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NEXT SUNDAY’S FIRST READING: ACTS 4: 32-35 SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER [B] USCCB Link to all three readings The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common. With great power the apostles bore witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great favor was accorded them all. There was no needy person among them, for those who owned property or houses would sell them, bring the proceeds of the sale, and put them at the feet of the apostles, and they were distributed to each according to need. As I noted last week, the entire Easter Season of Sundays will draw the first readings from the New Testament and not the Old; this is quite a departure from the other 45 Sunday observances of the Eucharist throughout the year. The specific source for the first readings is the Acts of the Apostles, a volume intended originally as the second part of St. Luke’s Gospel. Luke himself, in Chapter 1 of Acts, describes what he hoped to accomplish in his previous work, the Gospel, taking his narrative to the eve of Pentecost. The Acts of the Apostles introduces the reader to a new era, when Jesus, from his glorified place at the Father’s right hand, will sustain his followers through the ever-present life of the Holy Spirit. The new story line begins with Acts 2, when the Holy Spirit descends upon the apostles in tongues of fire and the Christian preaching ministry begins in earnest. [Chapter 1 ties up several loose ends, including determining a replacement for Judas.] Acts of the Apostles is the subject of lively debate among scholars today, much of it surrounding how or if Luke was an eyewitness to everything he reports. This stems from Luke’s use of the pronoun “we” when he describes the exploits of the preaching apostles, notably St. Paul, who is the heroic figure of the narrative after his conversion in chapters 8 and 9. St. Paul’s missionary career runs roughly between 40 and 60 A.D. Luke’s Gospel at the earliest appears after 80 A.D. and the Acts would be later than that. The Jerome Biblical Commentary includes the theory that by the time the Acts were written, Paul was a true hero of the Church, even though later thinkers—which would include all four evangelists—developed a richer theology of the Christ that Luke would have incorporated in the Acts. Under the influence of the Holy Spirit, the Church in the Book of Acts would come to understand that the crucifixion was in God’s plan, and not a terrible derailment of divine providence, as the two Emmaus disciples seemed to think it was in Luke 24. The Church would come to see that its preaching of the risen Christ and the future apocalyptic judgment of that same Christ made it a vehicle for the forgiveness of sins of the entire human race, not only the Chosen People Israel. It is Acts which anoints Paul as the Apostle to the Gentiles, perhaps the biggest paradigm shift in the New Testament era. While the Acts contain several inspiring conversions and acts of courage under public fire, it is also true that Luke wished to depict a Church that lived what it professed. There are two separate “vignettes” of an ideal church community. The first is Acts 2: 42-47; the second is next Sunday’s first reading. Most commentaries are quick to point out that Luke intended these depictions of a pure socialist church as models of how the members should live in a faith-filled, familial way, not as a reflection of actual household tranquility. Acts itself describes trouble in the family, notably the sad tale of Ananias and Saphira, which follows immediately after Sunday’s text. In Sunday’s first reading, the primary message about community is its response to the preaching of the Resurrection “with great power” by the Apostles. Acts is very clear on this point, that no group, no family, no church can hope to survive without the fire of the Resurrection and the impulse of the Holy Spirit to inspire them to full time charity and unity. Luke has captured the full “theology of the Resurrection” in that the new life of Christ is a statement of all human destiny, and the community cited here is living in expectation that the Lord will come again in glory and judgment. This community cited here is future oriented, hoping that the Lord will find them in fraternity and self-sacrifice for the good of the mission of baptizing the world into eternal glory. In recent times the Church has celebrated the Sunday after Easter as Divine Mercy Sunday. The Lectionary of Mass readings was established several decades before the Divine Mercy Sunday designation came into being thanks to Pope John Paul II. The sermon in your parish may reflect the Divine Mercy theme instead of one drawn from the Lectionary readings. The readings linked on today’s post are the universal assigned texts for the Easter season. It is a mystery to me why Pope John Paul II did not designate the Fourth Sunday of Easter as Divine Mercy Sunday, as that Sunday has been observed as “Good Shepherd Sunday” for centuries. If you are confused on Sunday, take heart that you are not alone. The USCCB website recommends that devotions around the observance of Divine Mercy Sunday take place outside of the Sunday Eucharist, as on Sunday afternoon.
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NEXT SUNDAY’S FIRST READING: ACTS 10: 34a, 37-43
EASTER SUNDAY [B] USCCB link to all Easter morning readings here. Peter proceeded to speak and said: "You know what has happened all over Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power. He went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses of all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree. This man God raised on the third day and granted that he be visible, not to all the people, but to us, the witnesses chosen by God in advance, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commissioned us to preach to the people and testify that he is the one appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness, that everyone who believes in him will receive forgiveness of sins through his name." The assignment of readings for the Easter Vigil and particularly Easter Sunday morning is quite diverse, like Christmas in that respect. Given that fact, if you are attending the Easter Vigil late Saturday—a rite with nine Scripture proclamations, you are probably best off to read or at least survey the texts by reviewing the Easter Vigil USCCB site linked here. Parishes usually take the option of reducing the full slate of vigil readings to about five or six. Easter Sunday morning also offers choices for the proclamations, except in the case of our first reading above, which is used every Easter Sunday in all three cycles. The Easter Season is unique in that the first readings every Sunday are drawn from the New Testament, specifically the Acts of the Apostles, which chronicles the development of the Christian faith under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Acts was written as the second volume of Luke’s Gospel, which places its composition in the decade of the 80’s A.D. However, there is strong opinion that the sermons of Peter, such as the one here, is a good historical remembrance of the actual earliest apostolic preaching. Sunday’s text from Acts 10 is Peter’s sermon addressed to Gentiles, as the Jews are spoken of in the third person. This is a softer text than Peter’s address in Acts 2, which comes immediately after the Lukan Pentecost event, and which is directed to the Jewish throngs who had called for Jesus’ crucifixion. In that sermon, the Jews respond with fear and demand the saving waters of baptism, in numbers approaching 3000 according to Luke. The one question we might ask here is why the imposition of a post-Pentecostal recollection on the Sunday of the Lord’s Resurrection. One explanation is the intimate connection of the Holy Spirit with the events of Good Friday and Easter Sunday itself, particularly in the Gospel of John. In John’s crucifixion narrative, Jesus gathers his new kingdom at the foot of the cross—notably his mother and the “disciple whom he loved”—and in John’s description of the moment of his death, Jesus “handed over the spirit.” The evangelist John portrays the first Pentecostal event (there will be others) at the moment of Jesus’ death. This explains an unusual act by a Roman soldier who, seeing that Jesus was already dead, lanced his side. What came forth was a cascade of blood and water, which splashed upon his new kingdom, those standing below. Later Christians would have recognized blood and water as symbols of the two earliest sacraments, baptism and eucharist. [Listen to the Good Friday Passion closely later this week.] John’s Gospel narrative continues into Easter Sunday, when Jesus appears that evening of the first day of the week to the apostles in the locked room. We can assume that the Ascension or ultimate Glorification of Jesus took place on Easter a little earlier. When Mary Magdalene tried to embrace Jesus near the tomb that morning, Jesus says “Stop holding on to me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father.” But in the evening Jesus shows the apostles his wounds and does not prohibit them from approaching him. Within a week, he will invite doubting Thomas to put his fingers in his nail holes. Having approached the apostles on Easter Sunday night in his eternal glory, Jesus breathes on them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” This marks the second “Pentecostal event” in John’s triduum of days. In the reform of the Sacred Liturgy of the Easter Season, beginning with Pius XII in 1955, the fathers of the Church wished to reestablish the full unity of Christ’s redemptive work: to leave a memorial meal where he would be present, to offer himself as the once for all redemptive sacrificial lamb [the timing of the soldier’s lance coincides with the butchering of Passover lambs in the Temple], to rise from the dead and enjoy the glorious eternal blessedness of his Father, to pour out the Holy Spirit upon his new kingdom, and to make possible the forgiveness of sins until his coming in glory. Easter cannot be celebrated as an empty tomb, but as the pivotal event for which Christ has come into the world and makes possible unity of glorious life beyond the grace. Thus, the Easter liturgy attempts to embody every aspect of Jesus’ redemption. [If you attend the three nights of the Triduum—Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil, you will notice that the Holy Thursday and Good Friday rites do not end with a formal dismissal, because the next day picks up where the previous rite leaves off, a rubric sign of continuity of the mysteries being reenacted.] This is the reason the Church draws from St. Peter in the Acts of the Apostles for its first reading every year on Easter Sunday morning. Peter has checked nearly all the boxes about Jesus, citing his baptism and anointing by the Spirit, his good works, his crucifixion at the hands of those who rejected him, his resurrection on the third day, the eating and drinking of a memorial banquet, his glorious judgeship [Ascension], his call to a mission to the world, and the promise of the forgiveness of sins. In this concise sermon, Peter has collected all the mysteries of Jesus into one address. Easter is a day to celebrate Christ in his fullness. At the Sunday Masses the congregation is invited to renewal of baptismal promises in a formula very much like Peter’s—a catalogue of every reason to rejoice on the day of the Lord’s Resurrection. NEXT SUNDAY’S FIRST READING: ISAIAH 50: 4-7
PASSION [PALM] SUNDAY [B] USCCB Link to all scriptural readings assigned to blessing and Mass The Lord GOD has given me a well-trained tongue, that I might know how to speak to the weary a word that will rouse them. Morning after morning he opens my ear that I may hear; and I have not rebelled, have not turned back. I gave my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who plucked my beard; my face I did not shield from buffets and spitting. The Lord GOD is my help, therefore I am not disgraced; I have set my face like flint, knowing that I shall not be put to shame. The Book of the Prophet Isaiah is three separate collections by three different authors. The text is divided into a pre-Exile section [Chapters 1-39], a Babylonian Captivity segment [40-55], and a post-Exile segment after the return of the Israelites to Jerusalem after 539 B.C. In terms of style and content scholars are comfortable with the tripartite division of the volume named Isaiah. For those of you who participate in the Holy Week liturgies, the second Isaiah (referred to in commentaries as “Deutero-Isaiah,” i.e., “Second Isaiah”) is quite familiar for its majestic poetry regarding the “Suffering Servant.” Deutero-Isaiah introduces the idea that one suffering soul has taken upon himself the sins of all in a universal act of redemptive suffering. Sunday’s reading introduces the theme, but its fullest and most dramatic proclamation will come during the Good Friday Liturgy [Isaiah 52:13—53:12.] Our commentator Father Boadt [see home page], speaking of chapters 52 and 53, comments that “It is a remarkable passage because it suggests more clearly than anywhere else in the Old Testament that God accepts one individual’s suffering to atone for the sins of others.” (p. 377) Israel was familiar with rituals of atonement involving the suffering and death of a goat, the “scape goat” ritual of Leviticus 16, but the concept of a human being atoning for general sin through an individual death was another thing entirely. Did Isaiah understand his prophesy as directed to Jesus of Nazareth specifically? I have never come across a commentator who answered this question affirmatively in the literal sense. Isaiah’s breakthrough is more along the lines of the concept of redemptive suffering. Again, Father Boadt reminds us that Isaiah’s prophesy here is unique to the Hebrew Scripture and is not a major feature of later Old Testament books which extend as late as perhaps 150 B.C. If Isaiah’s prophesy was targeted and specific, as we sometimes make it out to be, it would have altered Messianic expectations. The Gospels are clear that this was not the case. The idea of a dying, executed savior was not understood by the Jews of Jesus’ time, and not even by the first Christians in the post-Easter era. It is worth noting that Luke 24’s description of the meeting of Jesus and two disciples on the road to Emmaus involves two men who had not made any connection between Isaiah and Jesus. Luke reports Jesus to have spent the entire afternoon explaining every instance in the Scripture [the Old Testament] where the necessity of the suffering and death of the Messiah is depicted as part of God’s plan. Whatever Isaiah originally intended, the Christian Church eventually made the connection between Isaiah’s Suffering Servant and the redemptive death of Christ. The text from Sunday’s first reading combines the personality of a Spirit-filled prophet with a courageous stance of a man who knows that his message will draw persecution and eventually abandonment. “The Lord is my help; therefore, I am not disgraced.” It is interesting that next Sunday’s Passion account from St. Mark includes a description of Jesus’ final moments on the cross in which he cries “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?” This prayer resonates with the circumstances of Isaiah’s prophesy, when the exiles had been denied homecoming for several decades and perhaps had given up hope that they would ever see the holy city Jerusalem again. Mark, like Luke, writes to connect the vision of Isaiah with the intent of Christ, whose own preaching speaks repeatedly of a glorious and lasting homecoming in the Kingdom of God. I am in the middle of several personal projects this week, including presenting a parish staff retreat on Thursday. The usual Tuesday post will be up Friday, devoted to next Sunday’s first reading (Palm Sunday). NEXT SUNDAY’S FIRST READING: JEREMIAH 31: 31-34
FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT [B] USCCB link to all three readings The days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers the day I took them by the hand to lead them forth from the land of Egypt; for they broke my covenant, and I had to show myself their master, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD. I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people. how to know the LORD. No longer will they have need to teach their friends and relatives. All, from least to greatest, shall know me, says the LORD, for I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more. Father Lawrence Boadt’s Old Testament commentary (see home page) devotes Chapter 18 to the Prophet Jeremiah exclusively, and why not? Jeremiah’s ministry begins in 627 B.C. and extends to 582 B.C. Boadt comments that Jeremiah holds the record for length of prophetic activity at 45 years. His tenure begins with the reforms of the Israelite king Josiah and continues through the failures of their successors, the final collapse of the kingdom, and the Babylonian Exile. Boadt comments that “this work reveals more of the individual than any other Old Testament book…a person in ancient dress with whom modern readers can readily identify.” (p. 315) For much of his life Jeremiah focused upon two themes: the evil of idolatry and injustice. He was relentless in his call for reform, which brought him suffering and persecution throughout his ministry. At the same time, he was a man of deep compassion who loved his people and worked tirelessly to save them from the judgment their infidelity would provoke from God. Boadt quotes the twentieth century Jewish Scripture scholar Abraham Heschel, as describing Jeremiah as “the prophet of God’s pathos—the divine sympathy.” (Boadt, 321) As Israel’s moral ethos deteriorated, Jeremiah despaired that anything he could say would avert the inevitable destruction that was now a virtual certainty. In a few instances he states that God has ordered him not to intercede on behalf of the people any longer, as in Jeremiah 7:16. Those of us catechized in Western Christian civilization are used to hearing our doctrines and directives in propositional and left-brained style; no one has ever confused the Catholic Catechism with Maya Angelu for the Nobel Prize in Literature. [Note the prominence of “talking head” liturgies in the U.S.] Prophetic literature is a product of the Middle East, where song, poetry, parable, sermon, and metaphor convey religious truth. Jeremiah spoke in parable and visionary tones, and while his message remains consistent, the artistry of his figures of speech and the music of his verse moved his hearers and disciples. It is sad to say that in reading Jeremiah, Isaiah, and the other classical prophets, we do not have access to the sensory experiences that prophetic preaching entailed. Nor is it easy for us to enter the context of the preaching event, and Jeremiah’s preaching was no exception. When the Babylonian Captivity took full force, Jeremiah urged his brethren to accept their lot with resignation, as the just punishment for their sins. He also counseled against listening to false prophets who foretold a brief sojourn in Babylon. This probably cost him many followers and friendships. The Book of Lamentations, once believed to be authored by Jeremiah, certainly captures the grief of the prolonged captivity in a foreign land and the barrenness of a stripped Jerusalem. It is likely that Sunday’s reading, the oracle of a new covenant, was addressed to the captives at some point late in Jeremiah’s life. The literary style is apocalyptic—forward looking and full of promise. At first glance the text does not differ greatly from other renewals of God’s covenant, but again the context is the missing yeast. The listener would have to concede that the recent memory of Israel’s history—from King Josiah’s reform to its inexorable deterioration of faith—was indeed a breaking of the covenant. Jeremiah speaks of a new covenant with both the houses of Israel and Judah, signifying that the current split of the promised land into a northern and a southern kingdom would be healed. Jeremiah, assuming the voice of God, explains the need for punishment; “I had to show myself their master…” But with hearts purified by trial, the new promise will be “written in their hearts.” Curiously, the prophesy goes on to says that “no longer will they have need to teach their friends and relatives” of the covenant, suggesting a very personal degree of communication with God. It is a different emphasis from addresses to “my people” and may suggest the first strong indication of the importance of personal fidelity. It reflects prophetic identity, in which one man with a conscience steps forward to say and do what is right by the Law. Sunday’s reading is paired with St. John 12, and one can read in Jesus’ description of himself his sense of prophetic identity. Chapter 12 describes a voice from heaven, similar in effect to the baptismal scenes of Jesus in the other Gospels where the Spirit of God is poured forth upon him. This is the same idiom used to describe Old Testament prophets, as receiving the Spirit of God. Jesus knew the histories of Isaiah and Jeremiah quite well, and the Gospel concludes with Jesus’ full embrace of the prophetic destiny: “‘And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.’ He said this indicating the kind of death he would die.” For those wondering if there are available commentaries on Jeremiah, the answer is, uh, yes. NEXT SUNDAY’S FIRST READING: 2 CHRONICLES 36:14-16, 19-23
FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT [B] USCCB Link to all three readings In those days, all the princes of Judah, the priests, and the people added infidelity to infidelity, practicing all the abominations of the nations and polluting the LORD’s temple which he had consecrated in Jerusalem. Early and often did the LORD, the God of their fathers, send his messengers to them, for he had compassion on his people and his dwelling place. But they mocked the messengers of God, despised his warnings, and scoffed at his prophets, until the anger of the LORD against his people was so inflamed that there was no remedy. Their enemies burnt the house of God, tore down the walls of Jerusalem, set all its palaces afire, and destroyed all its precious objects. Those who escaped the sword were carried captive to Babylon, where they became servants of the king of the Chaldeans and his sons until the kingdom of the Persians came to power. All this was to fulfill the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah: “Until the land has retrieved its lost sabbaths, during all the time it lies waste it shall have rest while seventy years are fulfilled.” In the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah, the LORD inspired King Cyrus of Persia to issue this proclamation throughout his kingdom, both by word of mouth and in writing: “Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia: All the kingdoms of the earth the LORD, the God of heaven, has given to me, and he has also charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever, therefore, among you belongs to any part of his people, let him go up, and may his God be with him!” The books of 1 and 2 Chronicles are a retelling of the history of the Israel in the era of the kings, using material from 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings. 2 Chronicles begins with Solomon’s reign and continues through the Babylonian Exile (c. 597-539 B.C.), after which the kingship ceased to exist. Sunday’s reading marks the conclusion of the Chronicle narrative, the destruction of the Temple and the sorrowful forced dislocation of most of the residents of Jerusalem and its environs to a seven-decade captivity in Babylon. The history of post-exile Israel is picked up in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, the same time that this text was composed. The Chronicle is a retelling, so the obvious question is why the original Biblical narrative needed a reworking. Father Lawrence Boadt explains the forces at work in his 2012 commentary (which I strongly recommend for your home working library.) In the first instance, the sheer length of the exile strongly suggests that those who returned to Jerusalem in 539 B.C. were literally new to the place and probably under-informed of the staples of Israel’s life, such as kingship, temple, priesthood, and law. The vacuum created by the absence of a king was filled by the priests who desired to fill the gaps of Israel’s self-understanding. Given the upheaval created by the exile, detailed in the narratives of Ezra and Nehemiah that follow, religious leaders sought to remind their returning brethren that Israel had once been well served by its own kings, notably David and Solomon. Thus, Chronicles provides another source for the history of the monarchy, a version which Boadt observes has removed the warts of the kings recounted in Samuel and Kings. For example, David’s adultery with Bathsheba is edited out of Chronicles, and his role in the construction of the Temple is exaggerated. This second history is colored with emphases on the needs of post-exilic times: rebuilding the Temple, renewing the observance of the Law, restoring the power and functions of the priesthood. [Whether the popularity of King Cyrus of Persia among the returning Israelites played a role in Chronicles, one way or the other, is hard to say.] Sunday’s text is the conclusion of the revised story of Israel’s kings. It is interesting that the moral collapse of Israel is described quite democratically—everyone is to blame; the kings are not singled out. The fall is depicted as the desecration of the holy place and the influx of pagan religious rites. The text describes the appearances of the pre-exile prophets, and their rejection is described as widespread among all the classes. God’s wrath is finally provoked, and the Babylonians, under Nebuchadnezzar, began a protracted campaign against Israel around 600 B.C. that concluded with destruction of the Temple and mass relocation. Jeremiah’s prophesy of a seventy-year desolation is remarkably accurate. Israel’s springtime would be the conquest of Babylon by Persia, and its remarkable King Cyrus. The final paragraph of Sunday’s reading is, interestingly, repeated in the opening of the Book of Ezra which follows. It is a remarkable thing that the Lord directly inspired a gentile king, and even more remarkable is its content. Cyrus, in 539 B.C., states that all the kingdoms of the earth have been given to him and he has been charged by God to build him a house in Jerusalem. Cyrus allows any one of this God’s people who wish to undertake the rebuilding process to go, and he includes the blessing “May his God be with him!” Cyrus, not surprisingly, enjoyed considerable love and gratitude among the people of Israel, who loyally record his generosity for posterity by recounting what on its face is quite embarrassing—that a pagan king proves to be a God-chosen redeemer where their own kingly line has failed. Cyrus and his successors took this divine commission seriously. In 440 B.C., a century later, the Persian king Artaxerxes dispatched a royal official of his court to assist Jerusalem in shoring up its defenses and restoring observance to Jewish Law. The courtier-now-governor was named Nehemiah, the author of the Biblical work under his name. Sunday’s text is not simply a statement of sin and redemption, but also of the surprising fashion in which God works. We worship a God “without walls,” so to speak, and we would do well not to ‘domesticate” or “appropriate” the all-powerful. The Sunday Gospel text from St. John concludes: “But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.” Goodness and light appear in unexpected places, too, even in Persian palaces. NEXT SUNDAY’S FIRST READING: GENESIS 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18
SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT [B] USCCB link to all three readings God put Abraham to the test. He called to him, "Abraham!" "Here I am!" he replied. Then God said: "Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him up as a holocaust on a height that I will point out to you." When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. Then he reached out and took the knife to slaughter his son. But the LORD's messenger called to him from heaven, "Abraham, Abraham!" "Here I am!" he answered. "Do not lay your hand on the boy," said the messenger. "Do not do the least thing to him. I know now how devoted you are to God, since you did not withhold from me your own beloved son." As Abraham looked about, he spied a ram caught by its horns in the thicket. So he went and took the ram and offered it up as a holocaust in place of his son. Again the LORD's messenger called to Abraham from heaven and said: "I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you acted as you did in not withholding from me your beloved son, I will bless you abundantly and make your descendants as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore; your descendants shall take possession of the gates of their enemies, and in your descendants all the nations of the earth shall find blessing-- all this because you obeyed my command." The ancient days of Israel were not a time of mysticism or metaphysics; the human experiences of God were blunt and direct. In Sunday’s first reading the faith of Abraham is challenged in a stunning fashion: the sacrifice of his son, Isaac. To be honest, I had not seriously considered all the implications of this story, nor the remarkable overlap with Sunday’s Gospel from St. Mark, in which Jesus takes Peter, James, and John to the top of a mountain and reveals his full glory. Our Hebrew text here is a good example of the difference between “carrying a story line in our heads” and examining the revealed text word for word. The New Jerome Biblical Commentary (1990) points out that the intention of the passage is stated clearly in the first line: “God put Abraham to the test.” This is the only instance in the Pentateuch where an individual is tested by God; the common format is God’s testing of the entire people of Israel. The very purpose of Genesis 22 is the establishment of Abraham’s unshakeable personal faith in God, his fitness to be the father of Israel. After this test, God will address and test the descendants of Abraham as a corporate entity, his chosen people. The crux of Abraham’s obedience will center around his willingness to sacrifice Isaac. God’s command to Abraham describes Isaac as “your only one, whom you love.” This passage overlooks [deliberately] Genesis 16, a mini-redemption story in its own rite, in which an aging Sarah gives her Egyptian handmaid Hagar to her husband to produce a male heir and begin the line of the promised people. Hagar bears Abraham’s firstborn son, Ishmael, though it is clear in Genesis 16 that Ishmael is not loved. Sent away by Abraham, Ishmael and Hagar are rescued by an angel and great things are predicted for Ishmael, though the Bible does not elaborate. Middle Eastern thought identifies Ishmael as the father of the Arabic peoples. Sarah and Abraham had forgotten that God’s promise of a son was made to them; in Genesis 18 Sarah laughs at the idea of mothering at her age, as does Abraham. Father Boadt, in his commentary, identifies several “tests” of faith faced by Abraham, culminating in the sacrifice of Isaac, and both Abraham and Sarah question God’s wisdom or plan from time to time. When Abraham begs God to make the healthy Ishmael the child of the promise, God refuses and repeats his statement that the heir of the kingdom would be the child of the couple, Abraham and Sarah, hard as that was for the couple to believe. Wait out the promise. The order from God to Abraham that he sacrifice his own son is stunning in any age, but particularly so in the age of the patriarchs. In the primitive societal structure, the measure of a man was his progeny and his amassed fortune. When God made his initial promise to Abraham, it consisted of fruitfulness and an abundant offspring, as well as a great nation and descendants who would become kings. There is no mention here (or elsewhere in the Old Testament) of heaven or reward after the grave. To sacrifice Isaac would, for all practical purposes, make the fulfillment of God’s promise impossible. Had Abraham carried out the execution without God’s intervention, he would have had to face the idea that the God of a future Israel was nothing more than the numerous petty divinities so common to his experience. It is interesting, too, that when Abraham attempted to put his obedience into action, he is halted by an angel or divine messenger, who delivers the blessings from God: “I will bless you abundantly and make your descendants as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore.” The JBC summarizes Abraham’s religious experience on the mount: “[Abraham] had finally learned to give up control over his own life that he might receive it as a grace.” (p. 25) Genesis does not describe Abraham’s obedience as perfect throughout his lifetime, but as exemplary enough to build a people who would be the Lord’s own. Jesus, a devout Jew, was certainly aware of his Scripture and the theological meanings that generations of Hebrew thinkers had brought to interpreting the Biblical text. The theme of obedience and trust that permeates the Old Testament was the very theme around Jesus’ mission to bring the Law and the Prophets to fulfillment. One of the most riveting examples of Jesus’ ministry to obedience to the Father is Sunday’s Gospel, where Jesus takes his three most intimate followers to the mountaintop, where he is “transfigured;” even the evangelists do not have a detailed vocabulary to describe the image of Jesus in his full divine nature. There, on the mountain, the disciples are joined by Moses (father of the Law) and Elijah (the voice of all the classical prophets.) There is a perfect storm here of past, present, and future. For our purposes it is enough to reflect upon the voice of God from inside the cloud, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him." In Genesis God had spoken of Isaac as Abraham’s beloved son; in Mark God uses the same word “beloved.” The parallel drawn by Mark is loving obedience; what Abraham had begun, Jesus will complete. To advance the point, God held back Abraham from killing his son in obedience. In the New Testament, God will hold back nothing, allowing his beloved son to “give everything” in his passion to the last drop of his blood. The love of Christ fulfills the entire range of generous possibility. Isaac was the silent potential victim, his fates dependent on others. Jesus embraced his death totally and unconditionally, which is why his Father calls him his “beloved.” With each Sunday of Lent taking us closer to Good Friday, the Scripture of the Lectionary explains why the day of Christ’s unjust and painful death has carried the name for centuries, Good Friday. NEXT SUNDAY’S FIRST READING: GENESIS 9: 8-15
FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT [B] USCCB link to all three readings God said to Noah and to his sons with him: "See, I am now establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you: all the birds, and the various tame and wild animals that were with you and came out of the ark. I will establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all bodily creatures be destroyed by the waters of a flood; there shall not be another flood to devastate the earth." God added: "This is the sign that I am giving for all ages to come, of the covenant between me and you and every living creature with you: I set my bow in the clouds to serve as a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth, and the bow appears in the clouds, I will recall the covenant I have made between me and you and all living beings, so that the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all mortal beings." The choice of the Noah narrative with Sunday’s Gospel, the temptation of Jesus in the desert, is intriguing. Some of the intrigue rests in the Genesis text itself. The first eleven chapters of Genesis compose a “prehistory” so to speak, a philosophical/mythical setting of a real world in which God would embrace a specific tribal entity and formulate a covenant of exclusivity. Genesis 12 marks the beginning of the “chosen people” and the designation of Abraham as the father of Israel. But prior to Chapter 12, the inspired editors of Genesis sought not only to establish the reality of God and a world of real people, but also to address issues of the human condition that troubled later Israel and continue to haunt us in the present day. Thus the pre-Abraham texts explore the pride of humanity (the forbidden fruit of Eden and the Tower of Babel, for example), the hard lot of survival (Adam’s curse of tilling the earth in sweat), the power of human desire (Eve’s desire for her husband despite the pain and risk of child birth), the alienation of man from nature (the infamous talking serpent) and the psychology of envy and anger (Cain’s killing of his brother.) The account of Noah and the great flood falls into this category of myth/philosophy. In this early Genesis narrative, it seems that even God is surprised at the many ways his human creations can go bad, and he is determined to scrap the project and start over with the one good man he can identify, Noah, and his (presumably) good family. Genesis borrows freely from the Gilgamesh Flood Myth in describing details. There are, incidentally, about 34 versions of flood myths around the globe, from Native American lands to the Philippines. The human form as we know it dates back as far as 200,000 years. Niagara Falls, created by the melting of the last ice age, is only 12,000 years old (and at the time of Christ was located at the spot of the Rainbow Bridge). Massive water events—geological and meteorological--were understandably etched into human experience. The great flood is one of the first Bible stories I learned, both from home and Catholic school, and why not? Its most basic lessons meld with a second grader’s First Penance catechetic: God is angry at sinners, God protects those who do good, and as a sidebar, God will never send another great flood. Given that we kids grew up with hydrogen bombs tested in the atmosphere as a regular occurrence, the flood promise was perhaps less impressive to us than it was to the ancients. Here is where the trouble comes in. Adult Catholics do not generally engage in the level of catechetics comparable to what their college and graduate studies in other fields demand. I wish I had a dollar for all my adult students—highly competent professionals in the “real world” –who were shocked to hear that Adam and Eve are not specific human beings, not is their blood pulsing genetically through our veins. Bringing at best an elementary school handle on the Bible and other aspects of the Faith into adult life, I would bet that most hearers of next Sunday’s First Reading believe this text to be the conclusion of the Ark narrative, for it does cast a rosy view of the future after the long and nerve-wracking experience of the Ark and the Flood. Unfortunately, the narrative continues (Genesis 9: 18-29) and Noah and his three sons, back on solid ground as the waters dried, set to planting a vineyard. The wine produced in the subsequent season was strong, if nothing else, and Noah becomes very intoxicated and passes out naked in his tent. His son Ham “saw his father’s nakedness, and he told his two brothers outside.” The USCCB commentary primly observes that there is more to Ham’s offense than just laughing at his father; “Ham’s conduct is meant to prefigure the later shameful sexual practices of the Canaanites, which are alleged in numerous biblical passages.” The two other brothers walk into the tent backward with a blanket, so as not to see their father’s nakedness. Later Noah would curse his son Ham, calling him “Canaan” while extending blessings to the pair of other sons. Taking in the bigger picture here, God had done all he could do to eliminate evil from the earth and its peoples, and he has been unsuccessful. His last and most powerful act, the sending of the deluge, had evidently not changed the course of human nature as the post-flood conduct of Genesis 9 clearly shows. A clear message that emerges from early Genesis is the pervasiveness of evil, summarized in Genesis 3, “Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the creatures God had made.” Evil in its various forms is constitutive of human history. The election of Abraham’s tribe in Genesis 12 is the first chapter of a new beginning built upon election and a new, intimate relationship aimed at creating a holy people, a holy nation. What is noticeable in Genesis is the absence of “devils.” Ancient Israel did not know devils, which is why the problem of evil was an intense matter. Devils would have made convenient scapegoats for the evil of the world. Israelite thinkers did not look outside the human condition for causes of evil, though it would have been very tempting [no pun intended] to do so. Toward the end of the Old Testament era, in an age marked by apocalyptic and fascination with the end of time, devils come into common language, and the devil as an agent of evil appears in some New Testament books. Although the Temptation of Jesus [this Sunday’s Gospel] is included in three Gospels, it is not attested in St. John. This Sunday’s Gospel account of the Temptation from St. Mark, the first Evangelist, is very brief: “The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert, and he remained in the desert for forty days, tempted by Satan. He was among wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him.” The choice of the desert setting is no accident: the desert was the apocalyptic site of the final showdown between good and evil, between the angels of God and the minions of the Evil One. And indeed, Mark notes the presence of angels in Jesus’ struggle with the Evil One. Mark will go on to describe numerous conflicts between Jesus and demons; Jesus will perform exorcisms to announce to the people of his time and place that the power of evil is beginning its decline with the coming of the Kingdom of God. What we have in the pairing of Genesis and Mark this weekend is a conclusive demonstration by Jesus that the power of evil, which so perplexed the authors of the Hebrew Scripture has been broken in the desert and on through the Resurrection of Jesus, who has come to establish the victorious kingdom of God on earth. NEXT SUNDAY’S FIRST READING: LEVITICUS 13: 1-2, 44-46
SIXTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME [B] USCCB link to all three readings The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, "If someone has on his skin a scab or pustule or blotch which appears to be the sore of leprosy, he shall be brought to Aaron, the priest, or to one of the priests among his descendants. If the man is leprous and unclean, the priest shall declare him unclean by reason of the sore on his head. "The one who bears the sore of leprosy shall keep his garments rent and his head bare, and shall muffle his beard; he shall cry out, 'Unclean, unclean!' As long as the sore is on him he shall declare himself unclean, since he is in fact unclean. He shall dwell apart, making his abode outside the camp." Last Saturday, during my presentation on the Fourteenth Century at my diocese’s ministerial day, I discussed the Black Plague and the panic it released throughout Europe. I focused on three specific impacts upon the Church: the religious embrace of radical acts of excessive piety, such as the flagellants who whipped themselves constantly; the increasing need for reassurance of grace and an acceleration of the insurance of indulgences and good works to render one’s chances for salvation optimal; and three, the need for scapegoats for the wholesale sufferings of Christians led to intensification of persecution of Jews, a sad moral blot upon the Medieval Church. At that juncture a student added an interesting insight. Judaism, almost from its beginning, was enlightened on matters of hygiene. I will return to this point in a moment, but the student went on to explain that Jewish life in medieval times, with its practices of washings, avoidance of unnecessary contact with bodily fluids, sewerage disposal, and its burial customs were a deterrent to the fast spread of infectious disease, and Jewish communities—in some places restricted to ghettoes as in the city of Venice (c. 1140 A.D.)—tended to suffer considerable less illness than did Christians, a point that was not lost upon Christians. Anti-Semitic rage was only fueled by the relatively good fortune of their Jewish populations, though intelligence, vigilance, and hard work were the actual reasons for resistance to disease. The terms “clean and unclean” in the Hebrew Scripture are probably familiar to most readers, but the genesis of the term and the practice of cleanliness is more complicated. In yesterday’s [Monday’s] stream I addressed God’s passionate personal love of the Israelites and his protection of them when they trusted his ways. The Israelites understood at some level that whatever God had commanded them to do—as in this Sunday’s first reading above—was commanded not just as a loyalty test but as a directive for self-preservation given out of love. All the Ten Commandments have a self-preservation element based upon common sense and, in the case of health, what was understood at the time. Israel was a small tribe, later a small nation. Fertility was a matter of survival, which is why God commanded Israel to avoid idol worship—usually riddled with pagan fertility rites with no power to produce the desired effects. The sixth commandment, likewise, is another way for God to insure the continuing population of his chosen people. It is true that, from the distance of almost three millennia, portions of the Law appear harsh. The successful novel and film, The Red Tent, describes how the burden of uncleanness fell importunately upon women, with periodic blood flows and child birthing. [Attitudes toward blood, particularly human blood, are quite complex in the ancient world, and Israel was not exempt from outside influences.] In the story of the Good Samaritan, neither the priest nor the Levite stops to bind the wounds of the man beaten by robbers. The instruction of Leviticus in next Sunday’s Mass may strike us as harsh; the poor man with a scab or pustule is hustled out of the camp, a word indicative of the modest population of the time. It is worth noting that per Sunday’s reading a suspicious case is brought to Aaron the priest or one of his successors. The pronouncement of unclean status is a religious act, though the state of uncleanness can be brought about by sin, carelessness, or just plain bad luck. In its place in Sunday’s liturgy, the text from Leviticus is paired with the end of the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel, where an unclean leper pleads with Jesus to heal him. Jesus, moved with pity, heals him on the spot. The work of Jesus here is considerably simplified; there is no examination, no removal from the site, and no follow-up exam and reinstatement. Jesus cures the disease and the uncleanness. It would be wrong, however, to assume that Jesus is sidetracking the Israelite tradition or the Law itself. He commands the healed man to present himself to the [Temple] priest and make the obligatory healing offering. “That will be proof for them.” Proof of what? Later in the Gospels Jesus will explain that “I have not come to destroy the Law and the Prophets; I have come to bring them to fulfillment.” Jesus has come to combine the best of the Law and the Prophets in his ministry. What he is “proving” is that the long-awaited Kingdom of God or Reign of God is affecting the gift of the Law in ways never dreamed possible. The leper in Mark’s Gospel is cured, not simply because of procedural rectitude, but because he fell to the knees of Jesus and begged for healing with faith. Jesus has come to do the works of his Father and destroy the curse of uncleanness—be it caused by sin, carelessness, or bad luck. This is the final Sunday of Ordinary Time until the end of May. The observances of Lent, the Triduum, and the Easter Season will begin next Wednesday. We will continue to reflect upon the First Readings of the Sunday liturgies throughout that time. NEXT SUNDAY’S FIRST READING: JOB 7: 1-4, 6-7
FIFTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME [B] USCCB link to all three readings Job spoke, saying: Is not man's life on earth a drudgery? Are not his days those of hirelings? He is a slave who longs for the shade, a hireling who waits for his wages. So I have been assigned months of misery, and troubled nights have been allotted to me. If in bed I say, "When shall I arise?" then the night drags on; I am filled with restlessness until the dawn. My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle; they come to an end without hope. Remember that my life is like the wind; I shall not see happiness again. I was hacking away on my keyboard yesterday when my doorbell rang, and I received a visit from two elderly women from the Jehovah’s Witnesses. With all the unsolicited emails, robocalls, and other electronic overtures on behalf of the kingdom of mammon or Russian election mischief, it is refreshing to meet human beings—in this case of advanced years—following the call of the Great Mission from Matthew 28. For years I have wanted to invite such guests into my home—though I suspect the Witnesses do not drink coffee, which is about all I have prepared in mid-morning. Yesterday I was in a hurry and did not have much time to give them. I am long past the day when I feel inclined to parry with Jehovah’s Witnesses over bible quotes, and the recent visits of JW’s suggest to me that their purpose of visiting is much less polemical than in years past. My visitors yesterday offered me this year’s first edition of The Watchtower: Announcing Jehovah’s Kingdom. The Watchtower (and you can follow this link to what I received yesterday), according to Wikipedia, dates to 1879 and is the largest circulated periodical in the world, at 70 million copies in 327 languages. The spokeswoman struggled to explain to me the cover story, asking me “if the Bible is still here.” After some gentle exploring, I finally understood her question, appropriate to every Christian of all denominations and beyond that; “Is the Bible Still Relevant Today?” When I told her that I very much agreed the Bible had much to offer today—and this coming from a Roman Catholic teacher, no less—she was so pleased and thanked me profusely for answering my door. I was good to my promise and read a sizeable portion this morning in preparation for today’s commentary on Job. I could never be a card-carrying Jehovah Witness because of the tradition’s one-dimensional approach to interpreting the Bible, but in a catechetical sense the JW’s work excessively hard to create meaningful points of contact between the Bible and the skeptical, secular world. I am not overstating the case by very much when I say that the Witnesses—judging from their literature—are more eager to embrace the world’s questions and critiques than Catholicism may be. In the late Old Testament Era several sacred texts were written to address what the twentieth century would call “existential angst,” the pain of living. We can include questions of suffering, injustice, the unafflicted lives of sinners, and the very elementary question of what happens after the grave. There are at least three books in the Hebrew canon that address this existential or psychological pain of living; collectively they are called the Wisdom Books, specifically Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes [or Qoheleth]. Our guest expert today is Dr. Robert Alter of Cal-Berkeley, translator and commentator of The Wisdom Books (2010). Alter has translated many of the Old Testament texts, and given his running commentary of his translations, he makes serious reading of the Old Testament much more accessible to those entering the Hebrew Scripture for the first time. I had always been of the belief that the Wisdom literature of the Bible [including the Garden narrative of Genesis 3] owed something of its origins to the minds that produced Greek tragedy, which at its heart struggles with the contradictions of human living. Alter argues that this type of literature was not uncommon throughout the Middle East in late Biblical days. What is evident is that Jews of the post-exilic era wrestled with the same questions as their non-Jewish neighbors. Alter observes that the Jewish Wisdom literature contains very little, if any, reference to Jewish history or law other than the existence of a monotheistic God. What appears to have happened in the last few centuries before Christ is the emergence of a profound division among the Jews themselves. If we look at the historical books of Ezra and Nehemiah, written in the century after the return of from the Babylonian Exile in 539 B.C., it is evident that considerable work went into restoring the religious practices and mores of the Jewish people, including the restoration of the Temple and the enshrinement of the Law. But it is also true that recent history had led many Jews to the same questions of their neighbors, as well as to critique of their traditional theology. One issue taking front and center stage was death: was it final? When God had made the original contract with Israel through Abraham, the rewards were entirely material and earthly: Abraham would live long enough to see his descendants grow and prosper. There is no promise of reward beyond the grave; for most of the Old Testament life ended with earthly death; rewards for good deeds would be granted in this lifetime. This understanding of life and death was sufficient when things were going well; but the Exile and other events, such as the Syrian takeover of Jerusalem (c. 175 B.C.) proved too many examples of young and noble observers of the Law who were killed or martyred without any earthly reward. The puzzlement and pessimism expressed in Wisdom literature—and certainly in Sunday’s first reading—seem almost scandalous. But Jews included such texts in their sacred canon, as does Christianity today, partly the avoidance of magic and idolatry. Judaism wrestled with its own brand of quid pro quo: do what the law commands and success will be yours. This is a thinking man’s magic. In the Christian era Luther decried the idea that man is saved by works alone. In the story of Job, the hero/victim is a noble man of good works; in the Old Testament idiom he would have been rewarded much like Abraham. The irony of Job is that, at the pinnacle of his good life, calamities of the worst sort overtake him. Many readers and even scholars are troubled that God would act “unfairly” toward Job; the “restoration” at the very end of the book seems focused upon making things right with the reader as much as with Job. The very best of scholars will admit that the Book of Job does not really answer the issues of evil and unfairness, and the question remains today the most disquieting of doubts for thoughtful people of all persuasions. In this sense Job is the most “ecumenical” of all the Bible books [along with Qoheleth] in putting the finger on the heart of human unrest. Job 7 is paired with the Gospel reading from Mark 1 in which Jesus heals the sick and expels the demons believed to cause illness. Mark is not quite the philosopher that the author of Job manifests, but on the other hand Mark can be brutally graphic. In his depiction of the Crucifixion [this year’s Palm Sunday proclamation] Mark quotes Jesus—a man consecrated and anointed to do good--as crying from the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” in the last moments of his unjust capital punishment. To paraphrase New Testament teaching, we have a Savior who is not unfamiliar with the sufferings and doubts of the human lot. In his humanity Jesus did not have the answer to the Job questions, but he did have a master plan—an action plan-- to penetrate the darkness, to be perfect as the heavenly Father is perfect, to live the Beatitudes with open-ended energy. This is faith—the surviving confidence that there is something beyond what we cannot comprehend. The absence of faith—expectation of reward and fairness in a zero-sum game—is magic and idolatry |
THINGS BIBLICAL. Archives
March 2024
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