Have you come to destroy us?”  This reminds of the cry of Legion: “What have we to do with you, Jesus Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?” (Matthew 8, 29).  The demons, long ago cast into hell, are already “destroyed”.  What they fear is the final judgment at the end of time, when their punishment will significantly increase even from its current intensity.  Jesus does not allow the demon to delay him: “Be quiet! Come out of him!”  Results follow immediately: “Then the demon threw the man down in front of them and came out of him without doing him any harm.”  The demon throws the man down as though contemptuously shedding or discarding him.  “They were all amazed.”  A better translation of the Greek would be, “Awe came over them.”  The awe resulted from the power Jesus exhibited in the exorcism.  The rabbis attempted exorcism in those days with potions, sacrifices, and long prayers — and failed, or their “successes” turned out to be failures soon afterwards.  Here, no doubt exists that the demon has been driven out of the man, and that by a single, simple command of the carpenter from Nazareth.

Both St. Mark and St. Luke, writing for Gentile Christians, present this exorcism as the first powerful work the Lord performed in public for all to see, and in this way they show that the Son of God has come to earth to break the power that evil had over the whole human race by his Passion and Death. 

Monday in the Twenty-Second Week of Ordinary Time, August 31

Luke 4:16-30

Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the sabbath day. He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”  Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him. He said to them, “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” And all spoke highly of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They also asked, “Is this not the son of Joseph?” He said to them, “Surely you will quote me this proverb, ‘Physician, cure yourself,’ and say, ‘Do here in your native place the things that we heard were done in Capernaum.’” And he said, “Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place. Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah when the sky was closed for three and a half years and a severe famine spread over the entire land. It was to none of these that Elijah was sent, but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon. Again, there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were all filled with fury. They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong. But he passed through the midst of them and went away.

From now until the season of Advent, the daily Gospel readings will come from the Gospel of St. Luke.  Luke’s Gospel, as we shall see, is aimed at convincing the Greeks that this Jewish man is the Savior of the world.  In order to accomplish this, Luke takes a different tack than, say, St. Matthew, who wrote for the Jewish Christians of Galilee.  For instance, he places the Lord’s return to Nazareth at the beginning of his ministry rather than at some later time, as we find in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark.  In doing so, Luke shows how the rejection of Jesus by the Jews began soon after he started to preach and continued through the final rejection by the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem.  This paved the way for him to show how Jesus came not just for the Jews, but for all people, and that the rejection of the Jews opens the door to salvation for the Gentiles.  This theme became very important for St. Paul in his work among the Greeks, in fact dominating his letter to the Greek speaking Christian church in Rome.

We first notice in this reading that Jesus is in the synagogue on the Sabbath and is given a scroll to read.  Synagogue services were much less formal before the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem than now.  On the Sabbath, the Jews would gather in a meeting wall where they would discuss the Law and the Prophets.  Visiting rabbis or scribes would be invited to speak.  Jesus, who has made a name for himself as a preacher, is asked to speak on this occasion.  Handed a scroll containing the prophecies of Isaiah, he looks for and finds the passage on which he would like to preach.  The passage the Lord quotes is from Isaiah 61, 1-2, although he may have quoted many verses beyond these: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”  Luke’s rearrangement of the order of events allows him to show that the first words we hear from the mouth of Jesus at the beginning of his ministry are these, and they act as the banner under which he will work until his Death, and under which his disciples will work after Pentecost.  These words, although coming from a Jewish prophet, speak not merely of the Jews but of all people: the poor, captives, the blind, and the oppressed.  Matthew provides an account of this event in very nearly the same words, but we can see how Luke frames it with the Greeks in mind.

“Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”  The verb here translated as “fulfilled” can also mean “completed”, as though completing an action that was already begun.  We might think of the Prophet writing his words in faint pencil and the Lord coming along later and inking in the letters of those words with beautiful flowing color.  And the Lord did not simply “fulfill” the prophecy and then move on.  When Jesus touched the Jordan River at the time of his baptism, he changed it; it did not change him.  He entered it so as to render water capable of conferring eternal life, with the formula he would give his Apostles before his Ascension (cf. Matthew 28, 19).  This remained true even after he climbed up out of the water.  Similarly, when the Lord Jesus “touched” the bringing of glad tidings to the poor, proclaiming liberty to captives, and caring for the blind and the oppressed, he made our performing these actions, done for his sake, capable of making us like him.  His fulfillment of the words of the Prophet endures to the present time in us.

“And all spoke highly of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They also asked, ‘Is this not the son of Joseph?’ ”  We see their divided opinion here.  The people — his neighbors and relatives — struggle to reconcile the Jesus they had known with the Jesus they had recently heard about.  This reminds us of how little we really pay attention to people as we run around, absorbed in the business of our own lives.  When we hear that an old friend or acquaintance has become a world-class athlete, or actor, or scientist, we wonder about it.  Thus, the synagogue crowd sees only two alternatives: either Jesus was a greater man than they had thought or he was a fraud.  And in their pride, they thought him a fraud.  

“They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong.”  The brow of the hill is some distance from the old town of Nazareth.  It would have taken quite an effort even for three or four men to carry a grown man out to it.  This, then, was not a sudden act committed in haste.  The crowd, or at least a large percentage of the crowd, had decided to kill him.  We might ask why they would want to do this.  What had he said that had inflamed them so that they wanted to commit murder?  He had spoken of Elijah’s work among the Gentiles.  Were they responding to that?  It would seem that this was how Luke understood what had happened here: Why did the Jews, at the time and afterwards, seek to kill Jesus?  Because he showed his intent on going to the Gentiles.  While a valid interpretation, the Jews’s murderous hatred still seems an overreaction.  St. Cyril of Alexandria taught that what roused them like this was their belief that Jesus had compared himself to the prophets, and so he deserved to die.  This also may explain it.  

“But he passed through the midst of them and went away.” His hour had not yet come, and so he disentangled himself from them and walked away.  Perhaps as the people neared the brow of the hill their enthusiasm for their intended action sagged and they set him down.  And then Jesus, without a word, got up and walked away.  He would never return to his childhood home.  We see that Jesus invites all, speaks to all, but forces himself on no one.  When he is rejected he does not call down fire and brimstone, as two of his Apostles will want him to do later, but neither does he return, unasked.  

The Twenty-Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, August 30, 2020

Matthew 16:21–27

Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised. Then Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him, “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.” He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”  Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life? For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father’s glory, and then he will repay all according to his conduct.”

The Greek text begins the first verse of this reading with the words, “From that”, that is, “from that time”.  St. Matthew is telling us that at some time following the naming of Simon the fisherman as “Peter”, the “rock”, Jesus began to tell his Apostles about the future towards which he was nearing as they made their way to Jerusalem.  Jesus first lets the momentous teaching about this “rock” on which he was to build his “Church” sink in before the much more shocking announcement of his Passion, Death, and Resurrection.  St. Matthew says that he “began” to tell them this.  He might have meant that from then on he did this, through parables and also directly speaking of these events.  Just after the teaching about Peter as the “rock”, Jesus is transfigured before Peter, James, and John, and afterwards Jesus mentioned to them his Resurrection, which they did not understand, so it is clear that he had not spoken much of this at that time.  This leads to the conclusion that the rebuke of Peter in this reading did not happen directly after he had been named thus by the Lord.  The sequence of events makes more sense if we see this rebuke as taking place as the Lord and the Apostles drew much nearer Jerusalem, or even after they had entered it, when Jesus had become much more explicit about what would happen to him.  Matthew places it at this spot in his Gospel because it is his custom to group his sayings about the Lord according to theme, with less thought to historical order.  The theme here would be Peter’s relationship with the Lord.  This understanding of the events also eliminates for us the jarring effect of Jesus raising Peter to the heights in one moment, and then calling him “Satan” in the next.  There is some time between these events, days or weeks.  We recall another jarring effect that Matthew produces in the last verse of chapter two and the first verse of chapter three of his Gospel.  There, we go immediately from the infancy of Jesus to “In those days came John the Baptist preaching in the desert” — thirty years later.

“God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.”  The expression Peter uses, the Greek word hilaos, does not mean “God forbid”, which, in any case, would not be an expression Jews would use.  The word itself means something like “merciful” or “favorable”.  In the context here, it could be translated very loosely as “Mercy help us” or the simple ejaculation “Mercy!” which we sometimes hear today.  Peter would not have used the word as an expression of astonishment, but as a sort of a statement, or the prelude to an oath: “No such thing shall ever happen to you.”  Peter may have taken our Lords words about his coming Death as a challenge to see which of his followers would step up to fight for him, just as the Lord had told the Apostles to feed the feed the crowd of five thousand themselves, presumably (in Peter’s mind) to see how they would react.  Peter, the most zealous of the Apostles, is ready to defend his Lord.  But the One whom Peter has rightly named the Son of God does not need his assistance.  Here, as later when Peter unsheathes his sword in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Lord rebukes him.  

His words must have stung and confused the Apostle: “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” This is as strong as the Lord’s “Begone, Satan!” from Matthew 4, 2, when the devil tempted him to worship him in exchange for all the kingdoms of the world.  The Lord calls no one else “Satan”, coming only as close as to tell certain of his opponents that the devil was their father (cf. John 8, 44).  To understand what the Lord means by calling Peter “Satan”, it helps to compare this incident with the earlier one, when the Lord faced Satan in the wilderness.  On the first occasion, the devil sought to determine who this Jesus was, “tempting”, or, testing him.  As the Lord’s wisdom and holiness of life became more apparent through the testing, the devil continued to think of him not as divine but as merely human, finally promising him to rule the kingdoms of the world, which the devil plainly thought was the ultimate fulfillment of human desire.  Here, the devil did not — and could not — think as God would think, but only as a man would, or might.  How many times throughout history had he succeeded in gaining the souls of men and women with such a false promise?  This is what Peter does, and he, more than any other disciple deserved such a reprimand because as Jesus had confirmed for him, it was his Heavenly Father who had revealed to him that Jesus was indeed the Son of God, that he was divine.  Peter’s mistake is to forget, ignore, or not think through what this meant, and so to contradict, as though to countermand, the Lord’s will.  For, the Lord did not say that he might “suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised”, but that he would certainly undergo these things.  Jesus, in his divinity, was revealing the events of the future to the Apostles in order to prepare them for what was to come.  Peter, in effect, is treating Jesus as he would any mere mortal leader of whom he was a follower: he is “thinking not as God does, but as human beings do”.  

Matthew next describes Jesus as evidently referencing that last temptation, for he says to his Apostles, “What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life?”  As if to warn them that he is not seeking for himself nor promising them “all the kingdoms of the world”, the conquest of which would presumably begin once they had secured Jerusalem.  And when Jesus says “life”, here, he means one’s soul, one’s eternal life.  His speaking of the necessity of their denying themselves, picking up their crosses, and following him means that rather than pursuing worldly power they must renounce it, even as he has.  But in renouncing it, by renouncing their own wills for that of Jesus, they gain their souls and eternal life: “For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father’s glory, and then he will repay all according to his conduct.”

Renouncing one’s will for that of Jesus, which is to say, promising Jesus obedience to his will for us, is no easy task.  It is the hardest thing a human can do.  Not even all the angels succeeded in doing this.  It turns a person inside out.  The most graphic display of this is in the vows and promises made by a man or woman upon their ordination or their making their final vows in the religious life.  Nowadays, contracts do not mean very much even at the time people enter into them.  But when a person publicly promises to serve God, it is a powerful sign for all of us that it is something we can want, and must want, to do.

The Feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, August 29, 2020

Mark 6:17-29

Herod was the one who had John the Baptist arrested and bound in prison on account of Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip, whom he had married. John had said to Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.” Herodias harbored a grudge against him and wanted to kill him but was unable to do so. Herod feared John, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man, and kept him in custody. When he heard him speak he was very much perplexed, yet he liked to listen to him. She had an opportunity one day when Herod, on his birthday, gave a banquet for his courtiers, his military officers, and the leading men of Galilee. Herodias’ own daughter came in and performed a dance that delighted Herod and his guests. The king said to the girl, “Ask of me whatever you wish and I will grant it to you.” He even swore many things to her, “I will grant you whatever you ask of me, even to half of my kingdom.” She went out and said to her mother, “What shall I ask for?” She replied, “The head of John the Baptist.” The girl hurried back to the king’s presence and made her request, “I want you to give me at once on a platter the head of John the Baptist.” The king was deeply distressed, but because of his oaths and the guests he did not wish to break his word to her. So he promptly dispatched an executioner with orders to bring back his head. He went off and beheaded him in the prison. He brought in the head on a platter and gave it to the girl. The girl in turn gave it to her mother. When his disciples heard about it, they came and took his body and laid it in a tomb.

The deep influence of St. John the Baptist required the Gospel writers to record more about him than any other figure apart from Jesus.  They provide us with greater information about John the Baptist than even about the Lord’s own Mother and foster-father.  And while St. Luke gives us many words from the mouth of Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, we never hear St. Joseph, the Lord’s foster-father, speak at all.  The Baptist, even in death, seemed to overshadow the Lord Jesus, for some people believed the Jesus was John the Baptist or perhaps had received a “portion” of his spirit, much as the prophet Elisha received from the prophet Elijah before the fiery chariot carried him up to heaven (cf. 2 Kings 2, 9).  Indeed, John’s harsh manner of life and his fierce, relentless preaching marked him out as the prophet the Jews had anxiously awaited since the death of their last prophet, Malachi, over four hundred years before.

 In much a similar manner to Elijah, John the Baptist got into trouble with a ruler over his wife (although here Herod Antipas is called a “king” his title was only that of “tetrarch”).  Herod’s wife Herodias was both the divorced wife of his brother Philip and also his niece, and thus the marriage went contrary to the law of Moses on two counts, though in the Gospels John the Baptist is shown as harping on the first.  John’s hold on the Judean people and Herod’s shaky position as tetrarch resulted in Herod and Herodias feeling seriously threatened by him, and so John was arrested.  We are not given any details of the arrest.  It would have been interesting to compare the details of his arrest with those of Jesus’s, three years later.  At the same time, Herod hesitated in killing John because of his popularity.  St. Mark gives us an insight into Herod’s state of mind regarding John at this time: “When he heard him speak he was very much perplexed, yet he liked to listen to him.”  From this, it seems that Herod either had John brought to him on occasion or that he went into the prison in his for tree in order to listen to him.  Either way, John’s forceful personality and the authority of his words exercised some hold even on an essentially non practicing Jew like Herod.  Later, this same “perplexity” caused Herod to want to see Jesus, who only stood silently before him when Pontius Pilate sent him to him (cf. Luke 23, 8-9).

Herod would likely have kept John alive in his prison indefinitely had it not been for Herod’s lust.  Seeing the daughter of his niece/wife Herodias dance at his own birthday party, he promised the girl anything she wanted, even up to a part of territory which he ruled.  The girl, who would not have been married at the time and so would be in her early teens, went to her mother, who had more reason to feel threatened by John the Baptist than her husband.  Herod, after all, could have appeased John and his large following by divorcing his problematic wife.  Seizing her opportunity, she told her to ask for the head of the prophet.  Politically, this made sense for the girl as well as for the mother since John’s death could mean that his following would disappear and Herodias’s (and her daughter’s) position at court would be assured, st least in the short run.  

However, John had completed his sacred mission of preparing the way for the Son of God, and many of his disciples, during his life and after his death, joined with Jesus — he himself encouraging them to do so.  During his time in prison John’s followers kept him informed of the miraculous deeds and words of the Lord Jesus, of his growing following, so that he could know that he had, as St. Paul would later say, “I am even now ready to be sacrificed: and the time of my dissolution is at hand. I have fought a good fight: I have finished my course: I have kept the faith. As to the rest, there is laid up for me a crown of justice which the Lord the just judge will render to me” (2 Timothy, 4, 6-8).

Friday in the Twenty-First Week of Ordinary Time, August 28, 2020

The Feast of St. Augustine of Hippo

Matthew 25:1-13

Jesus told his disciples this parable: “The Kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones, when taking their lamps, brought no oil with them, but the wise brought flasks of oil with their lamps. Since the bridegroom was long delayed, they all became drowsy and fell asleep. At midnight, there was a cry, ‘Behold, the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’ Then all those virgins got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise ones replied, ‘No, for there may not be enough for us and you. Go instead to the merchants and buy some for yourselves.’ While they went off to buy it, the bridegroom came and those who were ready went into the wedding feast with him. Then the door was locked. Afterwards the other virgins came and said, ‘Lord, Lord, open the door for us!’ But he said in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, I do not know you.’ Therefore, stay awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”

Throughout the New Testament we find the Kingdom of heaven likened to a  Jewish wedding feast, beginning with the words of St. John the Baptist: “He that has the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices with joy because of the bridegroom’s voice. This my joy therefore is fulfilled” (John 3, 29).  St. Paul speaks likewise: “I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ” (2 Corinthians 11, 2).  Finally, at the end of the Book of Revelation, we read of the vision revealed to St. John in which the New Jerusalem comes down from heaven, adorned like a bride for her groom (cf. Revelation 21, 2).  We learn from these references that marriage serves as the primary image for the union of Christ and his Church.  The Lord himself shows this in various parables.  In the parable from today’s Gospel, we see how he uses the marriage feast to teach about the need for perseverance in faith in the life of his disciples.

The context of the parable is the return from the house of the bride’s family.  The groom brings her to his house so that they might begin their life together.  As part of this ritualized action, ten virgins, that is, girls in their early teens, would wait for the bride and groom outside the house and light the way for them until they went inside.  It was quite an honor to be chosen for this role, just as being chosen as a member of a wedding party would be for people today.  Now, five of the girls are described as being “wise”.  The Greek word actually means “practical”, “shrewd”, “sensible”, “prudent”, and “well-behaved”.  These girls realized that they were called to this role in order to fulfill a simple purpose, and so they procured that which would enable them to accomplish this.  They saw they were called to serve.  The other five girls are called “foolish”, and the Greek word is the basis for our word “moron”.  The Greek word has the meaning of “being dull”, “stupid”, “mentally inert”.  These virgins do not appreciate their role and do not prepare for it.  Even if they had not acted in this role for previous marriage feasts, what was necessary to carry it out would have been widely known.  In fact, they act with contempt towards the bridegroom and his bride.

The prudent virgins are those believers who light the way for Christ as he brings his Church into heaven at the end of time.  These are the saints, the Apostles, martyrs, confessors, virgins, and married people who have brightened the world below with the light of their faith and holiness.  Their lit lamps are their good works, and the oil is the faith which fuels these good works.  They have sufficient faith no matter how long they must wait for the Lord to come, for they have prayed for it to be strengthened, and they have increased it through witnessing it to others.  The foolish virgins showed up with lamps, but they did not do these things, as though the role itself were repugnant to them, or the bride and bridegroom were contemptible to them.  That they run to buy oil when it is already too late shows only that they wish to not be left outside but to join the party within.  They do not care for the host and hostess, only for themselves.  The groom’s words, “Amen, I say to you, I do not know you”, repeat back to the foolish virgins in words what they have said to him with their actions. 

Jesus says to us, and not for the first time, “Stay awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”  It is necessary for us to take stock of our own situations and to see if we have what we need for when the Lord comes again, for he surely will.

We celebrate today the feast of St. Augustine of Hippo, one of the two great theologians since the Apostles who have shaped the Catholic Faith.  His two best known works are his Confessions and The City of God, but he also wrote hundreds of relatively short sermons that are filled with insights on the Scriptures and the life of our Lord.  Much of this is online.  We ask for his intercession that he may instill in our hearts a great love of the Lord Jesus and his holy words.

   

Thursday in the Twenty-First Week of Ordinary Time

The Feast of St. Monica

Matthew 24:42-51

Jesus said to his disciples: “Stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come. Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour of night when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into. So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come. Who, then, is the faithful and prudent servant, whom the master has put in charge of his household to distribute to them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master on his arrival finds doing so. Amen, I say to you, he will put him in charge of all his property. But if that wicked servant says to himself, ‘My master is long delayed,’ and begins to beat his fellow servants, and eat and drink with drunkards, the servant’s master will come on an unexpected day and at an unknown hour and will punish him severely and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”

Throughout his Gospel, St. Matthew records very many instances of the Lord Jesus teaching about the coming judgment at the end of the world.  Doing so enabled Matthew to console the persecuted Jewish Christians for whom he was writing.  In Matthew’s Gospel more than the others, we see the wicked, often thinly disguised Pharisees, scribes, and the leadership in Jerusalem — their persecutors — being punished severely while the faithful are rewarded.  The Gospel reading for today is taken from the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel.  Chapters twenty-four and twenty-five contain the last public addresses of the Lord before his Passion begins and so they constitute a farewell speech.  He does not address large crowds again.  His last words to the crowds are about the second coming, and the next time large crowds see him will be at his second coming.

The reading is cut out from the middle of the Lord’s words on his coming again for judgment, and the context is his reason for people to live in  expectation of it.  In the Greek text, this reading is connected to those words with oun, which means “therefore”.  The Greek verb here is gregoreíte, which does not mean “stay awake” but “be on the alert”, or, “keep watch”.  The difference is significant.  A person can be awake but unaware.  Jesus is telling people to stay on their toes, to keep alert, “for you do not know on which day your Lord will come.”  We might ask why it is necessary for us to keep alert, since the Lord will certainly come again whether we are paying attention or not.  Foreseeing this question, Jesus speaks in a parable: “If the master of the house had known the hour of night when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into.”  We can understand this in two ways.  First, that Jesus is the thief who comes while everyone is asleep, sure of their safety.  But complacency is not real safety and if the thief comes and is able to break in, the sleepers will lose everything.  They could protect themselves with good works, and these would act as “the master of the house” keeping watch at night.  Second, it can be understood as the devil seeking to steal away a person’s faith, since faith can also be lost through complacency.

The moral Jesus gives here, “So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come”, he repeats several times in this section in the same way as he repeats “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you” over and over again as recorded the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel.  We must live holy lives today as though our souls will be demanded of us tonight (cf. Luke 12, 20).

“Who, then, is the faithful and prudent servant, whom the master has put in charge of his household to distribute to them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master on his arrival finds doing so.”  The servant “put in charge of his household” — the master’s household — is the disciple of Christ who “distributes to them their food”, that is, feeds others the Gospel, “at the proper time”, doing so prudently and skillfully.  “Blessed is that servant whom his master on his arrival finds doing so. Amen, I say to you, he will put him in charge of all his property.”  This servant is “blessed” in the sense that he is praiseworthy and also in the spiritual sense: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25, 34).

“My master is long delayed.”  The wicked servant, that is, one who has no interest in the master except to supplant him, persuades himself that the master will not return.  He may even tell himself that the master does not really exist, and so he is not bound by any objective rules or laws the master had set down — and not even basic human decency — and acts according to to his lusts and propensity for extravagance and violence.  But here he acts against his own interests because he is a servant and does not know how to be a master.  The other servants quit and the house falls apart, untended.  The crops are not planted, or not planted at the right time and they fail.  The returning master finds his property in a disastrous shape and so he “will punish him severely and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”  The wicked servant sails aloud in the agony of his suffering, and grinds his teeth in frustration of what he could have had if he had simply done his duty, and in rabid envy at the reward of the good and faithful servants. 

The Gospels are not for the faint of heart, and particularly not these chapters of Matthew’s Gospel, but for those who have the strength of faith and the love of God, they strengthen their strength and deepen their love.

We celebrate today the Feast of St. Monica, a woman of great faith and perseverance in prayer.  We ask her intercession for us below that we might imitate her virtues and come to share her reward.

Wednesday in the Twenty-First Week of Ordinary Time, August 26, 2020

2 Thessalonians 3:6-10, 16-18

We instruct you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to shun any brother who walks in a disorderly way and not according to the tradition they received from us. For you know how one must imitate us. For we did not act in a disorderly way among you, nor did we eat food received free from anyone. On the contrary, in toil and drudgery, night and day we worked, so as not to burden any of you. Not that we do not have the right. Rather, we wanted to present ourselves as a model for you, so that you might imitate us. In fact, when we were with you, we instructed you that if anyone was unwilling to work, neither should that one eat.  May the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way. The Lord be with all of you. 

Today’s first reading is taken from the end of the Second Letter of St. Paul to the Thessalonians.  Paul sent this second letter shortly after he received the Thessalonians’s reply to his first, and both are concerned with the same primary subject: the end of the world.  For these Gentile converts, the very notion that the world would come to an end proved very disconcerting, as pagan belief had no room in it for a final judgment, or a heaven or a hell, for ordinary mortals.  Their faith in the Lord Jesus, however, compelled them to believe in all of his teachings, even those hard to accept or previously unimaginable.  Reading these short letters all the way through with an eye to the questions they were asking Paul rewards us with an understanding of the secular people around us who have heard of judgment, heaven, and hell, and may have some primitive idea of what they mean, but have no real conception of them: we see the enormous difference that faith makes in people’s lives between those who have it, and those who do not.

“We instruct you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to shun any brother who walks in a disorderly way and not according to the tradition they received from us.”  Paul phrases his words in such a way as to form a solemn command: he gives this instruction “in the name of our Lord Jesus.”  Paul made it very clear when he was providing advice and when he was giving a command, as when he advises celibacy for Christians (cf. 1 Corinthians 7, 6), and when he was ordering an excommunication (1 Corinthians 5, 3-4).  Paul commands the Thessalonian Christians “to shun any brother who walks in a disorderly way.”  The Greek word here translated as “disorderly” is sometimes rendered into English as “idly”, but that is incorrect.  In the context of the letter, Paul is speaking of anyone calling himself a Christian who returns to pagan behavior out of a belief that the Lord’s coming is imminent and that he is already saved by virtue of his baptism.  Paul does not mince his words.  He wants such a one “shunned”, which is to say, excommunicated.  Paul recognized that these Christians came not from a Jewish heritage with strict teachings regarding morality, but from a very different world in which no moral code existed apart from the legal code.  The danger of the rest of the community copying such a one’s example moved Paul to this extreme course.  At all costs, the new Christians must remain true to “to the tradition they received from us.”  

Paul knew that without living models it would be hard for converts from the Gentiles to live as Christians, and so he says: “For you know how one must imitate us”, that is, Paul and his fellow missionaries who lived with the Thessalonian Christians for a time.  This imitation, then, was not some abstract set of rules, but living as they had seen Paul live: devout, faithful, prayerful, chaste, humble, honest — a man of service to God and man.  “Nor  did we eat food received free from anyone.”  He did not take advantage of his position to wheedle or demand anything from them, not even food.  Rather, “in toil and drudgery, night and day we worked, so as not to burden any of you.”  Paul emphasizes this in order to distinguish himself from the traveling promoters of pagan cults so common in those days, who really only promoted themselves and expected to be paid for their services.  In sharp contrast, “in toil and drudgery, night and day we worked, so as not to burden any of you.”  Now, Paul evidently joined up with other tent makers in the city.  He accomplishes two purposes in doing so.  First, he shows his own dedication to the Lord Jesus, from whom alone he hoped for reward.  “Not,” he points out, “that we did not have that right” to impose on the new Christians for food and lodging, for “the worker deserves his payment” (1 Timothy 5, 18), but in order to accomplish his other goal: “to present ourselves as a model for you, so that you might imitate us.”  

St. Peter writes, “According to him that has called you, who is holy, be you also in all manner of behavior holy” (1 Peter 1, 15).  As necessary as believing in the Lord Jesus is, so is the need to live holy lives.  Belief alone is not sufficient, for as St. James wrote, “You believe that there is one God. You do well: but the devils also believe — and tremble” (James 2, 19).  True belief in God both inspires and requires holiness of life.  As difficult as it may be for those who have practiced the Faith all their lives and have the benefit of good examples in people they know or at least in accounts of the saints, so much more difficult is it for those who do not have these advantages.  All the more necessary for Christians today to practice virtue and to live a life modeled after that of the Lord Jesus.  Who knows what word, gesture, or action may lead another to the path by which he becomes a believer himself?  Holiness of life is the most important preaching we do as believers.  If we do not know the answer to an unbeliever’s question, we can look it up.  But if we do not live the life of Jesus, we may never get that chance.

Finally, Paul says, “If anyone was unwilling to work, neither should that one eat.”  In the context of his letter, he is speaking of those who think that with the second coming around the corner, there is no point in planting seeds, working at their craft, or ordering goods to be sold in a month’s time.  The future is not now, but it is near.  Therefore, we must all carry on our work, for we know not the day nor the hour.  We can also understand this in a spiritual way, that the Christian who does not live a holy life and give good example to others will not eat at God’s banquet in heaven.

Tuesday of the Twenty-First Week of Ordinary Time

The Feast of St. Louis, King of France

Matthew 23:23-26

The four priests here at Blessed Sacrament continue to feel pretty well.  We are awaiting the results of our tests.  Maybe we will hear something in a few days.

Jesus said: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You pay tithes of mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier things of the law: judgment and mercy and fidelity. But these you should have done, without neglecting the others. Blind guides, who strain out the gnat and swallow the camel! Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You cleanse the outside of cup and dish, but inside they are full of plunder and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may be clean.”

In today’s reading from the Gospel of St. Matthew, we see the Lord pressing hard against the Pharisees and the scribes.  We might wonder why he would do this.  It is true that large numbers of them tried to steer people away from Jesus and to impede his ministry by explaining away his miracles and accusing him of breaking the law of Moses, but the crowds came and listened to him despite this, and very many of the people believed in him as the Messiah.  We must understand though that the Pharisees had become widely influential, so much so that for the ordinary Jew, the Pharisaic teaching on the law amounted to the only teaching on the law.  And yet the Pharisees took liberties with the law, upholding an oral tradition which sought to adapt the law of Moses to present circumstances.  In practice, this resulted in an unwritten code more or less equivalent to the actual law, and which went beyond it.  It is this that Jesus condemns when he cried out, quoting Isaiah: “And in vain do they worship me, teaching doctrines and precepts of men” (Mark 7, 7).  Jesus condemned the Pharisees and the scribes because they taught the people their sect’s doctrines and not God’s.

An example of these precepts of men is found in “tithes of mint and dill and cummin”, which were used as spices.  Inasmuch as they were herbs, they should not have come under the law of tithing, which said, “Every year you shall set aside the tithes of all your fruits that the earth brings forth” (Deuteronomy 14, 22).  Tithing mint would be the equivalent of tithing grass or weeds.  According to the Pharisaical oral law, however, even these things must be taxed for the benefit of the Temple.  Jesus does not condemn this interpretation so much as he points out its triviality, particularly when compared with other matters: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You pay tithes of mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier things of the law.”  Jesus spells out what he means by these: “Judgment and mercy and fidelity.”  That is, rather than teach the doctrines of their religion, they concern themselves with the technicalities of sustaining the Temple.  Again, Jesus does not take a position against this support, but puts it in the context of what the Pharisees and scribes fail to do.  The question should arise for them: Are we teachers of God or are we collection officers?  The Lord goes on to illustrate what they are doing: “Blind guides, who strain out the gnat and swallow the camel!”  People who throw themselves at the enforcement of details often lack the confidence to do actual work.  It is as though through their own actions the Pharisees and scribes admit that they have no divine authority as the basis for their teaching and interpretation of the Scriptures.  Jesus calls them “blind” because they do not have the ability to see this for themselves, and yet they put themselves forward as “guides”.  And the message to the people is that they would be foolish to listen to them because no one in his right mind follows a “blind guide”.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites.”  Here again, the Lord says to them, “Woe!”  The use of the word here indicates a warning of an imminent disaster.  The Lord is warning them to open their eyes and see what they are really doing and to repent.  He cried out this warning vocally two thousand years ago, and he cries it out to all sinners who are running out of time — not merely to their ears but from the midst of their hearts, from deep in their consciences.  

“You cleanse the outside of cup and dish, but inside they are full of plunder and self-indulgence.”  The Pharisees and their followers had a great concern for washing various items that is not found in the law.  This is an outgrowth from the cleansing that were commanded in order to make a person or a thing ritually pure.  The Lord uses this practice to point out that they worked very hard at appearances: “And all their works they do for to be seen of men. For they make their phylacteries broad and enlarge their fringes. And they love the first places at feasts and the first chairs in the synagogues, And salutations in the market place, and to be called by men, Rabbi” (Matthew 23, 5-7).  But they were not known for their virtue: “But according to their works do ye not. For they do not practice what they preach” (Matthew 23, 3).  “Inside they are full of plunder and self-indulgence: plunder through tithes, but also through the stealing of souls by their callous neglect of their duty to preach about God, his judgment to come, his mercy, and our duty to fidelity.  Self-indulgence, such as we find in Luke 18, 11: “The Pharisee standing, prayed thus with himself: O God, I give you thanks that I am not as the rest of men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, as also is this publican. I fast twice in a week: I give tithes of all that I possess.” 

The lesson here for us as faithful Christians is to have ever before us the Cross of Jesus Christ and to be mindful of his love.  “What does the Lord require of you, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6, 8).

The Feast of St. Bartholomew, August 24, 2020

John 1:45-51

Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one about whom Moses wrote in the law, and also the prophets, Jesus son of Joseph, from Nazareth.” But Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Here is a true child of Israel. There is no duplicity in him.” Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.” Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.” Jesus answered and said to him, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than this.” And he said to him, “Amen, amen, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” 

The disciple named “Nathanael” in St. John’s Gospel here is not named in the other three Gospels, but by examining the lists of the Apostles in those Gospels we find the Apostle “Bartholomew” listed next to St. Philip.  A strong tendency exists in these lists to present the Apostles in the order in which Jesus called them, and since John makes a point of showing Philip and Nathanael together, the Fathers concluded that Nathanael and Bartholomew are the same person.  The Roman Canon, in its list of the Apostles, takes this for granted.  Bartholomew originated in Galilee, probably from Bethsaida, the city of Philip.  Some time after Pentecost, tradition tells us that he set off to preach the Gospel in India.  The historian Eusebius, writing in the early 300’s, records the tradition that Bartholomew brought a copy of the Gospel of St. Matthew to India and left it there after he departed.  The second century missionary St. Pantaenus, who traveled to India, discovered Christian communities in India using it.  Subsequently, Bartholomew is said to have made the journey to Armenia to preach there, where he was martyred.  The Armenian Apostolic Church, an Orthodox Church, considers both St. Jude and St. Bartholomew as its founders.  Given the prominence St. John lends to his call by the Lord Jesus, the details he provides of it, and the praise rendered him by the Lord, it seems likely that Bartholomew remained in the Holy Land for several years after Pentecost, and was known by John’s original audience. 

St. Philip’s gushing, “We have found the one about whom Moses wrote in the law, and also the prophets, Jesus son of Joseph, from Nazareth”, is quite remarkable since up to then Jesus had not performed any miracles.  This testifies to a very child-like faith on Philip’s part and contrasts with Bartholomew’s more measured reaction: “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”  At that time, Bethsaida flourished with its fishing trade, located as it was at the spot where the Jordan flowed into the Sea of Galilee.  It was significant enough that a few years before Jesus went there, Philip the Tetrarch, ruling at that time, raised the status of the town to that of polis, which allowed for self-government.  Thus, civic pride might well have prompted Bartholomew to speak contemptuously of Nazareth.  Philip, full of enthusiasm, is not dismayed by his friend’s offhand dismissal, and is convinced that Bartholomew only needed to see and hear Jesus if but for a moment to fall under his spell.  To Bartholomew’s eternal credit, he did follow Philip, although reserving his own opinion until he met Jesus.

“Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, ‘Here is a true child of Israel. There is no duplicity in him.’ ”  Presumably Peter, Andrew, James, and John, were among those to whom the Lord would have spoken here.  Bartholomew also hears his words, and does not know how to take them: his guarded reply, “How do you know me?”, contains no salutation.  The words themselves are subject to interpretation. First, the Greek text does not say “a child of Israel”, but rather “an Israelite”: the former implies an actual son of the Patriarch, while the latter means a later descendent of him.  At the time Jesus used this word, it was a political anachronism, as the kingdom of Israel had ceased to exist centuries before.  More likely, Jesus referred to his zeal for his religion, his devotion to it.  A clearer way to translate the phrase is: “Behold, a true Israelite, in whom there is no trickiness!”  Now, the Patriarch Israel, whose original name “Jacob” God had changed, was known as a trickster in his youth, even goading his older brother Esau into trading his birthright for some food.  Considering this, a “true” Israelite would indeed be one in whom there was no deceit or trickiness.  And such was the case with Jacob when he became “Israel”, that is, “a man who contends with God”, which is to say, without subtlety.  Now, this must be coupled with the Lord’s further words, “Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.”  The fig tree had great significance for the Jews going back to the time when they could rightly be called “Israelites”.  It was their sign or emblem, just as the cedar tree was for the people in the region of Tyre and Sidon (it is today featured on Lebanon’s flag), and the olive tree was for Greece.  The fig tree represents Israel.  (Knowing this helps us to understand the cursing of the fig tree in Matthew 21, 18-22).  Thus, the true Israelite could only be found “under the fig tree”.  

Bartholomew’s perception of what the Lord was saying, coupled with the miracle of the Lord seeing him from a great distance, and hidden, as it were, “under the fig tree”, evince a wonderful statement of faith, as much an outburst as anything his friend Philip could have managed: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.”  That what Jesus told him brought forth such an exclamation leads us to wonder what more the words of the Lord meant to Bartholomew, but we have no way of knowing what that might be.  Later commentators speculate the Bartholomew was himself a rabbi or even a philosopher, who was thinking about or praying to God for the Messiah at the time of the Lord’s seeing him.  Jesus responds with an outburst of his own: “ ‘Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than this.’  And he said to him, ‘Amen, amen, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.’ ”  Jesus is revealing to his future Apostle that he is something more than a mere “rabbi”, and that the new Israel will not be a physical entity but a spiritual reality.

The Twenty-First Sunday of Ordinary Time, August 23, 2020

So far, all of us priests here at Blessed Sacrament feel pretty well.  We should know soon whether any of us test positive for the coronavirus.  Please continue to pray for us so that we can resume our work here.

Matthew 16:13–20

Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Philippi and he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter said in reply, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus said to him in reply, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Then he strictly ordered his disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.

The great question at the heart of each of the Gospels is, Who is he?  Each of the Gospels can be read as an attempt to answer this question in ways persuasive to the original readers or hearers.  That is, St. Matthew, in answering this question for his Jewish or Jewish Christian audience, puts forward the Lord as the legitimate successor to Moses and the prophets, and as the one who fulfills the prophesies pertaining to the Messiah.  Matthew presents him as preaching and teaching, just as Moses and the prophets, but his teaching is divinely authenticated by powerful miracles.  St. Mark, writing for a Gentile Christian audience of recent converts, emphases the powerful works performed by the Lord Jesus.  This appealed to the former worshippers of such gods as  Hercules and Apollo.  But Mark shows that the Lord goes way beyond these fictional figures in that he is historical — he truly walked the earth not long before, and that his works were greater than those of these gods, especially in that he rose from the dead by his own power.  And very significantly, his works consisted of acts of mercy and healing.  This was no mere hero: this was a Savior, and his salvation extended to all who believed in him.

In the midst of his miracles, authoritative preaching, and parables, Jesus poses the question to his Apostles.  This marks a turning point for them.  Heretofore they had followed.  Now they must believe. “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”  No leader asks his followers such a question.  To do so would show a fatal lack of confidence in himself to his followers. It is as if he is checking his principles against what the polls say the people want them to be.  Such a person is not a leader but an opportunist willing to hire himself out as the puppet of powerful forces solely to gain personal power.  But Jesus asks this question in order to set up his next question, to them.  He wants the Apostles to understand how they are different from the others who follow.  They are to be the first believers, and the first teachers — and something more.

The Apostles have listened to the crowds and spoken with them and they have even discussed this question among themselves: “But the men wondered, saying: ‘What manner of man is this, for the winds and the sea obey him?’ ” (Matthew 8, 27).  They answer him that which they are certain he already knows full well: ““Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”  They have have never known Jesus to waste a word, to speak an idly, and so they wonder what he will say next.  He does not leave them long in suspense: “But who do you say that I am?”  Today, we answer this question in a formal way at holy Mass when we profess our faith with the recitation of the Nicene Creed.  It is a simple act to perform.  We say it in unison with a crowd.  If we miss saying a word, no one around us, let alone the priest in the sanctuary, notices.  We have said the Creed so often that we can spout it off without even realizing that we are doing it, especially if we are amongst others reciting it.  But in the moment Jesus posed this question to his Apostles, no such creed existed.  No set words could be summoned up for the occasion.  Whoever spoke must do so from his heart.

It was Simon, the son of John, the fisherman from Bethsaida, the most zealous of the Apostles, who spoke up: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  

We see the monumental nature of his answer in what “the Christ, the Son of the living God” answers him: “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.”  These words ought to astonish us even today.  God had not spoken to a human being in this way before except on one occasion, to the Virgin Mary, through an angel.  What the Lord Jesus says to this man in these and the following words he did not say to Abraham, to Moses, or to any of the Prophets — indeed, not even to his other Apostles at any later time.  What the Lord does here with Simon, the son of John, the fisherman, reverberates throughout the future of human history.  It is “my Heavenly Father” who has revealed this — the divinity of his Son — to you.  By extension, we can say that the Father reveals this to anyone who believes in the divinity of the Son, but it happened here first, and it receives a dramatic confirmation from the Son himself.

“And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.”  The Lord has changed the names of various Apostles before, or given them nicknames.  But the changing of this name signifies a great mystery, and we must compare what the Lord does here to what he did when he changed Abram’s name to Abraham.  On that occasion, God told him: “Neither shall your name be called any more Abram: but you shall be called Abraham: because I have made you a father of many nations” 

(Genesis 17, 5).  “Abram” is a compound of two Hebrew words that mean together “exalted father”, or, “lofty father”, whereas Abraham literally means “father of many”.  The name change signifies the changing of the person and of his destiny.  The former Simon (a name related to the Hebrew verb “to hear”) now becomes a rock for the Church of God (cf. Matthew 7, 24-25).  The name would also seem to speak of Peter’s character: rough, rugged, solid, just as “sons of thunder” did of the youthful zealousness of James and John.

“And the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.”  The Greek word translated here as “netherworld” is actually “Hades”.  Was the original Hebrew word Jesus used “Sheol”?  We do not know.  Here, Hades might be understood as a figure for death, for this was the name of the ruler of the underworld in Greek mythology.  Since it was also the name of that realm, the Lord could have been speaking of the kingdom of the dead, but this is a very Greek concept.  A vast difference exists between Sheol and Hades.  In Sheol, the place where the souls of the dead went before the Resurrection of the Lord, one had hope of sharing in that Resurrection.  No hope existed for those in Hades.  The Greeks knew it as their final destination.  To understand what the Lord meant when he said the word translated as “Hades”, we have to look at the only other place in Matthew where this term comes up, when the Lord is quoted as saying, “And you, Capharnaum, shalt you be exalted up to heaven? You shall go down even unto Hades” (Matthew 11, 23).  That is to say, the hell of the damned, as the Fathers tell us.  “Not prevail”.  This can be understood in two ways.  The gates of hell can be seen as besieging the kingdom of heaven, or, better, the kingdom of heaven can be seen as besieging hell, and that hell’s gates will not hold against the angels and saints of God.  That is to say, the Church will snatch souls threatened with damnation and convert them so that they become saints.  That is to say, all of us.

We ought to think about St. Peter more than we do.  Even the bits and pieces we learn of him in the Scriptures help us to see what a most remarkable man he was.  And we ought to give thanks to the Father for revealing the truth about the Son to him, and to the Holy Spirit for prompting him to speak so boldly.

Saturday in the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time, August 22, 2020

One of our priests here at Blessed Sacrament has tested positive for the Coronavirus.  This means that he is quarantined to his room for the next two weeks, and we three others will be quarantined to the parish campus for the length of that time.  We will be tested in the next couple of days.  Please keep us in your prayers!

Matthew 23:1-12

Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples, saying, “The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses. Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example. For they preach but they do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens hard to carry and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them. All their works are performed to be seen. They widen their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels. They love places of honor at banquets, seats of honor in synagogues, greetings in marketplaces, and the salutation ‘Rabbi.’ As for you, do not be called ‘Rabbi.’ You have but one teacher, and you are all brothers. Call no one on earth your father; you have but one Father in heaven. Do not be called ‘Master’; you have but one master, the Christ. The greatest among you must be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

The Lord Jesus continues to explain to the people that the scribes and Pharisees have taught them merely their own interpretation of the law, which serves to provide these men with a certain authority over them.  Particularly, they shape the people’s expectations of the Messiah.  Yet their school of thought had only existed for a couple of hundred years, and certainly had no claim to have been founded by the prophets, let alone by Moses.  Nor can the scribes and Pharisees point to any signs of divine sanction or favor, as by miracles.  They became the dominant school for the interpretation of the law and the prophets largely through political maneuvering.  For this reason, the Lord Jesus says that they “have taken their seat on the chair of Moses”, as though to say that they have usurped it.  Because of the void that would exist without them, the Lord counsels the people to “do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you”, that is, that which is not plainly contrary to belief in God and to morals.  However, “Do not follow their example” — do not act as they do, for “they preach but they do not practice.”  In doing this, he offers himself as the one for whom God does show his signs of divine sanction and favor, and who does practice what he preaches.  He shows that he is not simply one alternative to the Pharisees, but the divinely approved successor to Moses and the prophets — indeed, the one who would fulfill them.  The Lord does not simply spout “human traditions” (Mark 7, 8) but tells what he has “seen with my Father”, rebuking the Pharisees for doing “the things that you have seen with your father”, the devil (John 8, 38).  

The Lord gives examples of the abuses the Pharisees commit as teachers in order to give themselves an air of authority: they interpret the law in such a way that it becomes onerous to keep, they make it a practice to flaunt good works, they parade around in exaggerated religious costume, they seek the best places at feasts as though they deserved them, and they enjoy being addressed as “rabbi”.  In reality they make a parody of themselves as “teachers”.  The Lord Jesus then turns to his disciples and instructs them that they are to sharply contrast themselves with these men.  The disciples are not to put on a show with their behavior.  They are to keep in mind that they are servants, not masters, and that they exist to preach the word not of men for their own advantage, but of God for the eternal profit of those to whom they speak.  To emphasize this, Jesus uses the common device of hyperbole: “Do not be called ‘Rabbi’, for you have but one teacher.”  That is to say, they are not to teach their own doctrines or opinions, but only those of Christ: they are teachers in the Teacher.  Likewise, “Call no one on earth your father; you have but one Father in heaven.”  God is the Father.  All others are fathers in the Father.  God is the only true Father, “from whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named” (Ephesians 3, 15).  Finally, having spoken in specifics, the Lord lays down the general principle: “The greatest among you must be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”  The work of the teacher, the father, and the master, is service to others: “Freely have you received, freely give” (Matthew 10, 8).  This is done not in imitation of mere men such as the scribes and the Pharisees, but in imitation of the Son of God: “For I have given you an example, that as I have done to you, so you do also” (John 13, 15).

All the Lord’s followers are called to teach in various ways, according to their calling.  Let us keep in mind as we do so, by word and example, that we are offering service in the Service of our Lord.