Tuesday in the First Week of Lent, February 28, 2023

Matthew 6, 7-15

Jesus said to his disciples: “In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.  This is how you are to pray:  Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.  If you forgive men their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.”

Recent thoughts about the Blessed Sacrament: How wonderful it is that the Covenant which God made with his chosen people through Moses was sealed when Moses sprinkled the blood of animals sacrificed for the occasion on the people, and the New Covenant was sealed by the Blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God — who took on our flesh for this very purpose — when he gave it to the Apostles to drink.  He did not sprinkle them with it for three reasons: that it was itself holy, and not the blood of animals which could only be a sign of his Blood; and so that the Apostles might not be effected in their exterior only by the Blood of the New Covenant, but that it effect them interiorly; and, third, so that the Christians of every generation since then might regularly personally renew this Covenant by drinking the Lord’s Blood and being effected interiorly as they had been.  Now, we should think about this: the Mosaic Law and the modified Law handed down by the Apostles to the Gentiles forbade the drinking of blood: “You shall not eat the blood of any flesh at all” (Leviticus 17, 14) and, “Abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood” (Acts 15, 29).  And God himself gives the reason for why the blood of animals should not be drunk: “For the life of all flesh is in the blood” (Leviticus 17, 14).  That is, to drink an animal’s blood was to share in the life of that animal: in a sense, to become that animal.  In reading God’s explanation we have to read it as the Jews understood it: its blood was the life of a creature.  There was no sense in ancient times of the blood providing nutrients.  It was life itself.  A man’s blood was considered so precious that it was not supposed to fall on the ground and thereby be contaminated.  And so to drink the Blood of the Son of God is to imbibe his life, and, in a real sense, to become him.  This helps us understand better what he means when he says, “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day” (John 6, 55), and, “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him” (John 6, 57).  Thus, the sign of the sprinkling of the blood of animals is fulfilled by the drinking of the Blood of the Son of God, and the prohibition against drinking the blood of animals prepares us for the drinking of the Lord’s Blood.  Truly, as the Greek text of Mark 7, 37 says: “He has done all things rightly”.  

The Gospel reading for yesterday’s Mass emphasized the practice of almsgiving as necessary for the life and salvation of the believer in the Lord Jesus.  Today’s reading likewise emphasizes the practice of prayer.  The Lord’s disciples eagerly desired to pray as their Master prayed and at the same time desired the sign of distinction as from the Pharisees and the disciples of John the Baptist that the Lord could deliver to them in their style of their prayer and its principal petitions.  The Lord thus teaches them, first and foremost, to address God as their “Father” — that is, to do so in anticipation of the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost when they would be made God’s sons and daughters by adoption.  Following this address, they are to pray to be made ready for the end of the world and the final judgment: for God’s will to be done on earth in the judgment as it was done by the angels in heaven, and that their sins be forgiven as they had forgiven the sins of others.  The final petition: “Deliver us from evil” can as correctly be translated from the Greek as “from the evil one”, which is the result of being delivered from a test of faith so severe that no one could endure it (the traditional “Lead us not into temptation”).

By placing this section of the Gospel alongside of Matthew 25, 32-46, yesterday’s Gospel, the Church teaches us that praying is no more optional than giving alms.  It is something we must practice, and something in which we can find great joy.  For, if to give alms is to give to Jesus Christ, prayer is the touching of his heart with ours.

 Monday in the First Week of Lent, February 27, 2023

Matthew 25, 31-46

Jesus said to his disciples: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne, and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’ And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’ Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.’ Then they will answer and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?’ He will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.’ And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

It is useful to compare the readings selected in the Lectionary for a given day with the readings found in the traditional Latin Missal because we can gain insight from the choices as to what is emphasized in the Mass for that day or feast.  Here, we see the Gospel Reading for the traditional Mass for the Monday after the First Sunday in Lent and that from the current Lectionary are the same, namely, Matthew 25, 31-46.  This helps us to see what the Church wants us to understand: the necessity of almsgiving in the Christian life,  in this section of the Gospel of St. Matthew, the Lord has entered Jerusalem for the last time and he is teaching the people about both the coming destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world, with the judgment to follow.  While the Prophets had spoken of a judgment at the end and the apocryphal Jewish works popular at the time so so as well, only Jesus provides details as to what it would entail, and what would make up the criteria by which God would judge the human race.  Jesus tells the people that this is not about the Gentiles being condemned and the children of Abraham being glorified, but about an individual’s life: the practice of  commandments anyone could carry out, for, as St. James would summarize, “James 1:27 (D-R): “Religion pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their tribulation and to keep one’s self unspotted from this world.”  

The Lord carefully enumerates the behavior that would be rewarded: feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, greeting the stranger, clothing the naked , visiting prisoners.  He himself did this when he fed those hungry for his teaching and even those physically hungry for being with him for days at a time; when he gave drink to the thirsty, as he showed the woman at the well: “The water that I will give him shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into life everlasting” (John 4, 14); when he welcomed tax collectors, prostitutes, and sinners and ate with them, and healed even the Gentiles; when he clothed with the robe of salvation the naked thief who hung on the cross beside him on Golgotha and confessed his belief in him; and when he visited the prisoners in limbo after he died on the Cross and led the righteous among them into heaven.  And, no less, the Lord looks upon us and sees that we are hungry, thirsty, strangers, naked, and locked in prisons of our own making, and he gives his alms to us in his great mercy.

We in turn ought to look upon our family members, relatives, friends, neighbors, and colleagues as those in need of alms and helping them.  We give them alms first of all through prayer, for whatever else any of us needs, we all stand in need of grace.  Then we seek through prudence to understand the true needs a person has and doing something about it.  In this way we continue the work of the Lord Jesus, or, he continues his work through us.

 The First Sunday of Lent, February 26, 2023

Matthew 4, 1–11

At that time Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was hungry. The tempter approached and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread.” He said in reply, “It is written: One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.”  Then the devil took him to the holy city, and made him stand on the parapet of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written: He will command his angels concerning you and with their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone.” Jesus answered him, “Again it is written, You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.” Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence, and he said to him, “All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.” At this, Jesus said to him, “Get away, Satan! It is written: The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.”  Then the devil left him and, behold, angels came and ministered to him.

The Evangelist describes the Lord’s temptations by the devil, which took place on the Eve of his ministry to mankind for us to learn about the Lord and his power over the devil but also to teach us about temptations.

We learn, for instance, that we can be tempted anywhere at any time: for Adam and Eve were tempted in the lush Garden of Eden and the Lord in the rocky wilderness of Judea.  We learn also that the devil is very persistent.  He tempts our Lord not once but three times, and probably over a period of time.  These temptations were not over in a few minutes.  We are also tempted in every condition in which we can be: strong, as in Adam and Eve in Eden; and weak and famished as the Lord in the wilderness.  We are tempted primarily regarding three basic things: pride, presumption, and the desire for indulgence.  You and I may be sons and daughters of God through adoption, but we cannot consider ourselves entitled to do whatever we wish because of it; God will protect us from evil, but not from the consequences we face when we seek it out; and the world and its peoples do not belong to us: they belong to Almighty God.  Something else we learn from this Gospel Reading about temptation is how to suffer it: we do not argue with the devil but simply refuse to do his bidding.  The Lord rebukes him with Scripture so as to preserve the righteousness of the Holy Scriptures against the devil’s misuse of them, but we are to then do as he did: walk away from his machinations.  We are to say: “Get away, Satan!”  And then we should move ourselves too.  Again, when the devil leaves us, the angels minister to us.  They bind up the wounds we may suffer in overcoming evil and obtain for us graces to protect us against further temptations.

We should also note that the devil does this at the very onset of the Lord’s ministry.  We are thereby warned that whenever we have committed to understate some holy work, whether to volunteer in charitable work, to receive a new sacrament, or to follow one’s vocation to the Priesthood or the religious life, the devil will fight against us.  He will use persuasion, threats, and even arrange for some kind of outside trouble to keep us from doing the will of God in this way.  We should not be dismayed by this when it happens, but rather encouraged.  Despite himself, the devil confirms that we are doing the right thing.

 The Saturday after Ash Wednesday, February 25, 2023

Luke 5, 27-32

Jesus saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the customs post. He said to him, “Follow me.” And leaving everything behind, he got up and followed him. Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were at table with them. The Pharisees and their scribes complained to his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus said to them in reply, “Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do. I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners.”

The doctor says my last ten days of sickness are the result of bronchitis so please pray for me to get better so that I can be useful to everyone during Lent.

We know from the corresponding story in the Gospel of St. Matthew that this Levi was also the Apostle Matthew.  The name “Levi” comes down from the name of one of the Patriarch Jacob’s sons.  In the days of Jesus it was a popular Jewish name.  “Matthew”, that is, “gift of God”, may have been a name Levi took after Pentecost.  It was certainly the name by which the Galilean Christians knew him in the years following the Lord’s Resurrection when this Apostle worked among them.  At least one modern scholar believed “Levi” was a mistranslation of “a Levite”, though his reasoning is embarrassingly specious and none of the Evangelists use the term in their Gospels.  Besides, Levites did not make their livings from tax collecting.

“And leaving everything behind, he got up and followed him.”  The decision to follow Jesus was final.  Unlike Peter and Andrew and many of the others who were fishermen and could go back to this occupation, Levi could never go back to tax collecting.  Once he threw up his  position, he could never hope to regain it.  The fact that he was able to do this perhaps points to him as being one of the tax collectors who listened to John the Baptist and who was waiting for the Messiah.  

“Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were at table with them.”  It is clear from the Greek text that he gave a great feast in his own house.  Luke here means to say that  a large crowd of tax collectors and others reclined at table with Jesus and his followers.  Reclining on one’s left elbow at table was a Greek custom which had seeped into ancient near eastern culture, even among the Jews.  The number of people reclining — not sitting — gives us an idea of the size of the house.  The banquet would certainly have taken place around the noon hour since that was the time for the day’s main meal.    

“The Pharisees and their scribes complained to his disciples.”  The Pharisees try to infuse dissent among the early followers of Jesus in this way.  This is the “leaven” of the Pharisees against which the Lord will warn the Apostles later.  “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”  These “sinners” are not just other tax collectors but are simply Jews who are not afraid to eat with tax collectors.  The tax collectors work for Herod, whom the people hated and considered an illegitimate ruler.  We should notice that the Pharisees do not give a reason for why Jesus should not eat with these people.  

“Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do. I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners.”  The Lord eats with the tax collectors and “sinners” just as later he will eat with the Pharisees themselves.  His reference to himself as a “physician” points the Pharisees back to the many cures he has performed and makes it clear to them that these were meant to be signs of the true healing he had come to do through the forgiveness of sins.

The Lord continues to dine with tax collectors and sinners when he feeds us his Body and Blood at the Holy .sacrifice of the Mass. 

 The Friday after Ash Wednesday, February 24, 2023

Isaiah 58, 1-9

Thus says the Lord God: Cry out full-throated and unsparingly, lift up your voice like a trumpet blast; Tell my people their wickedness, and the house of Jacob their sins. They seek me day after day, and desire to know my ways, Like a nation that has done what is just and not abandoned the law of their God; They ask me to declare what is due them, pleased to gain access to God. “Why do we fast, and you do not see it? afflict ourselves, and you take no note of it?”  Lo, on your fast day you carry out your own pursuits, and drive all your laborers. Yes, your fast ends in quarreling and fighting, striking with wicked claw. Would that today you might fast so as to make your voice heard on high! Is this the manner of fasting I wish, of keeping a day of penance: That a man bow his head like a reed and lie in sackcloth and ashes? Do you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; Setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke; Sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; Clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own. Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed; Your vindication shall go before you, and the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer, you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!

Very often, Almighty God told the Prophets the exact words he wanted them to say to the people.  This is true in Isaiah 30, 15, as the Prophet himself makes clear when he says, “Thus says the Lord.”  At other times, the Lord gives the Prophets a message that they are to put in their own way.  Here, God speaks directly to his people through the Prophet.

“They seek me day after day, and desire to know my ways, like a nation that has done what is just and not abandoned the law of their God.”  One of the great complaints made against God is that he says he will answer our prayers, but then he does not.  One reason he does not seem to answer them is that we tend to ask for things that are not good for us or may even be harmful to us.  We think we know what we need, but we need divine guidance even for that.  We also tend to be very specific about what we need, as though trying to control God and limit him in his actions.  A third reason is that we ask or demand things from him when we have not put ourselves in a position to receive them.  That is, we must ask humbly, and receive humbly and gratefully.  God, through the Prophet Isaiah, accuses the people of coming before him as unrepentant sinners and demanding that he answer their prayers.  We make ourselves incapable of receiving what God would give us through our state as unrepentant sinners because we extend to him not open hands to receive his gifts but closed fists closed closed in rebellion and sin.  That is, God can be trying to give us everything we ask, but we are unable of receiving it, through our own fault.  It is also worth pointing out here that we are to ask for what we need in our lives order to please him, as well as for the health and well-being of our friends and family, for justice, for peace in the world, and for things of this kind.  We should not be asking him to aid us in sinful enterprises or in actions that are motivated by greed, lust, vanity, and so on.  Prayer should never seek our own indulgence.  If we are going to be heard by Almighty God, then we must come before him as good servants with the uniforms of our faith pressed and resplendent with good works and the desire to please him. 

In the years preceding the end of the Kingdom of Judah and the destruction of the Temple in 586 B.C., the people had lapsed seriously in their duties towards God, led by the bad examples of their kings.  “Lo, on your fast day you carry out your own pursuits, and drive all your laborers. Yes, your fast ends in quarreling and fighting, striking with wicked claw.”  When their leaders proclaimed fasts for repentance, they went about their normal day, although not eating as they would normally.  Their actions did not come from their hearts but as under obligation.  Their intent was not to please God through inspection of their lives, the realization of guilt, and repenting.

We run the risk of carrying on after them if we merely pay lip service to Lent without the hard work of examining our consciences and going to confession — and after confessing our sins, living in a significantly different way so as not to go back to our vomit as the dogs do (cf. 2 Peter 2, 22).  In our work to fully orientation ourselves to God we may need to change jobs, make new friends, leave old friends, move to a less expensive place.  For us, as for those living in ancient times, these seem extreme actions, but nothing is worth the risk of losing our souls: “releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; Setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke” — this applies to us first and foremost.  We need to free ourselves from the yoke of bad or wicked habits, occasions of sin, and bad companions.  Once we are free, we can help others: “Your light shall break forth like the dawn.”  

“Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer, you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!”  This repentance and conversion is the first step in our efforts to gain a favorable answer to our prayers.  Then let us pray as did the men who brought their paralyzed friend to the Lord Jesus, that seeing our faith, he will refuse us nothing.

 The Thursday after Ash Wednesday, February 23, 2023

Luke 9, 22-25

Jesus said to his disciples: “The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.”  Then he said to all, “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. What profit is there for one to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit himself?”

The parish church was filled all day yesterday for the Ash Wednesday Masses.  Longtime parishioners said they could not remember seeing anything like it.  

“The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.”  We should notice how the Lord speaks this way only to his Apostles (whom St. Luke refers to as “the disciples” in the time before they are actually “sent out”).  These twelve men have by this time spent nearly three years living and working with him.  They have seen close up the bitter hostility of the Temple authorities and the Pharisees to him.  More than one attempt has already been made on his life.  More than anyone else, they are prepared for this revelation by the Lord.  And we see how he makes it: “The Son of Man must suffer greatly, etc.”  This is the “Son of Man” spoken of by the Prophet Daniel and in popular but non-canonical books of the time.  This is the title of the messiah whom the Pharisees announced God would send in great glory to reestablish Israel.  But the Lord says they are wrong: that is not what the Son of Man would do.  Instead, he would be rejected by the leaders of the people who wanted to design their own savior, be killed by them, and then “rise”.  He does not explain much about what it meant that he would be “raised up” — it would be utterly beyond them.  Nor does he yet explain what his Death would accomplish, and what they were supposed to do when this happened to him, the Center of their lives.  It was overwhelming enough to hear him speak of his own imminent Death.

The Lord then comes out and says for all to hear: “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”  For us today, these familiar words hardly threaten us or cause us to pause.  But for the people of the time, the words amounted to madness.  And for the Apostles who had just heard him speak of his own Death, even more so.  For they now heard the Lord exhorting people to follow him even though he was to be rejected and killed by the elders and authorities who should have welcomed him.  By what right could he urge people to follow him to certain disaster and death? And he called them to follow him, personally.  He does not say for them to follow the Law or God, or to fight for the destiny of Israel.  They are to follow him, carrying the means of their own destruction.  “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”  But to do this leads to saving one’s life.  Christ summons his people to battle.  It is a speech no general or king would have given on the eve of battle.  But if we rouse ourselves with the help of the grace Christ gives us, we will gain the eternal life we can receive only from him.  The people of the time could have gazed at each other and waited to see if Jesus would elaborate.  But the words are urgent, and the Lord spoke with urgency and force.  The meaning would only become clearer in time.  Perhaps in the days when St. Luke wrote his Gospel Christians still debated these words.

“What profit is there for one to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit himself?”  The Greek is stronger: “but be destroyed or punished”: such a man not only loses what he thought he had won but is subsequently “destroyed” in eternal punishment.  But the world gained by the believer in Christ who loses his life for him far surpasses this world, which crumbles even as we walk upon it.  It is a world of glory and light and love, an eternal land where past sufferings are hardly remembered.  It is the place where love gushes upon and into us, and where we we free to love without restraint.  With the vision of heaven in our minds we stumble along with the heavy crosses of divine service we carry now, knowing that one day they will loft us there.

 Ash Wednesday, The First Day of Lent, February 22, 2023

Matthew 6, 1-6; 16-18

Jesus said to his disciples: “Take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them; otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father. When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win the praise of others. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, so that your almsgiving may be secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you. When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.  When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They neglect their appearance, so that they may appear to others to be fasting. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you may not appear to be fasting, except to your Father who is hidden. And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.”

According to the annual calendar, February 22 is established as the feast day of the Chair of St. Peter, but according to the lunar calendar by which we know when to celebrate Easter, today marks the first day of the forty day season of Lent, popularly known as Ash Wednesday.  It is one of the rare occasions on which a feast day celebrated during a weekday is trumped by another celebration.  The length of this season has differed over time but was finally set as forty days, corresponding to the forty days during which the Lord was tempted in the wilderness.  The season is penitential, and practices such as fasting, prayer, and alms-giving are encouraged as well as sacramental confession.  We repent of our sins more intensely at this time, though our lives on earth ought to be understood as penitential.  We live in Lent now so that we may live in perpetual Easter in the next world.

“Take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them; otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father.”  The practice of performing good deeds in a hidden way is a particularly Christian one.  It is not the case that a person is ashamed of the good that he does, but that through doing it without the possibility of public approbation he might grow accustomed to the natural practice of good deeds.  Besides, the person who puts on the biggest public display of doing good actually does less than the one who works in a hidden way.  When the smoke of the self-congratulatory show clears, it is found that nothing actually happened.  Another way to put it is that deeds done purposefully in order to garner praise is not charity but masturbation.  In the end, we act as Almighty God, who gives us life and breath every day, free of charge, and without any fuss at all.  “And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.”  We “repay” our Father, who owes us nothing, for his gifts to us with our prayer of thanksgiving.  But he will “thank” us for doing what we ought to do with eternal gifts in heaven. 

“When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them.”  This may sound like a caricature to us but people still do this today.  We ought not to make travesties of ourselves and our God with displays that have little to do with true piety.  “When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites.”  Our current laws for fasting and abstinence are very light.  But we ought to follow them without display.  We are imitating Jesus so that we can become more like him.  “But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you may not appear to be fasting, except to your Father who is hidden.”  The moderation with which we should live our lives as Christians should include regular fasting.  We can think of our penitential life here on earth as a time of a permanent, ongoing fast which we intensify during certain times of the year.

God gives us this day, this hour in which to begin to become saints.  He gives us this season so that we followers of the Lamb may work at this together.

 Tuesday in the Seventh Week of Ordinary Time, February 21, 2023

Mark 9, 30-37

Jesus and his disciples left from there and began a journey through Galilee, but he did not wish anyone to know about it. He was teaching his disciples and telling them, “The Son of Man is to be handed over to men and they will kill him, and three days after his death the Son of Man will rise.” But they did not understand the saying, and they were afraid to question him.  They came to Capernaum and, once inside the house, he began to ask them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they remained silent. For they had been discussing among themselves on the way who was the greatest. Then he sat down, called the Twelve, and said to them, “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.” Taking a child, he placed it in their midst, and putting his arms around it, he said to them, “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.”

“Jesus and his disciples left from there and began a journey through Galilee, but he did not wish anyone to know about it.”  More than in any other of the Gospels, we find Jesus not wanting someone to know something.  This is one of the typical aspects of his Gospel, as well as Mark’s almost constant uses of “and then” and “immediately”, as well as of the odd details he furnishes: though very concise and ready to leave out details he surely knows, he adds details which do not always clarify his accounts but instead promote mystery: the naked man in the Garden of Gethsemane, for instance.  Peter, from whom Mark received his knowledge of the Lord, must have wondered about this a great deal.  Not that it puzzled him after all these years, necessarily, but that it amazed him to look back and see how brilliantly the Lord worked.

The other Evangelists do show the Lord to have traveled in secret or commanded silence after a healing, but we see in Mark a whole, consistent, pattern of this.  He carefully reveals himself to his Apostles as one who possesses power, one who is the Messiah, and, at the Transfiguration, as the Son of God.  He prepares his Apostles carefully because terms like “messiah” and “Son of God” mean something very different with respect to him than what the Pharisees teach they do.  Now, Mark shows us the Lord preparing the Apostles for what is more unthinkable than that God’s Son has come to earth: that God’s Son must be “handed over to men”, killed, and that he would then rise from the dead.  The preparation remains incomplete at the time of the Lord’s Passion because of the resistance put up by the Apostles, who only looked ahead and saw the road to glory and Israel’s restoration.  The Lord would explain it all to them again in the days after his Resurrection.  This is a teaching point for Mark to his readers: if the Apostles struggled to believe it, then it should not surprise if anyone else does, but with the grace that comes after the Resurrection, faith follows.

“They came to Capernaum.”  The Lord did this preparation in the depths of Galilee, away from the cities, after leaving Mount Tabor and following the exorcism of the possessed boy.  Since Mark tells us that the Lord “began a journey through Galilee”, it sounds as though this lasted a few days, at least.

“They had been discussing among themselves on the way who was the greatest.”  This signals us how far they resisted the Lord’s teaching regarding his arrest and murder.  They seemed to enter a state of denial whenever he spoke of his upcoming Death, perhaps thinking to themselves that he was speaking in parables or as a way to prepare them for conflict and warfare.  How could one who controlled the forces of nature, overthrew demons, and even raised the dead be killed?  

“If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.”  Thus, the Lord overturns the common, human understanding of authority: that it should benefit of the one who wields it and need do no more.  The purpose of having authority is to be in a better position to see how to serve, who needs to be served, and then to do it.

“Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.”  That is, to receive a child in the name of Jesus is to receive him as Jesus.  The Lord here teaches the Apostles how to receive, greet, welcome, other believers: not as some lower grade of disciple, but as Jesus.  This both recognizes the distinction and glory conveyed by baptism, but also the distinction with those who are not baptized.  These are also to be treated with charity, but with the understanding that they are not of us.  They do not belong to Christ.  Not yet.

 Monday in the Seventh Week of Ordinary Time, February 20, 2023

Mark 9:14-29

As Jesus came down from the mountain with Peter, James, John and approached the other disciples, they saw a large crowd around them and scribes arguing with them. Immediately on seeing him, the whole crowd was utterly amazed. They ran up to him and greeted him. He asked them, “What are you arguing about with them?” Someone from the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I have brought to you my son possessed by a mute spirit. Wherever it seizes him, it throws him down; he foams at the mouth, grinds his teeth, and becomes rigid. I asked your disciples to drive it out, but they were unable to do so.” He said to them in reply, “O faithless generation, how long will I be with you? How long will I endure you? Bring him to me.” They brought the boy to him. And when he saw him, the spirit immediately threw the boy into convulsions. As he fell to the ground, he began to roll around and foam at the mouth. Then he questioned his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” He replied, “Since childhood. It has often thrown him into fire and into water to kill him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” Jesus said to him, “‘If you can!’ Everything is possible to one who has faith.” Then the boy’s father cried out, “I do believe, help my unbelief!” Jesus, on seeing a crowd rapidly gathering, rebuked the unclean spirit and said to it, “Mute and deaf spirit, I command you: come out of him and never enter him again!” Shouting and throwing the boy into convulsions, it came out. He became like a corpse, which caused many to say, “He is dead!” But Jesus took him by the hand, raised him, and he stood up. When he entered the house, his disciples asked him in private, “Why could we not drive the spirit out?” He said to them, “This kind can only come out through prayer.”

This exorcism story contains elements we do not find in the others in the Gospels, and it affords us a glimpse into the war between heaven and hell, a war which we see in the open only rarely though it is always raging.

First, St. Mark makes a curious remark: “Immediately on seeing him, the whole crowd was utterly amazed.”  Now, the Lord had just descended from the mountain with Peter, James, and John.  This was Mount Tabor in the southern part of Galilee, about ten miles from the Sea of Galilee, fifteen miles southwest of Capernaum, and a few miles southeast of Nazareth.  This may be as close to Nazareth as Jesus came after his former neighbors had tried to kill him.  The crowd gathered at the foot of the mountain would have consisted mostly of Galileans, people who had seen him before.  This fact perhaps explains the note that when they saw the Lord, they were “utterly amazed”.  He was somehow changed in appearance, perhaps his face shone as had that of Moses at the time he returned from Mount Sinai with the commandments of God.

“O faithless generation, how long will I be with you? How long will I endure you?”  This cry of the Lord might be explained through the Apostles attempting to cast out the evil spirit though they had not yet been appointed with the power and authority to do so, and also through the arguing of the scribes, who may have been criticizing the Apostles for their ignorance of traditional Jewish exorcism rituals.  

“I do believe, help my unbelief!”  The pitiful, heartfelt cry of the father shows the requirement the Lord expects for faith on the part of the those who ask for a miracle and also the situation of so many people then and now: there is faith, or the beginnings of it, but not enough.  Yet the father does not make only an admission but a prayer, and of such a kind as is hard to find the like in the Gospels.  The Lord often counsels the Apostles to pray for faith, to increase their faith, but here we see someone, not an Apostle, doing just this.

“Mute and deaf spirit, I command you: come out of him and never enter him again!”  This is one of those elements which we do not see in other accounts of the Lord’s exorcisms: “never enter him again”.  This is a significant part of the exorcism because after the exorcism, the survivor is vulnerable.  Exorcism is not a Sacrament and does not confer grace.  In order to avoid the terrible fate of the re-possessed, the person must embrace a truly devout life, a very different life from that prior to the exorcism.  “This kind can only come out through prayer.”  Another unusual element to this story is the discussion about the exorcism between Jesus and the Apostles.  Many important Greek manuscripts have “prayer and fasting”, but the scholars who edited the critical edition of this Gospel decided to go with those that did not have these words.  Jerome retained them for the Latin Vulgate.  Now, the ”prayer” of which Jesus speaks is a period of spiritual preparation which a human exorcist must undertake in order to successfully cast out the demon(s) in a particular case.  The preparation is quite rigorous, for though the power used is that of Almighty God, the instrument which wields it must be strong.  Fasting and prayer accomplish this.  Jesus specifies “this kind” requires such preparation, that is, even more especial preparation than for other cases because the demon has got such a great hold on the child.

Thousands of exorcisms are commissioned by bishops and carried out by the appointed priests every year.  Some cases go on for months.  We should pray for the priests involved and for those possessed to be freed and never be possessed again.

 The Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 19, 2023

Matthew 5, 38–48

Jesus said to his disciples: “You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other one as well. If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand over your cloak as well. Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go for two miles. Give to the one who asks of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow. “You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same? So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

The Lord Jesus speaks many hard words to us and gives us many hard commandments to obey.  His calling “lust” a sin as deadly as adultery places a serious burden on us, and not just on the young.  Now, at the beginning of today’s Gospel Reading, he issues commandments such as these: “Offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other one as well.”  On their face, these words seem impossible to follow.  They run completely contrary to the most basic  instinct of any living thing, that of self-preservation.  But let us see what they really mean, for just as the Lord does not mean for us to cut off our hands and eyes lest we sin with them, he does not command us to refuse to protect ourselves and those in our care.  The Lord is saying that if someone commits an evil act against us — he assaults or robs us — we are not free to reply with evil of the same level or kind.  As an example, the Russians have evidently committed terrible crimes against humanity in their war against the Ukrainians.  The Ukrainians are free to defend themselves and to seek just for these crimes, but they are not free to commit similar crimes against the Russians.  In the case of the Lord Jesus himself, when he was struck by the guard for speaking to the high priest, he rebuked him, but he did not destroy him, as he could have.  And divine justice was enacted at the end of that guard’s life.  So we are not to act as our enemies act, and this is the sense of the quote of the Law with which Jesus begins this section of his Sermon: “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”  The follower of Jesus does not exact revenge.  St. Paul explains this simply for the Gentile Christians in Rome: “To no man rendering evil for evil, providing good things, not only in the sight of God but also in the sight of all men. If it be possible, as much as is in you, have peace with all men. Revenge not yourselves, my dearly beloved; but leave wrath to God, for it is written: Revenge is mine, I will repay, says the Lord” (Romans 12, 17-29).

“If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand over your cloak as well. Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go for two miles. Give to the one who asks of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow.”  The Lord here speaks about how a fundamental disposition of the Christian is generosity.  He is not making hard and fast rules, for according to the Law, a Jew could not take the cloak of another Jew if that was all he had to sleep in, and a Jew could walk a mile on the Sabbath, but that was the limit.  “Give to the one who asks of you” does not mean necessarily to give what the person is asking for, for as the Lord will point out, “What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?” (Luke 11, 11-12).  So if a person asks us to give him that which will not be good for him, the person should give something that will be, such as food instead the means for buying drugs or alcohol.  

“He makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.”  The Lord repeats his principle of not treating the wicked with wickedness, and grounds it in the justice of the Father.

“So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  We should be careful when we come to this word “perfect”.  The Greek word from which this word is translated has the sense of “completeness”, especially a completeness in all one’s parts.  The word implies a growth and a fullness to the growth so that the person or thing is complete: it is what it is meant to be.  The Lord is telling us to be complete so that the following of his Law comes easily and naturally to us.  He is also speaking of our growth in grace so that we are as filled with grace as we can be, for our beings are finite unlike his.  The saints are thus “perfect” because they are complete in grace and holiness.  They have carried on their vocations in obedience.  They had been given five talents and they then traded with them and received five back — that is to say, they achieved all that they were able to achieve, with the help of God.

And so can we, by loving others, praying for them, seeking their good, imitating the Lord Jesus as best we can.

 Saturday in the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time, February 18, 2023

Mark 9:2-13

Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no fuller on earth could bleach them. Then Elijah appeared to them along with Moses, and they were conversing with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus in reply, “Rabbi, it is good that we are here! Let us make three tents: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He hardly knew what to say, they were so terrified. Then a cloud came, casting a shadow over them; then from the cloud came a voice, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.” Suddenly, looking around, the disciples no longer saw anyone but Jesus alone with them. As they were coming down from the mountain, he charged them not to relate what they had seen to anyone, except when the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what rising from the dead meant. Then they asked him, “Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?” He told them, “Elijah will indeed come first and restore all things, yet how is it written regarding the Son of Man that he must suffer greatly and be treated with contempt? But I tell you that Elijah has come and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written of him.”

When we read of how the Lord manifested his glory and appeared to the Apostles in the place of honor amidst Moses and Elijah, it pays to keep in mind that he chose to do this not before people more likely to understand his glory but to those more likely to benefit from it.  These were accomplished, skilled, hard-working men.  All three had derived a hard living from the sea.  They were practical men.  The practice of religion was strongly integrated into their lives since childhood.  They went to the synagogue on the Sabbath to hear and discuss the Scriptures.  They would have died rather than eat pork or worship an idol.  But as yet they were not spiritual men.  The Peter who went up the mountain with Jesus and the others was not the Peter who would say, a couple of months later, “Ye men of Judea, and all you that dwell in Jerusalem, be this known to you and with your ears receive my words.  For these are not drunk, as you suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day: But this is that which was spoken of by the Prophet Joel: And it shall come to pass, in the last days, (says the Lord), I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy: and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams” (Acts 2, 14-17).  The Peter who went up the mountain understood the world in very material ways.

“And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no fuller on earth could bleach them.”  Mark’s very plain, very simple description of the vision reflects how Peter perceived it at the time.  But his words, as reported by Mark, give some idea of how overwhelmed he was: “Rabbi, it is good that we are here! Let us make three tents: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”   There stood the Lord Jesus Christ, ablaze with glory, and the mighty men of old, Moses and Elijah, and Peter was proposing to erect shelters for them with the sticks and branches which the mountain offered as building material?  Mark comments, almost certainly paraphrasing his master, “He hardly knew what to say, they were so terrified.”  The Greek text agrees with the English translation:  they were greatly terrified.  To this point they knew the Lord possessed power which he used at various times to heal the sick, to expel demons (sometimes in spectacular displays), to walk on the water, and to calm storms instantly.  But this glorification went far beyond what they knew or expected.  In the Transfiguration, these practical, earthy men were thrust into the world of the spirit.  Though more prepared than others, they were not st home in it.  Light blasted all around, light that was love and that was inexhaustible.  It shook them through their beings so that they knew their insignificance and at the same time how loved they were.  It was inexplicable.  But it could not go on for long.  They heard the words of the Father identifying his Son and commanding them to listen and to obey him, and then, “suddenly, looking around, the disciples no longer saw anyone but Jesus alone with them.  It was as it had been.  At least it was on the outside.  Jesus “charged them not to relate what they had seen to anyone, except when the Son of Man had risen from the dead.”  Not that they could articulate what they had experienced even to each other for some time to come.  

They passed through the ground they had covered on the way up, speaking little.  It all looked the same.  But they were different.  They began to be quicker to understand the spiritual in the earthly world.  Suddenly, it made sense to them that Elijah had come in spirit through John the Baptist.  They still had far to go, though, and even with this experience Peter would deny his Lord three times (but without it, John would not have been able to stand under the Cross).  They would need to be filled with the Holy Spirit before it all came together for them, that it all became clear, and they could preach his Gospel to the ends of the earth.

 Friday in the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time, February 17, 2023

Mark 8, 34--9, 1

Jesus summoned the crowd with his disciples and said to them, “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 and that of the Gospel will save it. What profit is there for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? What could one give in exchange for his life? Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this faithless and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.” He also said to them, “Amen, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the Kingdom of God has come in power.”

The Greek word translated here as “deny” also has the meanings of “disregard” and “disown”.  The Lord makes an enormous demand here.  He does not say, Whoever wishes to fight for the Kingdom, or, Whoever wishes to be saved.  This raggedy carpenter from Nazareth who was known as a healer told those who wanted to “follow” him —he does not even say his teachings — that they had to turn their backs on their former lives, occupations, interests, and even families.  They must make him the center of their lives.  More than this, they had to “take up his cross, and follow me.”  Nowadays when we speak of crosses to be carried, we mean difficulties in our lives, some bigger than others.  But to those to whom he spoke, and to every believer since, he is saying that we must sell out for him, accepting the worst death for his sake.  But he enables us to do this.  He shoulders his cross alone, but he helps us carry ours.  He equates the failure to do this as being “ashamed” of him, and warns us that on the day is second coming he will look at us, the trembling servant who buried his master’s talent, and express his shame of us.  In contrast, those who truly follow the Gospel will find themselves in “his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”  Prayer is an essential part of our giving ourselves to Christ as he wants us to.  The more we pray, and the more fervently we pray, the more we are able to conform ourselves to his holy will for us.

“Amen, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the Kingdom of God has come in power.”  The Lord adds these words to comfort those to whom he has spoken these hard words.  The Fathers understand “tasting” death as experiencing its bitterness, that is, the complete and final separation of the sinner from his fellows and from the pleasures they enjoyed, but also the separation of the sinner from the God who sent his Son to die for him and who offered him multiple chances to repent.  The just do not “taste” death but know it as the palace doorway into heaven.

 Thursday in the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time, February 16, 2023

Mark 8, 27-33

Jesus and his disciples set out for the villages of Caesarea Philippi. Along the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” They said in reply, “John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others one of the prophets.” And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter said to him in reply, “You are the Christ.” Then he warned them not to tell anyone about him. He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days. He spoke this openly. Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. At this he turned around and, looking at his disciples, rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

To those who come to our weekly Bible Study, I’m sorry to have missed you.  I was extremely sick in the beginning at an hour before we were to meet, and I have been weak all day since.  With the help of your prayers, I will see you this coming Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning.

City of Caesarea Philippi was built in a lush, fertile area watered by the springs that fed the Jordan.  At the time our Lord walked the earth, it had become a center of pagan worship.  Twenty-five miles beyond the border with Galilee, numerous temples fostered the worship of the Greek god Pan and those gods associated with him.  Pan, whose lower half was that of a goat, was a god of shepherds.  He was known and celebrated for his lascivious behavior.  He knew no morality and could be seen as a symbol of our present age.  To this pagan city the Lord led his disciples, and it was there, in the face of the worship of Pan, that he declared that he would build his Church on St. Peter (cf. Matthew 16, 18).  That Mark does not recount this vital detail here may be because Peter, from whose preaching he derived his Gospel, did not mention it out of the sense of his own unworthiness, a trait he always seems to have possessed: “Leave me, Lord, for I am a sinful man” (Luke 5, 8).  The Lord made this announcement on Gentile territory, not on that of the Jews, signifying that his Church would include both Jews and Gentiles — and also that he was not beholden to the authorities in Jerusalem.  He makes his announcement as a sort of declaration of war against the rule of the devil over the world.  

“Then he warned them not to tell anyone about him.”  “Christ” is the Greek translation of the Hebrew “Messiah”.  The Lord wanted the Apostles to know this because they were open to learning what the term meant to him.  For the Jews and especially for their leaders, the term meant something very specific, which they had defined for themselves without the guidance of a prophet or even a properly appointed high priest.  The Lord would finally reveal himself to them during his interrogation before the Sanhedrin.

But he did speak openly that “the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days.”  This ran completely contrary to what the Pharisees taught about the Son of Man, and, indeed.  In fact, to be rejected by the elders meant that any following that he had would exist outside of Judaism.  Whatever awe the Apostles felt upon hearing that he was indeed the Messiah melted away quickly with this subsequent announcement.  Peter, in fact, seemed to think that he was testing them.  “Get me behind me, Satan” shows something of the vehemence of the Lord’s desire to die for our salvation.  But the Lord is not calling Peter “Satan”, but revealing that the devil, suspecting more and more who the Lord actually was, was starting to plan ways to keep the Lord from dying in this way, or, failing that, to cause him to suffer so greatly that he would revel from God’s plan and save himself, as we hear the guards and the Sanhedrin urging him to do on Calvary.

 Tuesday in the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time, February 14, 2023

Mark 8, 14-21

The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. Jesus enjoined them, “Watch out, guard against the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.” They concluded among themselves that it was because they had no bread. When he became aware of this he said to them, “Why do you conclude that it is because you have no bread? Do you not yet understand or comprehend? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes and not see, ears and not hear? And do you not remember, when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many wicker baskets full of fragments you picked up?” They answered him, “Twelve.” “When I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many full baskets of fragments did you pick up?” They answered him, “Seven.” He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”

“Watch out, guard against the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.”  The Lord speaks of the work of the Pharisees and of the Herodias as “leaven”.  His meaning is not clear at first and so his saying was meant as a matter for the Apostles to discuss among themselves, or to ask him about.  Instead, they assume the mention of “leaven” is a reprimand for their not bringing enough bread with them for their next meal.  The Lord uses “leaven” to teach that both these groups worked in the darkness, spreading rumors and calumny, quietly passing their doctrines off as the commandments of Moses and the teachings of the Prophets, and provoking violence while pretending to urge peace.  Leaven is rubbed into dough and “corrupts” it, making it grow out of its original size and shape, all the while remaining quite invisible.  The Lord warns his Apostles not to listen to what these people say but to listen to what he, the living Truth, teaches.

“When he became aware of this.”  Mark writes this from the point of view of the Apostles, for certainly the Lord knew all along how they would react to his words.  “Do you not yet understand or comprehend?”  The Lord does not so much rebuke them as remind them of how far they have to go before they fully understand his teaching, and how far their faith must still grow before they believe in him completely.  We should realize this about ourselves.  

“ ‘When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many wicker baskets full of fragments you picked up?’ They answered him, ‘Twelve.’ ”  The feeding of the five thousand is set in this Gospel at Mark 6, 31-44.  “ ‘When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many wicker baskets full of fragments you picked up?’ They answered him, ‘Twelve.’ ”  This is found at Mark 8, 1-9.  The Lord contrasts the leaven of the Pharisees and the Herodians, of which they must beware, with the bread he himself feeds the people.  The leaven corrupts while the bread the Lord gives enriches and fills.  The Lord also means to point out how greatly abundant the food he provided was: in both feedings, there is more left over than there was to begin with.  Depending on the size of the baskets, it is possible that more food was left over than the people were actually able to eat.  Demonstrating the magnitude of this sign to the Apostles and the crowd might have been the reason the Lord had the leftovers collected into baskets.  

The Lord uses our weaknesses for his great purposes.  With the large crowds, he allowed their hunger for his words to keep them with him and away from the towns where they could have bought provisions.  This led to the signs of his miraculously feeding them.  In the present Gospel Reading, he allows the Apostles to forget to bring sufficient bread with them: he could have reminded them or provided the bread for them without their realizing it.  But he wanted them to know and to believe that he would take care of them.  While he did not multiply their single loaf on this occasion, they did soon come to Bethsaida where they could buy all the bread they wanted.

The Lord uses our weaknesses too in order to show that he has got us, that he has his loving arms around us.  Let us, then, not rely on the Pharisees and Herodians in our lives and in our society, but on Jesus alone.

 Monday in the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time, February 13, 2023

Mark 8, 11-13

The Pharisees came forward and began to argue with Jesus, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him. He sighed from the depth of his spirit and said, “Why does this generation seek a sign? Amen, I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation.” Then he left them, got into the boat again, and went off to the other shore.

“A sign from heaven.”  Despite the abundant signs on earth which showed Almighty God’s approval of the Lord Jesus, the Pharisees sought a “sign” from heaven.  We can only speculate what sort of sign they wanted from heaven.  We can be sure, though, that no sign would have sufficed to prove  to them that Jesus was the Son of God.  To this point the Pharisees had seen him cast out demons and instantaneously heal every kind of sick or paralyzed person.  They may have heard stories of how he fed large crowds and calmed storms.  

The Pharisees were looking for something very different from Jesus of the son of Mary, the carpenter of Nazareth: “This is the son of man who has righteousness, with whom dwells righteousness, and who reveals all the treasures of that which is hidden, because the Lord of the spirits has chosen him, and whose lot has the pre-eminence before the Lord of the spirits in uprightness for ever. This son of man whom you have seen shall raise up the kings and the mighty from their seats and the strong from their thrones, and shall loosen the reins of the strong and break the teeth of the sinners.”  This passage is from the apocryphal Book of Enoch, which was probably written by a Pharisee.  It illustrates how the Pharisees expected the Messiah to arrive on earth already glorified, and not healing the miserable, helpless sick and lame beggars, but deposing and appointing kings.  While the Book of Enoch was not included in the Hebrew Scriptures read in the synagogues, it made for a very popular and influential work.  It serves us today in revealing what so many people were awaiting, and helps us to understand how they got the Messiah so wrong.  They were expecting a powerful outward appearance, not powerful works of love.

“He sighed from the depth of his spirit.”  The Lord comes before them as one who would provide them with every good thing but they only want a cheap show.  We can also see this as a refusal to a prayer.  In this case, the Pharisees possessed no faith in him, and they were also asking in bad faith.  St. Philip asks for something like this at the Last Supper: “Lord, shew us the Father; and it is enough for us” (John 14, 8), which the Lord also declined to do, though pointing out that anyone who saw him saw the Father.

If we appreciate the great works the Lord performed long ago and which he continues to perform through the Sacraments and through the prayers of his holy ones, then we will see great things in time to come, in his good time, not on our schedule: “Amen, amen, I say to you, you shall see the heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man” (John 1, 51).

 The Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 12, 2023

Matthew 5, 17–37

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 tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment. But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; and whoever says to his brother, ‘Raqa,’ will be answerable to the Sanhedrin; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna. Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court. Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge, and the judge will hand you over to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Amen, I say to you, you will not be released until you have paid the last penny. You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body thrown into Gehenna. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body go into Gehenna. It was also said, Whoever divorces his wife must give her a bill of divorce. But I say to you, whoever divorces his wife—unless the marriage is unlawful— causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. Again you have heard that it was said to your ancestors, Do not take a false oath, but make good to the Lord all that you vow. But I say to you, do not swear at all; not by heaven, for it is God’s throne; nor by the earth, for it is his footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Do not swear by your head, for you cannot make a single hair white or black. Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one.” 

The Gospel Reading for today’s Mass consists of twenty verses from the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount.  Each verse is worthy of a substantial discussion, but looking at these verses as a whole also rewards us for in them we can learn a lot about the One who speaks them.

The Lord has prefaced this sermon with the Beatitudes and with reaching about how his true disciples are the light of the world.  Now he launches into the deep waters of his teaching.  He prefaced this by saying, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”  Now, this runs contrary to what the Pharisees thought he was doing, and what many people today thought he did.  After all, among Christians there is no religious law for circumcision.  We also do not follow the law regarding the Sabbath with such strictness, nor do we fast as the Jews do.  But in fact, the Lord fulfilled the sign of circumcision with his teaching regarding baptism; he fulfilled the sign of the Sabbath by showing that it is a day especially set aside for us for performing good and pious works, works which “preserve life” (cf. Luke 6, 9); he fulfilled the laws of fasting by transforming the meaning of the practice, which we now do in order to imitate him.

The Lord provides specific examples of how he fulfills the sign that the Mosaic Law was.  For instance: “You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment. But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.”  Far from abolishing the law on murder, the Lord expanded it.  The sign is, “You shall not kill.”  In the days before grace, this was all a person could be expected to do, and it was hard enough.  But in the time of grace, we are to aim at perfection, and to live perfectly, as the Lord Jesus did, we must acorn and even flee from temptations to lose our tempers and to act irrationally out of anger.  Even for the baptized who practice the Faith, this is not easy, but it is possible through the grace of God won for us by Jesus Christ.  Similarly, with the expansion — or, tightening — of the other commandments, specifically, regarding adultery.

“If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.”  Having shown the fulfillment of the commandments, showing what they really mean and how they must be kept, the Lord reveals the urgency of keeping them.  There is now no question of sinning and then going to the Temple to make a sacrifice to be made right again.  If even a lustful thought, willingly engaged in, means death just as much as actual adultery — and now we are talking about the eternal death of the soul — then it would most definitely be better to cut off a hand or gouge out an eye than to go to judgment with these sins.  Yet here the Lord speaks of the signs of procuring our safety.  That is, cutting off one’s hand signifies walking away from the object which one desires to steal, or taking one’s mind off the object and thinking of something else.  The gouging out of an eye is signifies turning one’s inner or exterior eye to another matter, and physically leaving the place of temptation.  Now, if hands and eyes did in fact cause us to sin, they ought to be dealt with physically, but they do not and so in order to prevent ourselves from sinning, we perform the actions the Lord shows us with these signs.

“But I say to you, do not swear at all.”  In ancient times, just as in modern times, vows hold society together.  But in the times before Christ, elaborate oaths in which a person might call upon thunder to strike him and his family if he failed to perform some action were quite common.  The Lord commands that his followers not engage in this sort of thing, and so vows today are more in the way of promises, sometimes with civil consequences for breaking them, as breaking the simple vow in court to tell the truth results in perjury.  Other examples of vows permissible under Christ’s law are made by parents in raising their child to be a Catholic at the time of baptism, the vows a bride and groom exchange in marriage.  There are other vows too, but they take the form of simple promises, which is what the Lord allows here.

In these verses we see the Lord Jesus far more zealous for the Law of God than the Pharisees and the scribes.  He is far more zealous than Moses and Elijah and John the Baptist.  His zeal almost runs to the fanatic.  The people hearing him were stunned and wondered if he was speaking in parables.  Their reaction would have echoed that of the members of the crowd to whom the Lord revealed that they must eat his Body and Drink his Blood to be saved: “This saying is hard; and who can hear it?” (John 6, 61), and the reaction of very many would have been the same: “After this, many of his disciples went back and walked no more with him” (John 6, 67).  He is the One who welcomes all, but with strict conditions; he is the One who dies on the Cross for us but demands obedience.  His love is “love is strong as death” but his “jealousy is cruel as the grave” — he will abide no adoration of the many false gods in our world.  

This is our God: he loves us beyond measure and to know his love, we must love him in the same way, without limit.