Friday in the Fourth Week of Lent, April 1, 2022

John 7, 1-2, 10; 25-30

Jesus moved about within Galilee; he did not wish to travel in Judea, because the Jews were trying to kill him. But the Jewish feast of Tabernacles was near.  But when his brothers had gone up to the feast, he himself also went up, not openly but as it were in secret.

Some of the inhabitants of Jerusalem said, “Is he not the one they are trying to kill? And look, he is speaking openly and they say nothing to him. Could the authorities have realized that he is the Christ? But we know where he is from. When the Christ comes, no one will know where he is from.” So Jesus cried out in the temple area as he was teaching and said, “You know me and also know where I am from. Yet I did not come on my own, but the one who sent me, whom you do not know, is true. I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.” So they tried to arrest him, but no one laid a hand upon him, because his hour had not yet come.

This second pilgrimage of the Lord to Jerusalem during his Public Life, which begins here, is momentous for his freeing the woman caught in adultery, his claiming that “Before Abraham came to be, I am”, and his healing of the man born blind.  In his preaching, the Lord continues and elaborates on themes he spoke on in chapter 5.  If we step back from our awe of his words and actions here, we note that he does not act like the Messiah many of his followers expect him to be.  He does not try to build alliances with the leaders on Jerusalem, nor he does not seek the admiration of the crowds.  He does nothing to further a political or military movement.  In fact, he goes out of his way to denounce the leaders there and to antagonize not only the people of Jerusalem but his own disciples.

The inhabitants of Jerusalem have seen few of his miracles since the Lord only came there a few times a year for Passover and did not stay long, but they have heard of his reputation.  When they saw him preaching in the Temple during the feast, they questioned among themselves: “Could the authorities have realized that he is the Christ?”  The authorities have not acted openly against him, so this led to them wondering if they acquiesced to his preaching.  As we know, to this point the Jewish leadership wanted to arrest and even kill him, but were afraid to do anything which might cause a riot or uprising.  They knew their own restive people well.  Forty years later, even with the Romans pouring into Jerusalem during the siege, Jewish groups were fighting each other.  

“But we know where he is from. When the Christ comes, no one will know where he is from.”  These Jews are murmuring to each other while listening to the Lord preach.  What they say here interests us because the Pharisees interfered Micah 5, 2: “And you Bethlehem Ephrata, are a little one among the thousands of Judah, out of you shall he come forth unto me that is to be the ruler in Israel: and his going forth is from the beginning, from the days of eternity”, as explaining the origin of the Messiah.  These Jews seem ignorant of this.  We see that there was variance in the expectations for the Messiah.  “You know me and also know where I am from. Yet I did not come on my own, but the one who sent me, whom you do not know, is true.”  The Lord explains how it is possible both ideas might be true, that they might know where he is from and that they might not.  He speaks of having been sent.  In fact, they did not know who sent him: “whom you do not know”.  But Jesus knew who sent him: “I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.”  It is a remarkable way of speaking.  Who among us could seriously talk of having been “sent” into the world?  In this way the Lord teaches concerning his pre-existence with the Father and also that he was given a mission by him.  One is not “sent” somewhere without purpose.  

The Son was sent into the world in order to save us from sin, and he did not spare himself in accomplishing this.  He then sent the Apostles into the far regions of the world to teach this to the human race and to assist their salvation through the sacraments.  You and I are likewise sent to live out the Gospel and to assist in our own way in the salvation of the world.

 Thursday in the Fourth Week of Lent, March 31, 2022

John 5, 31-47

Jesus said to the Jews: “If I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is not true. But there is another who testifies on my behalf, and I know that the testimony he gives on my behalf is true. You sent emissaries to John, and he testified to the truth. I do not accept human testimony, but I say this so that you may be saved. He was a burning and shining lamp, and for a while you were content to rejoice in his light. But I have testimony greater than John’s. The works that the Father gave me to accomplish, these works that I perform testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me. Moreover, the Father who sent me has testified on my behalf. But you have never heard his voice nor seen his form, and you do not have his word remaining in you, because you do not believe in the one whom he has sent. You search the Scriptures, because you think you have eternal life through them; even they testify on my behalf. But you do not want to come to me to have life. I do not accept human praise; moreover, I know that you do not have the love of God in you. I came in the name of my Father, but you do not accept me; yet if another comes in his own name, you will accept him. How can you believe, when you accept praise from one another and do not seek the praise that comes from the only God? Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father: the one who will accuse you is Moses, in whom you have placed your hope. For if you had believed Moses, you would have believed me, because he wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”

I think that for most people, the hardest parts of the Bible to read are the genealogies in the Old Testament, St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, and certain sections, like this one, from the Gospel according to St. John.  And then there is the whole book of Revelation which intimidates potential readers with the mysterious creatures and monsters as well as the numbers with their opaque meanings.  St. John records teachings of the Lord that the other Evangelists mostly did not, preferring his simpler, shorter sayings for their particular audiences.  It is possible that St. John’s intended readers were not any more learned than those of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but it is clear at the very beginning of his Gospel that John is fascinated by certain terms the Lord Jesus used in his teaching, and certain themes that he developed during the three years of his Public Life: “spirit”, “birth”, “bread”, “water”, and “life” are some of these.  “Testimony” is also very important to John.  He emphasizes more than once in his Gospel that he is reporting on what he himself had seen.  He repeats this claim even in the first of his three Letters.  He speaks of the Word of life “which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled” (1 John 1, 1).  He himself as seen and heard and touched the Son of God-made-man, and, as he quotes the Lord in the present Gospel reading, this One himself explains how the Father testifies of him through the works which he does.

In the reading, the Lord Jesus says, “If I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is not true.”. That is, he is not asking the Jews to accept anything he says about himself regarding his divinity.  However, “There is another who testifies on my behalf.”  This is “the Father who sent me”.  He “testifies” through the miracles which his Son performs.  If Jesus were a fraud making extraordinary claims, he would not be able to give sight to the blind or cure the lame.  These are works which require divine power.  A man without God’s favor will certainly not be able to perform them: “The works that the Father gave me to accomplish, these works that I perform testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me.”  On another occasion he will plead, “If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though you will not believe me, believe the works: that you may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in the Father” (John 10, 37-38).   In the Lord’s insistence that his Father bears him witness, he even discounts, rhetorically, the testimony of one who was merely human — John the Baptist: “You sent emissaries to John, and he testified to the truth. I do not accept human testimony.”

He explains to the unbelieving Jews why they do not believe in him: it is because they do not believe the Father’s testimony, for, “you have never heard his voice nor seen his form, and you do not have his word remaining in you.”  They believe in a god of their own making and identify him as the God of Abraham and Moses rather than learn from the Law and the Prophets who God really is, for his “voice” and “form” are contained therein.  Indeed, they speak of the Son as well: “You search the Scriptures, because you think you have eternal life through them; even they testify on my behalf. But you do not want to come to me to have life.”  That is, the Pharisees “search” the Scriptures for validation of what they want to believe, but instead they should be examining their beliefs to see if they are in accord with God’s revelation.  If they studied God’s word carefully and honestly, they would know that it points to him, Jesus, as his Son, but their pride keeps them from doing this, lest what they learn tell them what they do not want to hear: “You do not want to come to me to have life.”

“Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father: the one who will accuse you is Moses, in whom you have placed your hope.”  The Pharisees declare that what they teach is founded securely on the Law which came from God through Moses.  This is not so because their interpretation of the Law deviates severely from the Law.  At the Judgment, Moses will not speak on their behalf to Almighty God; he will accuse them of using the Law to further their own interests.  The Lord tells them, “If you had believed Moses, you would have believed me, because he wrote about me.”  That is, the words Moses wrote would have led them to a far different and accurate understanding of who the Messiah was.  Moses did not write about the Lord in the explicit way that Isaiah did, but he laid the groundwork for the later prophetic statements he and the other Prophets would make.  “But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”  The Lord Jesus says “you do not believe his writings”, not “you do not understand his writings”.  The first is a matter of reading in bad faith and the second is part of the human condition, a limitation.  The first is a malicious act of disbelief and the second is a matter of weakness.  They studied the Law, but they did not “believe” it ad so they would not believe in Jesus either.  The Pharisees believed that they were the masters of the Law, not its servants, just as certain scholars today, deep in their hearts, believe that they are masters of the Word of God and not its servants.  They change its meaning to suit their tastes and the presuppositions that come from their pride.  Belief “raises” the thing or person believed in while “lowering” the believer.  The believer is always the servant of what or whom he believes in.  But the Pharisees would have themselves be the masters.

If we believe in Jesus Christ, then we are his servants and he is our Master.  Let us lower ourselves however we can so that we may serve him well, and have the life he came to give us.

 Wednesday in the Fourth Week of Lent, March 30, 2022

John 5:17-30

Jesus answered the Jews: “My Father is at work until now, so I am at work.” For this reason they tried all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the sabbath but he also called God his own father, making himself equal to God.  Jesus answered and said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, the Son cannot do anything on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for what he does, the Son will do also. For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything that he himself does, and he will show him greater works than these, so that you may be amazed. For just as the Father raises the dead and gives life, so also does the Son give life to whomever he wishes. Nor does the Father judge anyone, but he has given all judgment to the Son, so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life and will not come to condemnation, but has passed from death to life. Amen, amen, I say to you, the hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For just as the Father has life in himself, so also he gave to the Son the possession of life in himself.   And he gave him power to exercise judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not be amazed at this, because the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and will come out, those who have done good deeds to the resurrection of life, but those who have done wicked deeds to the resurrection of condemnation. I cannot do anything on my own; I judge as I hear, and my judgment is just, because I do not seek my own will but the will of the one who sent me.”

The Lord Jesus is speaking here to the Jewish leaders who hunted for him after he healed the lame man by the pool, as recounted in the Gospel reading for yesterday’s Mass.  It is not immediately clear whether they desire to kill Jesus because he cured on the Sabbath or because he told the cured man to pick up his mat and go, thus encouraging him to break the Sabbath according to their reckoning.  The other Evangelists make it clear that the Jewish leaders hated him for curing on the Sabbath.  But by both curing and causing someone to carry something on the Sabbath, the Lord was challenging the Pharisees about their interpretation of the Law.  On the one hand, there is a miracle that could only be performed through the divine will and power.  On the other, an apparent breaking of the Law.  But rather than reconsider their interpretation of the Law, they ignored the miracle and clung to their own ideas.  This ought to remind us of the behavior of the lame man after the Lord healed him: he seems to forget the marvelous sign of God’s mercy and rather than examine his life so as to live in accord with God’s will, he prefers to cling to his sinfulness so that Jesus warns him of the consequences for doing this.

The Jewish leaders charged the Lord with “breaking” the Sabbath.  “Breaking” is perhaps not the best word to elucidate their meaning.  The Greek word actually means “loosing” or “destroying”.  When we today speak of someone “breaking” the law, we mean on one occasion, as in, The man broke the law when he stole the necklace.  However, the meaning in the Gospel text is that the whole Sabbath law was destroyed.  The Jewish leaders saw the Lord’s actions as invalidating the law on the Sabbath that had its origins in God’s creation of the world.  For them, this amounted to a challenge against the rule of God and the Law that made them the Jews his people.  The Lord answers this charge when he says, “My Father is at work until now, so I am at work.”  The Greek text does not make the first clause causative of the second, but joins them together with the conjunction “and”.  This allows the Jews to understand that he is claiming equality with God.  The wording also implies that the Son, equal to the Father, is not ruled over by the Father.  The Father does not cause the Son to work by his own work, but the Son works of his own will.  Equal in nature, and distinct as Persons.  Jesus appears to contradict Exodus 7, 11: “In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them, and rested on the seventh day: therefore the Lord blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it”, explaining the basis for the Third Commandment.  For the Pharisees, the “rest” ordered by the commandment meant almost no activity at all, though, as the Lord pointed out to them on another occasion, “On the sabbath days the priests in the temple break the sabbath, and are without blame.”  He then added, “But I tell you that there is here a greater than the Temple” (Matthew 12, 5-6).  The point Jesus is making is that the commandment applies to human beings, not to God, and he is God.  Furthermore, God was said to have “rested” once, but he is not said to have rested ever again.  The Sabbath was made for human beings, not for God.  The Jewish leaders knew exactly what he was saying: “They tried all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the sabbath but he also called God his own Father, making himself equal to God.”  

“Amen, amen, I say to you, the Son cannot do anything on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for what he does, the Son will do also.”  The Lord Jesus explains what he meant in referring to himself as the Son of God in these next several verses.  He wants to make clear that he does not claim to be the Father though he is equal to the Father.  And he reassures the Jews that the Son does not depart from the will of the Father, but does what he does.  For us, as the Son does only what he sees the Father doing, so should we do only what we see the Son doing.

 Tuesday in the Fourth Week of Lent, March 29, 2022

John 5:1-16

There was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem at the Sheep Gate a pool called in Hebrew Bethesda, with five porticoes. In these lay a large number of ill, blind, lame, and crippled. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been ill for a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be well?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; while I am on my way, someone else gets down there before me.” Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your mat, and walk.” Immediately the man became well, took up his mat, and walked.  Now that day was a sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who was cured, “It is the sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.” He answered them, “The man who made me well told me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.’“ They asked him, “Who is the man who told you, ‘Take it up and walk’?” The man who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away, since there was a crowd there. After this Jesus found him in the Temple area and said to him, “Look, you are well; do not sin any more, so that nothing worse may happen to you.” The man went and told the Jews that Jesus was the one who had made him well. Therefore, the Jews began to persecute Jesus because he did this on a sabbath.

The Pool of Bethesda with the five porticoes was the lowermost of two pools in Jerusalem, the upper pool being a reservoir for the city.  It fed the lower pool, which is conjectured to have been originally meant for ritual washing.  The porticoes were of a wall that separated the two pools.  The fact that the water of the lower one was widely considered to possess healing properties is attested by the Romans building a temple to their god of medicine Aesculapius on the location after Jerusalem was destroyed following the second Jewish revolt of 132-136 A.D.  In the years after the legalization of Christianity, a church was built on the site, later destroyed by the Moslems, who built another structure in its place.  For centuries thereafter the site of the pools was forgotten and by the nineteenth century there was doubt about their existence because no ruins of them could be found.  Finally, in 1888, the German archaeologist Konrad Schick discovered the upper pool, and in the twentieth century the second pool, mentioned by St. John in his Gospel, was discovered and excavated.  This is a marvelous sample of how archaeology can help confirm and explain what we find in the Scriptures.  Particularly, this helps confirm the eyewitness testimony of John, as author of the Gospel, to the deeds of the Lord Jesus.

The name of the pool, “Bethesda”, means “house of mercy”, appropriately enough, for “a large number of ill, blind, lame, and crippled” lay near it in hopes of being cured of their conditions through washing in the water there.  Some old Greek texts of the Gospel contain the following, by way of explanation: “And an angel of the Lord descended at certain times into the pond and the water was moved. And he that went down first into the pond after the motion of the water was made whole of whatsoever infirmity he lay under.”  This passage is found in the Latin Vulgate of St. Jerome and in the Douay Rheims it is found in John 5, 4.  Other Greek texts do not have this verse and most modern translations do not include it.  However, without this verse it is impossible to understand the meaning of the lame man’s words to Jesus: “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up.”  

Many of us picture this cure of the infirm man as taking place in the Temple since after the healing we read that “Jesus found him in the Temple area”, but the pool is quite separate from it.  We should think, rather, of an open area in Jerusalem with the sun shining down on the multitude of sick people lying around this pool.  “One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.”  We read here and there in the Gospels of people having suffered terribly for many years at the time the Lord comes to them.  For instance, there is the woman with the blood flow for twelve years (cf. Luke 8, 43-48); the lame man in this account; and the man born blind (cf. John 9), who had grown into adulthood before his encounter with the Lord.  For us, this signifies the long centuries in which the world waited for its Savior and also the long centuries since his Ascension as we have waited for his return in glory.  More personally, we see in these cases how the Lord comes to help us when we persevere in hope.  

“Do you want to be well?” The Greek literally says, “Do you want to become whole?” which is has a different meaning: there is no action required in wanting to be well.  It might as well be a daydream.  But wanting to “become whole” carries consequences.  A person who wants to become whole must perform some action in order to achieve wholeness.  The man knows that Jesus means this, for he offers an excuse for why he has failed to become well after all these years: “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; while I am on my way, someone else gets down there before me.” This is a mere excuse because someone has been sustaining him all these years.  He probably cannot get to the street by himself to beg, and if he could, there seems no reason why he could not move himself to a more advantageous spot near the pool.  If he did have family to help him by bringing him food, then they could just as well have spent a few days with him to help him get to the pool so he could wash in it at the right time.  The man here signifies all the folks down through the ages who have claimed that they wanted to be helped but would not lift a finger to use the assistance that was available.  Spiritually, he is those who make excuses not to go to Mass on Sundays, or go to confession after sinning, or pray for their needs until it is too late.

The Lord loved this man despite everything, just as he loves us, and he said to him, “Rise, take up your mat, and walk.”  St. John remarks that the man became well “immediately”.  This was a more complete healing than he could have wished for from bathing in the pool.  Rising up, he took up his mat and walked.  We should note that the word translated here as “walked” can also mean “to conduct one’s life”.  He seems to have uttered no word of thanks, placing him in the large company of people who did not think to thank the Lord for the cures with which he healed them.  He did, however, go to the Temple area.  He is evidently not praying there, though.  Perhaps he was just strolling around, enjoying his newfound strength and health.  “Look, you are well; do not sin any more, so that nothing worse may happen to you.”  The verb “do not sin” is a present active imperative and has the sense of continuation: Do not be sinning, or, Do not continue sinning.  Perhaps when Jesus sees the man again, he is sinning or has resumed sinning.  The warning the Lord issues has the force of having caught the man in the act.  The irony here would be that the Jewish leaders accused the man of sinning by carrying his mat on the Sabbath, which he was obliged to do if he was not to lose it.  But here the Lord, who knows what is in the heart — “he knew what was in man” (John 2, 25) — speaks rightly to him of sin.  Since the word translated as “walked” also means “to conduct one’s life”, we can think of this in spiritual terms: that the Lord has come upon someone steeped in sin, forgives him, and tells him to take up his life again, free of sin; and then coming to the person at a later date, he finds him going back to his old ways and he warns him to give this up, as though saying, Remember how you were before.  If you do not stay out of the sin that got you into trouble before, something worse than that will happen to you.

“The man went and told the Jews that Jesus was the one who had made him well.”  The man utters no thanks, but instead goes off to the Jewish leaders to point out Jesus as the one they were looking for.  This man shows how we often repay kindness with ingratitude and even scorn.  For all that, the Lord still laid down his life on the Cross for him.  We can ask ourselves whether the man treated the Redemption the Lord won for him in the same way as he treated his physical cure.

 Monday in the Fourth Week of Lent, March 28, 2022

John 4:43-54

At that time Jesus left [Samaria] for Galilee. For Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his native place. When he came into Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, since they had seen all he had done in Jerusalem at the feast; for they themselves had gone to the feast.
Then he returned to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water wine. Now there was a royal official whose son was ill in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, who was near death. Jesus said to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.” The royal official said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” Jesus said to him, “You may go; your son will live.” The man believed what Jesus said to him and left. While the man was on his way back, his slaves met him and told him that his boy would live. He asked them when he began to recover. They told him, “The fever left him yesterday, about one in the afternoon.” The father realized that just at that time Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live,” and he and his whole household came to believe. Now this was the second sign Jesus did when he came to Galilee from Judea.

St. John’s use of the phrase, “A prophet has no honor in his native place”, brings to mind Matthew 13, 57 where the Lord Jesus applies it during a visit to his home town of Nazareth.  John does not link the phrase to Nazareth.  Instead, he uses the phrase as though the Lord’s homeland wasJudea.  This seems very odd, and appears to tell us that John was unaware that the Lord’s “native place” was Nazareth.  But in fact, the Lord was born in Bethlehem, not Nazareth, so his native place (the Greek word should be translated “fatherland”) really was Bethlehem in Judea.  The Lord’s spoken testimony that Judea was his native place indicates that others knew this also.  This puts a different spin on how we think about what the people of his time knew about him. If it was widely known that despite his Galilean accent he was from Judea, and specifically from Bethlehem, people would have been much more likely to see this as proof that he was the Messiah, for that was where the Messiah was said in the Scriptures to be born (cf. Micah 5, 2).  The usual idea is that since we do not hear the Lord ever claiming to have been born in that town, most if not all of his followers would have been ignorant of this fact.  That the leading Pharisees did not seem to know this when others do tells us of how little they had sought to understand who he was: “Search the Scriptures, and see that a prophet does not rise out of Galilee” (John 7, 52).  If they had searched his life, they might have learned something.

“When he came into Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him.”  John says that Jesus went back to Cana, where he must have had some connection, perhaps through the bride and groom whose marriage feast he had attended.  Pointedly, he did not return to Nazareth.  He had left that town months before and taken up residence in Capernaum. 

“Now there was a royal official whose son was ill in Capernaum.”  This sounds somewhat like the cure of the centurion’s slave as recorded in Matthew 8, 5-13.  The point of the story as The other Evangelists tell it is to praise the faith of the Gentile.  Here, the request of the royal official is met with, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.”  The official, abashed, repeated his request.  Strangely, the word translated as “slave” in the other Gospels is here translated as “son”.  It is the same word.  The Lord’s words shock us with their apparent lack of compassion, but he is speaking to the crowd, not to the man.  The English translator tries to make this clear by inserting “you people” here, but “people” is not on the Greek.  This is proved by the fact that the second person form of the verbs “you see” and “you will not believe” is in the plural, whereas if the Lord were speaking to the man, they would have been in the singular.  It is safe to assume also that John leaves out some details, such as comments by the crowd.  For instance, St. Luke informs us, in his account of this event, that the Jews insisted that Jesus perform this cure: “They besought him earnestly, saying to him: ‘He is worthy that thou shouldest do this for him. For he loves our nation: and he has built us a synagogue.’ ”  It is likely that the Lord was responding to both their impertinence and the lack of faith on their part, for which he condemned them later: “And you Capernaum, shall you be exalted up to heaven? You shall go down even unto hell. For if in Sodom had been wrought the miracles that have been wrought in you, perhaps it would have remained unto this day” (Matthew 11, 23).  That is, they believed he could heal, but not that he was the Christ, whose words they should obey.  In contrast to the obstinacy of the citizens of the town, which must have persisted even to the time when John wrote his Gospel (so that it was well-known to the early Christians), we learn that the man “and his whole household came to believe.”   

Through our own searching of the Sacred Scriptures we can know much about the Lord Jesus so that our faith in him might grow, and help is maintain our belief even in times of trial.

 The Fourth Sunday of Lent, March 27, 2022

Luke 15:1–3, 11–32

Tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to Jesus, but the Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So to them Jesus addressed this parable: “A man had two sons, and the younger son said to his father, ‘Father give me the share of your estate that should come to me.’ So the father divided the property between them. After a few days, the younger son collected all his belongings and set off to a distant country where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation. When he had freely spent everything, a severe famine struck that country, and he found himself in dire need. So he hired himself out to one of the local citizens who sent him to his farm to tend the swine. And he longed to eat his fill of the pods on which the swine fed, but nobody gave him any. Coming to his senses he thought, ‘How many of my father’s hired workers have more than enough food to eat, but here am I, dying from hunger. I shall get up and go to my father and I shall say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers.”’ So he got up and went back to his father. While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him. His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son.’ But his father ordered his servants, ‘Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Take the fattened calf and slaughter it. Then let us celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.’ Then the celebration began. Now the older son had been out in the field and, on his way back, as he neared the house, he heard the sound of music and dancing. He called one of the servants and asked what this might mean. The servant said to him, ‘Your brother has returned and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’ He became angry, and when he refused to enter the house, his father came out and pleaded with him. He said to his father in reply, ‘Look, all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders; yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends. But when your son returns who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fattened calf.’ He said to him, ‘My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours. But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.’ ”

The way in which this Gospel reading is assembled helps us to understand a key point in the Lord’s parable.  The first lines of the reading tell us that the Pharisees objected to some of the people the Lord chose to eat with: “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”  They complained because, in their way of interpreting the Scriptures, these “sinners” were spiritually unclean and contaminated anything they came in contact with.  They distorted the laws concerning ritual purity so that they clashed with the Middle Eastern imperative of hospitality, by which a person fed those who came to their tent or door.  While originating in a society that was mainly nomadic and based on the fact that we all need help to survive the cruelty of man and the rigors of nature, it passed into later times and a more urbanized society.  That is part of the background to the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man.  Lazarus lay outside the man’s gate and yet he was offered nothing.

The Lord ate most of the with his Apostles, usually outside of the towns and cities, but on occasion he was invited to dinner and so he ate with with tax collectors, public sinners such as prostitutes, wealthy disciples, and even Pharisees.  He was shown hospitality and did not begrudge it to anyone else.  For the Pharisees, to greet a sinner was to accept him and his sinfulness.  To eat with one was to share in his sin and to become unclean too.  We might wonder why the Pharisees cared about the company with whom Jesus chose to eat.  The Pharisees wanted to debunk the idea that Jesus was a prophet or the Messiah.  They wanted to invalidate his teaching because it refuted theirs.  The Messiah they taught about would be a leader who would crush sinners and the Romans alike.  But they were only creating a Messiah to their liking, not examining the Law and the Prophets to learn of the one whom God would actually send.

The Lord sets up the Parable of the Prodigal Son in such a way that the climax comes down to the question of whether the older son will join in the festivities honoring the return of his sinful  and unclean brother.  It is a difficult question for him.  He wants to do as his father bids him and yet he is appalled by his brother and the impurity in which he has lived: his brother had “swallowed up your property with prostitutes”, he reminds his father.  He does not bring up the business of living with pigs, which he may not have known about.  The elder son cannot seem to set aside his loathing of impurity, yet in his hesitation at joining his brother at his father’s request, he disobeys the Fourth Commandment, which mandates honoring one’s parents.  Breaking a clear commandment of the Law would make the older son a sinner with whom others should not eat, but he does not see this.  He is wrapped up in his personal notions about purity.

We do not know if the older son relented and went into the house or not.  The Lord leaves it to us to finish the Parable, just as he left it to the Pharisees to ponder their own reactions.  

We must love as the Lord directs us to love.

 Saturday in the Third Week of Lent, March 26, 2022

With a great number of Christian’s throughout the world, I prayed today for the consecration of Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Luke 18:9-14

Jesus addressed this parable to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else. “Two people went up to the temple area to pray; one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector. The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself, ‘O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity - greedy, dishonest, adulterous - or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.’ But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner.’ I tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

“Two people went up to the Temple area to pray; one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector.”  This first line of the Lord’s parable would have caught his hearers off-guard.  The first part was all right: “Two people went up to the Temple area to pray”, and the identity of one of these men as a Pharisee would not have surprised anyone.  But the idea of a tax collector going up to the Temple to pray was ridiculous.  It was like saying that a house had gotten up and walked away.  Tax collectors were not known as religious men.  They were hated by all for collaborating with the Romans and, on top of that, extorting money above what was required.  Examples of tax collectors converting did exist — St. Matthew was one — but for the most part they were thought of as wicked and they did little to convince anyone otherwise.  The way the Lord phrases the opening to his parable makes it sound as though the Pharisee and the tax collector were traveling together, but that would be very unlikely.

“The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself.”  A more literal translation would be, “The Pharisee, standing, was praying these words to himself.”  He did not “take up” a position.  He simply stood, which was the normal stance for praying in those days among the Jews.  The main verb “was praying” is in the imperfect, indicating that he did not say these words and then get up and leave; this meditation of his went on for some time.  The Greek text is clear that he is praying these words to himself, with the implication being that he had made an idol of himself, one of those objects that “have a mouth, but they speak not: they have eyes, but they see not. They have ears, but they hear not: neither is there any breath in their mouths” (Psalm 135, 16-17).  

“O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity — greedy, dishonest, adulterous — or even like this tax collector.”  The Pharisee is grateful that he is not like “this multitude, that knows not the Law, [and which is] accursed” (John 7, 49).  Because he is praying to himself as an idol, he gives himself credit that he has not created himself to be greedy, dishonest, and adulterous, but he does not within himself to see the arrogance, the contempt, and the tendency to condemn that needs to be rooted out.  He says, “I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.”  The Law does not command anyone to fast twice a week.  He does this on his own but to no purpose.  The tithing is required for the upkeep of the Temple, but it is not so great a law as any of the moral laws in the Mosaic Law.  We should note that neither the fasting nor the tithing directly benefits anyone.  They do not feed the poor or assist widows and orphans.  That of which he boasts is paltry. 

“But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast.”  The Greek says, literally, “He did not wish even to raise his eyes to heaven.”  The Pharisee stood piously with his eyes lifted up and showed the world that he was praying.  The tax collector did not look like he was praying.  He did beat his breast, as though in mourning, but this was not a action typical of one praying.  “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.”  This contrasts severely with the Lord’s description of a Pharisee’s usual manner of prayer: “They think that in their much speaking they may be heard” (Matthew 6, 7).  But the tax collector’s prayer lines up well with the lean and direct prayer Jesus taught his disciples to pray.

“The latter went home justified, not the former; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”  The tax collector prayed for forgiveness and was heard, but the Pharisee’s boasting echoed within his empty soul.  He did not ask for forgiveness and was not forgiven.  And only God can “justify” or “make righteous” anyone.  The Pharisee wrongly thought that he could justify himself and so he was not, but the tax collector was justified at the time he was forgiven.  The Lord’s conclusion emphasizes the need for humility.  Humility requires an honest search of the Lord — not overly scrupulous but not indulging ourselves either.  We begin with prayer to see ourselves as others do.  It is a prayer the Pharisee could never have made. 

 The Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Friday, March 25

I had a rough morning and afternoon with lightheadedness and confusion, but I feel better now.  Please keep praying!

Luke 1:26–38

The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary. And coming to her, he said, “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.” But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his Kingdom there will be no end.” But Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” And the angel said to her in reply, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. And behold, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren; for nothing will be impossible for God.” Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

The Church calls St. Paul “the Apostle of Grace” because of his development of the doctrine of grace in his Letters, particularly in that to the Romans.  He adapts the common Greek word charis (Latin gratia), meaning “favor” or “free act of good will”, to mean the free gift of God which forgives sin and imparts divine life.  As Paul writes in Romans 5, 17: “If, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.”  Paul is speaking of the Original Sin, committed by Adam and Eve, which brought death to themselves and their descendants, as overpowered by the grace which was won for us by the Lord Jesus.  Although we do find other Apostles and Evangelists also speaking of grace, Paul emphasized it in his teaching and it became an important part of what his disciples, such as St. Luke, also taught.  

The account of the Annunciation in St. Luke’s Gospel comes across in Greek as spoken with a heavy Hebrew accent.  That is, the text reads as though it were largely translated from Hebrew into Greek.  We may account for this by considering that it was the Virgin Mary herself who related her experience of this event to Luke.  He could easily have met her among the relatively small groups of Christians that existed during that time.  Also, he must have talked to her, for after the death of her husband Joseph, only Mary would have known what had occurred when the archangel visited her.  Gabriel would have spoken to her in Hebrew or Aramaic, and Mary, who probably did not know Greek, would have spoken to Luke in one of those languages.  Luke, then, would have translated what Mary told him into Greek for his readers.  And he used the Greek charis to translate the Hebrew word Gabriel used when he addressed the Virgin Mary, which we translate as “Full of grace”.  There are those who would translate this as “Highly favored”, but Luke, the disciple of the Apostle of Grace, knew exactly what he was doing when he used the word Paul had adapted, and which his readers would also have understood. Simply put, it is impossible that what Gabriel said to Mary was, “Greetings, you who are (highly) favored”.

But this translation — “Full of grace” — does not quite suffice either.  The actual Greek word is a perfect passive participle, meaning that an action has been completed in the past and its effect is enduring.  With St. Paul’s understanding of “grace” in mind, we can see, from Gabriel’s greeting, that the Virgin Mary was given the gift of divine life at some point in the past, that this action was completed (or, “perfected”), and the effect of this gift of divine life continues in her up to the present.  She was perfected in grace at the instant of her creation and remains in that state.  This describes not only an action that was done to her but it becomes her name as well, as we can also see from Gabriel’s greeting.  He wishes her peace (“hail”) and then instead of calling her “Mary”, he calls her “the one who has been perfected in grace” (which, in Greek, is one word).  This is not simply what happened; this is who she is.  Just as Almighty God is “I am”, so Mary is “the one who has been perfected in grace”.  In fact, the more we know about sanctifying grace, the more we can know about her.  Romans 5 is a good place to start learning more.

“Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.”  In response to Gabriel’s name for her, the Virgin Mary gives her name for herself: the handmaid of the Lord.  We may see the two names as opposed to each other, for one speaks of greatness and the other of lowliness, but they are the same name in different words, for the one who is perfected in grace becomes, of her own volition, the handmaid of the Lord.  The service of God obtains for us grace, which in turn enables us to perform more and greater service for him: “To every one who has, more shall be given, and he shall abound” (Luke 19, 26).  And the Virgin Mary abounds more than any of us in the love of Almighty God.

 Thursday in the Third Week of Lent, March 24, 2022

Luke 11:14-23

Thank you for your prayers! I’m not as well today as yesterday but definitely better than I was on Monday. 

Jesus was driving out a demon that was mute, and when the demon had gone out, the mute man spoke and the crowds were amazed. Some of them said, “By the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons, he drives out demons.” Others, to test him, asked him for a sign from heaven. But he knew their thoughts and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste and house will fall against house. And if Satan is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? For you say that it is by Beelzebul that I drive out demons. If I, then, drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your own people drive them out? Therefore they will be your judges. But if it is by the finger of God that I drive out demons, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you. When a strong man fully armed guards his palace, his possessions are safe. But when one stronger than he attacks and overcomes him, he takes away the armor on which he relied and distributes the spoils. Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”

“The crowds were amazed.”  The Greek word translated as “amazed” also shows up in verses such as Matthew 27, 14, which describes Pilate’s reaction to the Lord’s silence at the charges leveled against him.  In that case the word is more often translated as “wondered exceedingly”.  Nowadays we use words like “amazed” so often that they lose something of their force.  The crowd in this passage from St. Luke’s Gospel gasps and shouts as they see the Lord casting out the demon afflicting this man.  Undoubtedly, the man had lived among these people for a long time and they had known him as the mute, taking it for granted that he would never speak again.  It is not clear where this exorcism occurred or how the Lord met this man, whether he was brought by others or if the man accosted the Lord and his Apostles as they approached a city.  Of the two possibilities, the first is more likely since there is a crowd present.  The Lord would have cast out the demon quickly, based on the other accounts of his exorcisms which the Evangelists tell us, and then the man seems to have gone his way, for we hear no more about him.

“By the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons, he drives out demons.”  Luke tells us that “some said” this. It is not certain whether “some said” this in response to this particular exorcism or if this very silly accusation came at another time but Luke fits in in here as a convenient spot for it.  The Lord shows its illogic by pointing out that if the devil is at work in his exorcisms, he is fighting against himself and he will fall; or, if the Lord does this by his own power, “the Kingdom of God has come upon you.”  Either way, it is good news, though those who made the accusation meant to attack him.  It is so ridiculous even on its face, and so perverse, that we ought to wonder if the people making it were themselves possessed.  Coming after an exorcism, this would be ironic.

“When a strong man fully armed guards his palace, his possessions are safe.”  These next few verses seem unrelated to what the Lord has just said.  St. John Chrysostom, however, wrote that the “strong man” was the devil and the “stronger man” was Christ.  The strong man’s “palace” or “dominion”, as the word has also been translated, is his reign over sinners.  Thus, when the stronger man “attacks and overcomes him”, he breaks his dominion and carries off his goods, sinners.  The stronger man “takes away the armor on which he relied”, that is, again, sinners, through whom the devil works in this world to bolster his kingdom. The stronger man then “distributes the spoils.”  Sinners freed from the devil’s grasp are “distributed” to the care of saints and angels for their guidance and assistance in attaining heaven.

“Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” The Lord speaks of “attacking” the strong man, the devil.  Those who are with the Lord join in the attack, fulfilling the Lord’s saying that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against [the Church]” (Matthew 16, 18).  But those who do not join in the attack are opposed to Christ and his Church.  The Lord does not propose any middle ground.  This brings to mind his speaking to the Christians in Laodicea: “You are neither cold nor hot. I would you were either cold or hot. But because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will begin to vomit you out of my mouth” (Revelation 3, 15–16).  The “hot” are fervent believers and the “cold” are those who are cold in their charity.  The “lukewarm” are indifferent to God’s will and so shall be expelled from God’s sight. 

 Wednesday in the Third Week of Lent, March 23, 2022

I’m doing better today than yesterday.  Still some confusion and spells of light headedness and shaking.  I am trying to stay off my feet as much as I can.  Thank you for your prayers!  Also, a reminder that Bible Study is up and running again.  We are examining the states of Christian life as we find them in the Bible: the married life, the priesthood and religious life, and the single life.

Matthew 5:17-19

Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the Kingdom of heaven. But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.”

“I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”  While the idea of “abolishing” something, such as the law and the prophets, is clear to us, less so is the meaning of “fulfilling” something.  It helps to know that the Greek word translated here as “ to fulfill” can also be translated as “to complete”.  It also helps to keep in mind that God had given the Law and the Prophets to the Israelites to govern them, but also as a sign that his Son would one day complete.  We can think of it this way: When we are watching a small child building some structure with his blocks, we might see this as a sign that he will grow up to be an engineer.  When the child does grow up and become an engineer, we can say that he has fulfilled or completed the sign we saw years before.  The Law and the Prophets in general showed the way for the New Covenant that the Lord Jesus would establish in his Blood. In doing this, the Lord sets out its terms, that is, his completion of the various laws found in the Law.  He does this, for instance, in his command for us to love our enemies as well as our friends and relatives.

The idea that the Lord was abolishing the Law and the Prophets came from the Pharisees.  In fact, he was abolishing or “overthrowing” (another meaning of the original Greek word) the false teaching of the Pharisees on the Law, and their false interpretation of the Prophets.  In their zeal for holiness, the Pharisees taught that the laws in Leviticus regarding the purification of the priests for offering sacrifice must apply to everyone.  While a regular part of the priest’s function, these laws were impractical for ordinary people.  The Pharisees made living the Law difficult for the people in other ways as well.  This is what the Lord overthrew.

“Not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place.”  The word translated here as “have taken place” is difficult to translate.  It has the overall meaning of “come into being” or “is born” and is often translated simply as the verb to-be. What the Lord refers to is his Passion, Death, and Resurrection, and also the coming of the New Heavens and the New Earth at the end of time (cf. Isaiah 66, 22).  It should be noted that the Lord means that “not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass” from the fulfilled or completed Law, the New Law of the New Covenant.  It is for this reason that we are not bound to sacrifice sheep and cattle: this sacrifice was a sign of the Sacrifice of the Lord Jesus, the Lamb of God, which is continuously offered up at Holy Mass.

“Whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.”  We who are joined to the Lord Jesus through baptism and so with him are heirs to heaven, may attain the “greatest” place there through obeying and teaching his fulfilled Law to others.  We do this by our words and deeds, fostered by our prayers.  In the ranks of heaven, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the most obedient of all and preeminent in her virtues, is accorded first place among the saints, and after her, those first teachers, the Apostles.  Third in order are the martyrs, who obeyed and taught the New Law through their sufferings and deaths, and still do so today through their example.  In fact, all the saints have obeyed and taught, and now exult and rejoice, basking in the love of God.  We too can have this is we join their company in obeying the teaching the Law of Jesus Christ.

 Tuesday in the Third Week of Lent, March 22, 2022

Matthew 18:21-35

I am in need of prayers once again. While I was setting up for Mass this morning, someone threw open a door which hit me in the head, breaking my glasses and leaving me stunned.  I was able to get through Mass, but I am not doing so well now.  I have had several concussions in my time on earth and this feels like another one.  So I’m shaking, stuttering, disoriented, and sick.  In the past these have lasted a week or so.  Maybe this one won’t be so bad.  There really is not anything to do for them except to lie down and stay quiet.  I cannot really do that right now so I will just keep going.  So please pray!

Peter approached Jesus and asked him, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times. That is why the Kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who decided to settle accounts with his servants. When he began the accounting, a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount. Since he had no way of paying it back, his master ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, his children, and all his property, in payment of the debt. At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.’ Moved with compassion the master of that servant let him go and forgave him the loan. When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a much smaller amount. He seized him and started to choke him, demanding, ‘Pay back what you owe.’ Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ But he refused. Instead, he had him put in prison until he paid back the debt. Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were deeply disturbed, and went to their master and reported the whole affair. His master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to. Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?’ Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt. So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart.”

St. Matthew makes a point to tell us that it was St. Peter who asked the Lord about forgiveness.  We can perhaps enter his thoughts as he writes this and remembers how Peter denied the Lord to a maid servant, and how in need of forgiveness Peter was.

It is hard for us to identify with the servant who owed a fabulous amount of money — hundreds of millions of dollars according to the Greek and the value of silver today.  He comes across as the greatest of fools.  His actions against his fellow servant who owed him money show us that he was a terrible bully as well.  Only for a moment do we feel any sympathy for him: when his master announces that he and his wife and children will be sold at auction as slaves to pay off the debt.  In a way, he reminds us of the parable that the Prophet Nathan told David after he had committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband killed.  Nathan speaks of a family that owned a lamb that they treated as a member of the family.  Then a rich man took it from them and roasted it as part of a dinner for friends.  The Lord wants us to feel outrage at what this servant has done in order to confront us with an image of who we become when we refuse to forgive from our heart.  We should look again at this servant and rush to forgive anyone who may have harmed us, lest Almighty God look down and see this monstrous servant when he sees us.

We must keep in mind what forgiveness means in order to do it properly.  Both in Latin and Greek the words used for “to forgive” also mean “to send away” or “to dismiss”.  We “dismiss” our personal charge against the person who has harmed us, we release him from the threat of our vengeance.  We also put away from ourselves any desire for revenge.  We then pray for the person, for the Lord commands us to pray even for our enemies.  It may not be prudent to approach this person again, as we are not obliged to put ourselves in harm’s way, but we pray for his conversion.  Our forgiveness is not dependent on anyone’s asking for it, but is a free gift we offer, in imitation of the Lord who bestows forgiveness so freely upon us.

 Monday in the Third Week of Lent, March 21, 2022

Luke 4:24-30

Jesus said to the people in the synagogue at Nazareth: “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.

St. Luke includes more details to the story of Jesus at Nazareth than either St. Matthew or St. Mark do, perhaps because the latter Evangelists we’re making the point that the Lord was rejected by his own town as a sign of how he would be rejected by his own people.  Luke, on the other hand, uses this story to explain why the Lord went to Capernaum and adopted that town for his base rather than work out of Nazareth. 

“Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place.”  The Lord Jesus may be quoting an old saying because, with the congregation against him, they would not be interested in a defense of his own but could be swayed by a recognized bit of wisdom.  Just before this the Lord quoted another saying popular at the time: “Physician, heal yourself.”  The proverb about the prophet refers especially to Jeremiah, who began to prophesy in his home town of Anathoth but was threatened with death and had to leave (cf. Jeremiah 11, 21).  Since there had been no prophet in Israel for hundreds of years, the Lord’s identifying himself as a prophet here must have disturbed the crowd very much, already in an uproar by the Lord’s declaring that Isaiah 61 was fulfilled in him.  “In the days of Elijah.”  Here the Lord compares himself to Elijah, the great defender of the worship of the true God and who worked miracles.  “During the time of Elisha the prophet.”  He next compares himself to Elisha, whose disciple Elijah was, and who cured the foreign general.  In referencing these particular deeds of the two prophets, the Lord shows that it will be the lowly and the Gentiles who will receive the Gospel.

“When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were all filled with fury.”  For us, the madness of the people seems very strange, a severe overreaction.  They are in an uproar because their neighbor, Jesus the son of Joseph, had made himself out to be as great or greater than the most revered prophets of Israel, and this was akin to blasphemy for them.  Furthermore, he seemed to be rejecting his own people for the Gentiles.  We should not underestimate the animosity which the Jews of the period felt for the Gentiles, who had trodden them down repeatedly throughout their history and at one point destroyed their most important city and its Temple, the central place in the land where God was worshipped.

“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.”  This interesting verse tells us that Luke knew the geography of the site, possibly from visiting the town during his time in the Holy Land.  We note that the people do not resort to stoning the Lord, which was the preferred way of dealing with blasphemers.  By attempting to kill him by throwing him over the side of the hill, they show that they are completely rejecting him from their town.  

“But he passed through the midst of them and went away.”  He never returned.  He visited many cities, towns, and villages during the three years of his Public Life, but he never went back to Nazareth.  He does not go where he is not wanted nor does he ever force himself upon us.  We rejoice that we have him with us, and pray for the grace to persevere in our faith and good works so that he stays with us forever.

 The Third Sunday in Lent, March 20, 2022

Luke 13:1–9

Some people told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices. Jesus said to them in reply, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were greater sinners than all other Galileans? By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did! Or those eighteen people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them— do you think they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem? By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!”
And he told them this parable: “There once was a person who had a fig tree planted in his orchard, and when he came in search of fruit on it but found none, he said to the gardener, ‘For three years now I have come in search of fruit on this fig tree but have found none. So cut it down. Why should it exhaust the soil?’ He said to him in reply, ‘Sir, leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; it may bear fruit in the future. If not you can cut it down.’ ”

The account in which the Lord warns the people to repent lest they die like the people in Siloam and the Galileans, and the parable about the fig tree, may not seem to go together, but they are both about repentance.  The fig tree must start acting like a fig tree and produce fruit in due season.  The man who owned the orchard did not expect anything extraordinary from his fig trees, only that they produce figs.  This particular fig tree seemed unwilling to do so, although a gardener tended it.  The fig tree acted against itself in its unfruitfulness.  This is the situation between God and ourselves.  He does not give us extraordinary commands which no one can follow.  He does not order us all to fast forty days and forty nights, or to walk on the water.  His laws for us do not benefit him in any way as the laws of tyrants do.  His laws are for our good and simply direct us to act in a way which is good for us.  Above all, he commands us to love.  There should seem no need for him to direct us to do this since love can be so joyful and liberating, but we humans balk at it and delay and even refuse — acting just as the fig tree.  We do this out of pride, rejecting laws we have not made for ourselves, or even deciding for ourselves who is worthy of our love.  We also do this out of sloth, for love is sometimes work, although, as in the case of the harvest, it is work that brings joy.

We can think of the unproductive fig tree as any part of our life that is not dedicated to God.  If we examine our lives and find that a certain relationship is not good for us or is sinful, then we “cut it down”.  It is not helping us and is hindering us from our true purpose.  Or, if we find in our life some aspect which is good but that could be better oriented to God, then we modify it accordingly — we “cultivate” and “fertilize” it.

The “fig tree” signifies Israel in the Prophets.  The Lord found no fruit on it — no believers in him — and so found it without life.  It particularly signifies the leaders of the Jews at the time, who were plotting against him.  We must take care in our lives that we bring forth fruit through our prayer, words, and good works so that the Lord will be pleased with us.

 The Solemnity of St. Joseph, Saturday, March 19, 2022

Matthew 1:16, 18–21, 24a

Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Of her was born Jesus who is called the Christ.

Now this is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about. When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found with child through the Holy Spirit. Joseph her husband, since he was a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce her quietly. Such was his intention when, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home. 

I have written a few times already on the proper translation and understanding of this passage of St. Matthew’s Gospel.  Those who are interested may look for reflections on this feast in the archives.

Above all, St. Joseph was a man of obedience.  He was also a man who sought the will of God so that he could be obedient to it.  If he had not been, he would have acted quickly when he learned, from her lips, that she had conceived by the Holy Spirit.  Whether he took her into his home as his wife or left her as knowing his unworthiness of the mystery of the Incarnation, he would have acted quickly, assuming that his will was God’s also.  But he pondered and he prayed.  The counsel of the angel in his dream decided him, and he obeyed.  The obedience could not have come easily because his feeling of unworthiness persisted, but he obeyed anyway.  The obedience was not a single act performed once, either, but one which he continued to perform throughout his life.  

St. Joseph, then, is a wondrous model of seeking out the Lord’s will and adhering to it.  In this, he imitates the Prophet Jeremiah, who was called as a youth to prophesy to the Israelites.  At the time of his call, he presented to the Lord good, solid reasons why he should not prophesy, among them that he was too young.  But the Lord insisted and off Jeremiah went to do the Lord’s work.  He did so throughout the rest of his days despite his own doubts, imprisonment, threats, and beatings.  Towards the end of his life, after the fall of Jerusalem, he remained behind to console the Israelites not taken into Israel.  A band of them approached him, 

led by a man named Azariah, and asked him what was God’s will for them.  Azariah, speaking for the group, promised to obey whatever God told Jeremiah (cf. Jeremiah 42, 2-3).  Instead of giving his own opinion, which must have been tempting, the Prophet prayed for ten days, and the end of which God spoke to him.  Jeremiah then told Azariah and the others that God did not want them to go as refugees into Egypt but to stay in the land of Judah, where he would prosper them.  However, Azariah had made up his own mind that he was going to Egypt.  “You lie!” he accused the Prophet (Jeremiah 43, 2).  He then made up a silly accusation that Jeremiah’s secretary Baruch had turned him against them.  We are told that he took his band to Egypt despite what the Prophet had told them, and there they disappear from history.

We are all tempted from time to time to sidestep God’s will after we have ascertained it when it does not accord with what our “gut” tells us, or when it goes against what other people say or what we fear they will say.  But as important it is to seek God’s will, it is for us to obey it and to obey his laws as well as his inspirations.  We ought to shun the self-serving behavior of Azariah and gladly follow the example of St. Joseph.