Tuesday in the Second Week of Ordinary Time, January 18, 2022

Mark 2:23-28

As Jesus was passing through a field of grain on the sabbath, his disciples began to make a path while picking the heads of grain. At this the Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?” He said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he was in need and he and his companions were hungry? How he went into the house of God when Abiathar was high priest and ate the bread of offering that only the priests could lawfully eat, and shared it with his companions?” Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. That is why the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

Curiously, neither Matthew nor Mark tell exactly why the Pharisees were able to accuse the disciples here.  It is the Gentile Luke who tells us that they were rubbing the heads of the grain in their hands (cf. Luke 6, 1).  The Mosaic Law declared that food should be gathered and cooked on the day before the Sabbath because this could not be done on the Sabbath itself.  The rubbing of the grain heads constituted a preparation of food for eating.  The basis of this law is found in Exodus 16, 23-24: “This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord; bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over lay by to be kept till the morning.’ So they laid it by till the morning, as Moses bade them; and it did not become foul.”  The keeping of the Sabbath became one of the chief identifying marks of the Jew and consequently the breaking of the Sabbath in any way amounted to a very serious offense.  The Pharisees would seem to have a good reason to report the actions of his disciples to the Lord.

Jesus does not excuse his disciples or tell the Pharisees that they must have seen wrongly.  Instead, he uses the occasion to announce a new order in the world.  Just as he has shown that he has the power to forgive sin, so he has power over the Sabbath.  That is, he, the Son of Man written of in the Prophets, is not a mere mortal but comes from the Father and is endowed with the power of the Father.  He himself is not bound by the laws he makes, and can alter them at will.  No Pharisee would dare claim such power for himself, but no Pharisee was casting out demons, curing the sick, and forgiving sins.  

“Have you never read what David did when he was in need and he and his companions were hungry?”  While his miracles backed up his claim to be the Forgiver of sins and the Lord of the Sabbath, the Lord does refer back to the Scriptures for the benefit of the Pharisees.  In 1 Samuel 21, 1-6, King David is fleeing from his son Absalom, who has rebelled against him.  David and his followers come to Abimelech the Priest and ask for bread.  He has none but the loaves that are placed on the altar of God.  Since David and his men are ritually pure, Abimelech allows them to eat these loaves, as there are no others.  The priest alters the Law on his own account for David’s sake.  If Abimelech, who made no claims of divine authority and performed no miracles, could do this, then certainly Jesus could.  The Pharisees listen to him but do not reply.  Certainly they murmured among themselves, but they had no answer to offer, nothing with which to contest his words.  

Jesus declares, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”  He teaches us that the purpose of the Law is the salvation of the human race.  Previously, kings had made laws in order to show their power.  As he would later remind his disciples, “You know that the princes of the Gentiles lord it over them; and that they that are the greater, exercise power upon them” (Matthew 20, 25).  But God makes his Law to safeguard his people.  He makes a “narrow way” (cf. Matthew 7, 13) for us so that we might have the consolation of two walls or rails to feel as we go along to him.  

 Monday in the Second Week of Ordinary Time, January 17, 2021

Mark 2:18-22

The disciples of John and of the Pharisees were accustomed to fast. People came to Jesus and objected, “Why do the disciples of John and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” Jesus answered them, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them they cannot fast. But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunken cloth on an old cloak. If he does, its fullness pulls away, the new from the old, and the tear gets worse. Likewise, no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the skins are ruined. Rather, new wine is poured into fresh wineskins.”

“The disciples of John and of the Pharisees were accustomed to fast.”  The verb here is in the imperfect, and so the sentence means: “The disciples . . . were those who fasted.”  While the Law prescribed fasting at various times, members of such sects as the followers of John the Baptist and the Pharisees fasted regularly at other times as well.  In fact, fasting might be said to be their norm, with meals and feasting the exception.  This practice marked out the members of the sect from other Jews and also unified the members among themselves.  In some cases, the fasting was undertaken as penance and in others as a sign of preparedness for the coming of the Messiah and the “wedding feast” he would inaugurate: “He that has the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices with joy because of the bridegroom’s voice” (John 3, 39).  

“People came to Jesus and objected.”  The Greek text does not identify who it was who came to Jesus, here, although the inference is that it was a group of the disciples of the Pharisees and/or of John the Baptist.  It does not seem to be simply members of a curious crowd.  Also, the Greek text says nothing like “objected”.  The Greek verb means “they say”.  And so it seems that a group of those who were members of these sects were discussing their ways of life and someone brought up the followers of Jesus.  Did they not fast?  The question may seem trifling to us but actually had important ramifications.  Membership in a sect was tightly regulated.  We see this particularly among the Essenes, whose writings on the subject have come down to us.  A prospective member went through a probationary period of learning and conversion which might last years.  Being allowed to fast and eat within the sect was seen as a privilege.  But the disciples of Jesus did not fast — that is, above and beyond the fasting imposed by the Law.  It seemed, then, that there were no special requirements for a person to be his disciple.  What, then, did it mean to be a disciple of Jesus?  From the outside, it seemed very vague.

“Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?”  The Lord identifies his disciples as “wedding guests”, that is, the friends of the bridegroom, thus making himself to be the bridegroom.  Since he uses terms John the Baptist used, this may indicate that Jesus was speaking primarily to John’s disciples here.  But the “bridegroom” of whom John spoke was the Messiah, and they all knew this well.  Jesus is telling them that his disciples did not fast because the sign was now fulfilled and fasting at this time was inappropriate because he, the Messiah, had arrived.  “As long as they have the bridegroom with them they cannot fast. But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day.”  The words “when the bridegroom is taken away” would not have made sense to them because according to their understanding of the Prophets, the Messiah, when he came, would institute a new age for Israel.  There would be no “taking away”.  Of course, we understand that the Lord is speaking of his Passion and Death and, following his Ascension into heaven, the remainder of the age until he comes again to judge the living and the dead.  The Lord speaks in prophecy.  But the fact that he left these others in darkness regarding his meaning reminds them that they are not his followers, and that there is a limit to what they can understand about him as outsiders.  

This “limit” as to what outsiders can understand about him is key to what he says next: “No one pours new wine into old wineskins.”  All the Evangelists quote Jesus using this figure.  The Lord is simply saying that without grace, faith is impossible (and without faith, we cannot understand who the Lord is or what he did except on a very rudimentary level).  Faith cannot be imparted to a person who is not made a new creation in baptism.  Grace makes a person a “vessel” capable of being filled with the “new wine” of faith.  

Baptized in Christ, we are new wineskins filled with his new wine, but we are not made so only in order to sit around and age in a cellar.  We are to go forth and to witness to the glory of our Vinter.

 The Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, January 16, 2021

Thanks again for your prayers!  I am starting to eat again and the cough is not as bad.

John 2:1–11

There was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the wedding. When the wine ran short, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servers, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now there were six stone water jars there for Jewish ceremonial washings, each holding twenty to thirty gallons. Jesus told them, “Fill the jars with water.” So they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, “Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter.” So they took it. And when the headwaiter tasted the water that had become wine, without knowing where it came from —although the servers who had drawn the water knew—, the headwaiter called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves good wine first, and then when people have drunk freely, an inferior one; but you have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs at Cana in Galilee and so revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him.

The earliest readers of St. John’s account of the miracle Jesus performed at the wedding at Cana would have been shocked by a particular detail: that Jesus makes the wine from water stored in vessels used for the ceremonial washings.  John, himself an observant Jew, makes this abundantly clear, and in such a way as to show that Jesus knew exactly what he was doing.  It is a very purposeful act.  John need not have mentioned it, especially if the point of his account was simply to describe the miracle.  Looking closely at what Jesus does here helps us to see the meaning of his action.  Indeed, John refers to the miracle as a “sign”.  Of course, all the miracles the Lord performed during his Public Life were signs, but John singles out a handful of these particularly as signs.  Let us see what this one means.

Now, Jesus chose to make the wine from water in the ceremonial vessels.  He could have simply made the wine out of nothing in the room used to store the wine or he could have increased what was still there as he would later increase the handful of fish and loaves to feed large crowds.  He could have done this without witnesses, though his Mother wanted the servants to be involved.  His deliberate choice to make the wine from water tells us something, as well as that it was witnessed by the servants, and that he used the ceremonial vessels.  In making the wine from water he shows how, throughout his ministry, he will take ordinary human words and artifacts and reveal heavenly mysteries with them.  Thus, he will use the Temple to teach about his Body, and “wind” to teach about the Holy Spirit.  He also uses water in this way in order to show how he will take what is good and make it perfect: the belief of an Apostle who sees, to the faith of a believer who does not.  In involving the servants, the Lord shows that though he does not need us to assist him in his work of salvation, he uses us anyway, for our own good.  He also uses servants rather than the steward because of their humility.  As we see in the account, the steward was a proud man, unwilling to admit his own failure to provide enough wine in the first place.  

The earliest readers, acquainted as they were with the teaching of the Pharisees, would have jumped at seeing Jesus use the ceremonial vessels for making wine which people would consume.  It is as though the Lord had chosen to employ a dirty bathtub for this purpose.  Beyond this, his action flaunts the Law as the Pharisees had been teaching it.  His use of these vessels to make wine for drinking amounted to a serious provocation.  The servants, knowing their place, did not object to the Lord’s orders.  The steward, had he known of this, would have absolutely refused to allow the wine to be served, miracle or no.  As it turns out, though, the wine Jesus makes is not only drinkable, despite the impurity of its origins, but it is “the good wine”, superior to all that had been served to that point.  When we consider the miracles from this angle, we see that the Lord’s least word surpasses the best the Pharisees can offer, and that his teachings show the worthlessness of theirs, as the steward, signifying the Pharisees and scribes, himself is forced to attest.  That Jesus uses water to make the wine rather than his wine from the remaining wine, shows that he begins with the pure Law as God had given it to Moses and fulfills it, revealing its true meaning.  The Lord does not add onto or reform the teachings of the Pharisees: he disregards them entirely.

We rejoice in our God who does not allow his people to flounder about on their own but who provides a clear road to heaven, brushing out of the way for them all the rubbish that false teachers throw onto it.

 Saturday in the First Week of Ordinary Time, January 15, 2021

Mark 2:13-17

Jesus went out along the sea. All the crowd came to him and he taught them. As he passed by, he saw Levi, son of Alphaeus, sitting at the customs post. Jesus said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed Jesus. While he was at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners sat with Jesus and his disciples; for there were many who followed him. Some scribes who were Pharisees saw that Jesus was eating with sinners and tax collectors and said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus heard this and said to them, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

The Gospel reading for today’s Mass tells us, in the words of St. Mark, how Levi, also called “Matthew”, was called by Jesus to follow him.  In order to understand this reading, we ought to look first at what exactly Jesus was telling Matthew to do.  Jesus is walking along the sea during the day.  As he walked along, he spotted Matthew at his custom’s post and said to him, “Follow me.”  In English, the Lord could be directing Matthew to a particular place in order to see or hear something of benefit to him.  The duration of “follow me” here is brief: Matthew follows, he sees, and he is free to resume what he was doing before.  The Lord could also be directing Matthew to follow him for some more persistent period of time, but in English this is not so clear.  The Greek word translated here as “Follow me” has the meanings of “Attend to me” or “Accompany me”.  It is in the present active imperative which indicates a continuous action (the aorist imperative, by contrast, would indicate “Follow me this once to this place.”).  Jesus is calling on Matthew to accompany him or to attend to him from now on.  He is no longer to attend to his own affairs but to those of the Lord.  And Matthew “got up and followed Jesus”.  

We might wonder a little at the immediate willingness of the men who became Apostles to follow the Lord.  We are told that Peter, Andrew, James, John, Matthew, and the others simply got up and followed the Lord.  Most people, faced with far less pivotal decisions to make, consider their options before deciding on one.  It helps if we keep in mind that most of the future Apostles had heard the Lord preach.  Andrew and John had spent the better part of a day alone with him, conversing.  Some, such as Bartholomew, saw him perform miracles before joining him.  In short, they did have a chance to think about him and who he was.  Nevertheless, their immediate response in the moment hints at something more.  It would be one thing if they had weighed their thoughts and feelings and then chosen to join him at a time of their choosing.  Upending their lives at the instant of his call is another.  St. Jerome comments that a certain brightness of his divinity shone forth in his physical features and attracted followers to him.  He compares this to the invisible power of a magnet that draws bits of iron to itself.

Very notably, the Lord chooses odd times for calling his Apostles.  He calls them when they are busy.  Not just busy, but when, literally, they are enmeshed in their work.  He calls them at the least possible times.  Peter and Andrew were casting their nets into the sea.  Later, he calls James and John, who were mending their nets at the time.  Matthew, in the present reading, is engaged with his accounts and receiving tax payments.  Jesus deliberately calls people to follow him when it least convenient for them.  And they get up and follow him anyway.  This is a sign of his power, his hold on people.  But he does not exercise it in order to indulge himself.  He does this so that later, when the faith of his followers is tested by weariness or persecution, they may recall their experience of his call to them, and so persevere.  

The Lord continues to call us in the same manner today, whether to perform a single action or to turn our lives entirely over to him.  He does not wait for an opportune moment, but seemingly for the least opportune moment.  Not when we are praying peacefully, but when we are chasing our children, waiting on tables, lying on our sickbed, or overwhelmed at work.  And so, with the example of St. Matthew before us, let us not answer him, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first take my leave of them that are at my house” (Luke 9, 61), but as he did, getting up at once and leaving it all behind.

 Friday in the First Week of Ordinary Time, January 14, 2021

Mark 2:1-12

When Jesus returned to Capernaum after some days, it became known that he was at home. Many gathered together so that there was no longer room for them, not even around the door, and he preached the word to them. They came bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. Unable to get near Jesus because of the crowd, they opened up the roof above him. After they had broken through, they let down the mat on which the paralytic was lying. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to him, “Child, your sins are forgiven.” Now some of the scribes were sitting there asking themselves, “Why does this man speak that way? He is blaspheming. Who but God alone can forgive sins?” Jesus immediately knew in his mind what they were thinking to themselves, so he said, “Why are you thinking such things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, pick up your mat and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins on earth” – he said to the paralytic, “I say to you, rise, pick up your mat, and go home.” He rose, picked up his mat at once, and went away in the sight of everyone. They were all astounded and glorified God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this.”

“Unable to get near Jesus because of the crowd, they opened up the roof above him.”  The initiative of the men carrying the paralytic on his mat is striking.  They persisted in their plan to bring him before the Lord even when they received no help or encouragement from those around them.  Not bothering to complain or make demands, they concentrated on what they wanted to do and accomplished it.  In this way, they acted as the man’s servants, whatever their actual relationship to him may have been.  The lazy servant stands around and makes excuses and complains at the slightest sign of difficulty.  He does not want to do his job and so looks for opportunities to give up and blame others for his failure.  But the industrious servant sees options and makes many attempts until his object is obtained.  This is the difference between the lost soul and the saint.  Jesus makes this clear in Matthew 25 when he gives the words of the damned at the time of their judgment: “Lord, when did we see you hungry and not feed you?”  The outlook of the saint is always, “Look at all the ways I can serve the Lord today!”

“When Jesus saw their faith.”  Now, you and I can see faith indirectly through the outward actions of a person, but even so we are making an assumption.  In this case, how would we know the men were not being paid a lot of money to help the paralytic in this case?  But the Lord Jesus “saw” or “recognized” their faith — that is, their belief that he could heal this man.  He looked into their hearts and saw what was truly there.  It seems very likely that they had come some distance because some days earlier, the Lord had healed all the sick in the town and its environs and then gone away to preach.  Word of his power traveled through the country meanwhile and over the course of days many who lived several miles away came across the country.  Thus, when Jesus “saw” the faith of the men who carried the paralytic, he saw them laboriously hauling him from a great distance for several days.  He saw their single-hearted devotion to this man.  He saw the suffering they had willingly endured for him.  It is as much for them as for the paralytic that the Lord did what he did next.

“Child, your sins are forgiven.” The paralytic was brought for the healing of his body, but the Lord grants the healing of his soul.  The paralytic asks for a crust of bread and the Lord provides him with a feast.  This reminds us of how the Lord fed the large crowds.  The people would have been more than satisfied with a little food, enough to strengthen them for their journey home.  And yet he offered them more than they could eat.  He shows his willingness to answer our prayers and even to go beyond them to answer those desires which we dare not voice even to ourselves.  In forgiving the man’s sins, the Lord also shows the higher nature of the soul than the body and how our care for our souls ought to greatly exceed that which we spend on our bodies.  The Lord’s restoration of the man’s ability to walk comes across in this account as almost incidental, and is accomplished mainly to provide the sign of the greater, inward, healing he has received. This marks the beginning of the Lord’s campaign to teach the meaning of sin, its affects on the soul, and our need of forgiveness — which can only come from him.  The scribes understood right away the point he was advancing and so they challenged him: “Who but God alone can forgive sins?”  While a good question, they should have thought a little deeper: Only God can heal a paralytic.  Is this God?  If this is God, then of course he can forgive sins.  But they looked at Jesus — not at his works — and decided he could not be God.

The people did not fully understand what had taken place, but they saw the work Jesus performed and wondered at it.  What did it mean?  What did this powerful deed say about the one who performed it? “They were all astounded and glorified God, saying, ‘We have never seen anything like this.’ ”  The crowd wondered, showing that they were ready for faith.

The man walked the long way home, carrying his mat.  He must have kept it with him the rest of his life so that he could remember his once helpless state and the One who had raised him from it.

 Thursday in the First Week of Ordinary Time, January 13, 2021

Thanks everyone for your prayers!  While I am still struggling a bit in terms of weakness, I feel well enough to resume offering reflections on the Scriptures.  Months ago I had planned to take next week off to visit my sister.  I’m not sure between my health and the threat of blizzards whether I will still be able to do this, but at any rate I will take the week off, so no Bible Study next week.  I really do want to start Bible Study the week after that, though.  I am always glad to hear suggestions for it, so please feel free to offer any.  You can reach me through the blog comments and also through my email, which is: mfcaime@cs.com.  

Mark 1:40-45

A leper came to him and kneeling down begged him and said, “If you wish, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand, touched the leper, and said to him, “I do will it. Be made clean.” The leprosy left him immediately, and he was made clean. Then, warning him sternly, he dismissed him at once. Then he said to him, “See that you tell no one anything, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed; that will be proof for them.” The man went away and began to publicize the whole matter. He spread the report abroad so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly. He remained outside in deserted places, and people kept coming to him from everywhere.

“If you wish, you can make me clean.”  We ought to imagine for ourselves the horror inspired by the appearance of the leper, here.  Not only by his dreadful physical aspect, his reek, the creak of his voice, his ragged attire, but by the panic others would have felt in the possibility of their becoming infected by him.  We might think of how people were thrown out of their homes by their own family members in the early days of the AIDS epidemic.  I knew of men who were thrown out of hospitals onto the street after lying untouched and uncared for in their beds for weeks.  And so this leper comes before the Lord, having heard of the cures he was worked for so many others.  The others around the Lord would have drawn back or walked away.  Jesus alone would have stood before him, the Creator before his needy creature.  The creature says an interesting thing to his Creator: “If you wish, you can make me clean.”  A better translation is: “If you will it, you are able to make me clean.”  First, this is more than Jesus having a preference for doing something.  It is a matter of his will.  Second, the leper acknowledges that Jesus has the power to do what he wills to do.  The leper, then, is not merely making a request, however earnest, but an act of faith.  It is a quite extraordinary act on the leper’s part.  He does this, of course, not absolutely on his own but prompted by the Holy Spirit.  

“Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand, touched the leper, and said to him, ‘I do will it. Be made clean.’ ”  Jesus is “moved with pity”.  At what?  At the leper’s appearance?  His knowledge of what he had suffered?  Or at something deeper?  For, before the Lord kneels the human race, horribly disfigured by sin and unable to do anything about it, doomed to a lonely, miserable death.  The repentance itself is piteous, for though the punishment is fearful, the sin which resulted in it is far worse.  And as the Lord looks into the leper’s eyes back through human history to the first sin, he also looks ahead to that terrible, dark night when he will pray alone in a garden, awaiting his own Death.  Having taken on the sins of the world, he will look into the Father’s face and speak as the leper — humanity — has just spoken to him: “My Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will but as you will” (Matthew 26, 39).  The Lord, who will not save himself, saves the leper and makes him clean “immediately”, just as the penitent’s sins, whatever they may be, are forgiven immediately by the absolution in the confessional.

“Then, warning him sternly, he dismissed him at once.”  Jesus commanded the man whom he had healed to offer the proper thanksgivings to God in the Temple to fulfill his religious obligation and also to show himself as a sign to the Temple authorities.  It should seem odd that the Lord feels he must tell him something that he should know to do, and rejoice to have the opportunity to do, but “the man went away and began to publicize the whole matter”.  Jesus, knowing that the man would disobey him, he healed him anyway.  It is enough for us to pity our God.  

 

Monday, January 3, 2021

Hi!  I’m doing a little better each day but I’m still pretty sick.  One of the consequences of this particular sickness is that it makes concentration hard.  I’ve tried to write reflections on the Mass readings and have had no real success.  I hope to be able to do this again in the next couple of days.  Also, I’m not going to be able to have the Zoom Bible Study on St. Matthew today.  I regret this very much but with the best will in the world it can’t be helped.  I hope to resume doing this again soon, though.  I very much appreciate your prayers!  — Rev. Mark Carrier