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NEXT SUNDAY'S GOSPEL: LUKE 24: 13-35
THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER USCCB link to all three readings That very day, the first day of the week, two of Jesus' disciples were going to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus, and they were conversing about all the things that had occurred. And it happened that while they were conversing and debating, Jesus himself drew near and walked with them, but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him. He asked them, "What are you discussing as you walk along?" They stopped, looking downcast. One of them, named Cleopas, said to him in reply, "Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know of the things that have taken place there in these days?" And he replied to them, "What sort of things?" They said to him, "The things that happened to Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, how our chief priests and rulers both handed him over to a sentence of death and crucified him. But we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel; and besides all this, it is now the third day since this took place. Some women from our group, however, have astounded us: they were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body; they came back and reported that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who announced that he was alive. Then some of those with us went to the tomb and found things just as the women had described, but him they did not see." And he said to them, "Oh, how foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?" Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the Scriptures. As they approached the village to which they were going, he gave the impression that he was going on farther. But they urged him, "Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over." So he went in to stay with them. And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight. Then they said to each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?" So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem where they found gathered together the eleven and those with them who were saying, "The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!" Then the two recounted what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of bread. It is unfortunate that due to my schedule I can’t give this Gospel a fuller examination, but I would like to point out two critical points. The first is the discussion of Jesus (unrecognized) with two demoralized disciples. The two disciples on the road to Emmaus know a great deal: they know that Jesus of Nazareth was a great prophet whose words and deeds were true to the Father. They knew the details of his trial. They were close enough to Jesus to hope that he was the one to redeem Israel. Moreover, they knew a great deal about the Easter morning confusion from their own eyewitness experience: they were aware that women had gone to the tomb early in the morning and discovered it was empty, and that the women had seen a vision of angels who announced that Jesus was alive. The disciples themselves went to see the empty tomb. These two men were not peripheral walk-ons. Luke’s text describes them as insiders who had witnessed about everything there was to see. But they did not connect the dots. As Luke observes, they were “looking downcast.” And Jesus was none too pleased, calling them “foolish” and hard of heart, as if they were fighting inside themselves to whether to dare believe that their greatest hopes had been fulfilled. Jesus goes on “to interpret to them what was referred to him in all the Scriptures.” Clearly this is a factual impossibility and we have to understand this text as Luke intended it, that Jesus must be understood in the context of the entire (Hebrew) Scripture. What the Scriptures actually teach is that “it was necessary that the Christ should suffer these things.” The Greek word for “it was necessary” is dei, which implies destiny or preordination. It was preordained in the Scriptures all along, is Jesus’ point, and in this narrative, he brings them up to speed within an afternoon. It is quite possible here that Luke is describing the gradual growth of awareness of the nascent Christian Church in the full meaning of Jesus. The second critical point in this text is the dinner. Last week I titled the entry, “St. John’s Resurrection Orphans,” John’s description of how Jesus would remain in his Church after he and the apostles would no longer be present, through the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit. In next Sunday’s Gospel, St. Luke addresses the same question—how will Jesus remain with us—in a different narrative. It should be fairly obvious where Jesus got his table gestures; “while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them.” Our first impulse would be to recall the Last Supper, to be sure, but scholars believe that Luke was also drawing from the formula of actual celebrations of Eucharist in his own locale in about 80 A.D. The theological significance of Luke’s supper narrative here becomes clearer in the way that the two disciples have their eyes opened and recognize (in the fullest sense) the presence of the risen Jesus. Luke states that Jesus vanished from their sight, but he leaves two things behind. One, obviously, is the broken bread, his broken bread. The second is two previously discouraged disciples whose hearts are burning within them. The word “burning” is a deliberate choice by Luke; in his Acts of the Apostles Luke describes the Holy Spirit as coming down in tongues of fire. Sunday’s Gospel is the root of the Catholic sacramental experience. Luke establishes that later Christians are not orphans. In fact, they encounter Jesus in the Spirit-filled breaking of the bread. Our Eucharistic prayers at Mass embody Luke’s theology; when the celebrant extends his hands over the bread and wine and says, in several liturgical formulas, “Send forth your Spirit upon these gifts to make them holy,” he is in fact calling the Spirit to unite us in the real encounter with Christ in the eating and the drinking. In the best of all worlds, our eyes are opened to the Lord in our midst in the Eucharist. The same can be said for all the sacraments the Church has come to celebrate: in all of them our eyes are opened and we see the risen Lord forgiving, healing, marrying, ordaining. The question of Sunday: do we, as individuals and a Church, feel our hearts burning within us in intimacy with Christ in our sacraments? Or are we Resurrection orphans?
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NEXT SUNDAY’S GOSPEL: JOHN 20: 19-31
SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER USCCB Link to all three readings On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, "Peace be with you." When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained." Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples said to him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe." Now a week later his disciples were again inside and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe." Thomas answered and said to him, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus said to him, "Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed." Now, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name. Matthew’s Resurrection narrative, even with its drama, is relatively brief, and this year the Church Lectionary draws from the considerably longer post-Resurrection accounts from St. John. Personally, I took great pleasure this morning in retrieving from my library the venerable commentary on John’s Gospel by Father Raymond Brown in the famed Anchor Bible series. Father Brown’s commentary was written 47 years ago and much scholarship has supplanted his work, but the text remains venerable to those of us who work with the bible. I do take note of the Amazon reviewer, though, who correctly observed that “Nobody said this would be easy.” There is also a feeling of “going home” to a Gospel text familiar to most Catholics, with its inclusion of Doubting Thomas. You probably would not be surprised to learn that I was specifically named after Thomas the Apostle, the “doubter.” I don’t know what I did in my first two weeks of life to earn baptismal fellowship with the Gospel’s true recovered agnostic, though legend has it that after overcoming his doubts Thomas undertook heroic missionary work in India. Biblical scholarship in 1970 was quite technical, for the most part, an effort to discover the precise understanding of words and the organization of the texts from their oral predecessors. Father Brown notices details that many of us might miss. For example, the opening of Sunday’s text begins with the disciples behind locked doors when “Jesus came and stood in their midst.” Implied here is that the post-Resurrection Jesus “had marvelous, non-physical powers.” On the other hand, Jesus shows his hands and his side, the wounds of his crucifixion. This continuity of corporeality with divine glory hints at the afterlife circumstances of all who die in the Lord—i.e. we will retain our identities in the afterlife. It is hard to overstate the importance of the word “peace” in the Bible, the same word Jesus addresses to his disciples after the Resurrection. Generally, peace has meaning for the present and the future. My own sense of the word is “God’s comfort.” In the Psalms, we read “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem,” which suggests there is an eschatological or future-oriented sense of the word. In John’s Last Supper discourse Jesus says to the disciples “Peace is my farewell to you. My peace is my gift to you, and I do not give it to you as the world gives it.” The disciples at the Last Supper were fearful about the future, with the imminent departure of Jesus. In Sunday’s specific context, Jesus repeats the word twice, and then breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” John has melded three significant themes in very few words. Again, beginning with the Biblical, John has explained what this longed for “peace” is about: the presence of God’s Holy Spirit, the “Comforter” in Catholic liturgy and prayer. Second, Jesus’ breathing upon the disciples is John’s Pentecost moment with the disciples. (This is a second Pentecost moment for John, who records Jesus’ “handing over his spirit” at his death on Good Friday.) And third, John connects this Pentecost moment in the upper room with God’s power to forgive sin. It is helpful here to catch our breaths and consider what scholars call the sitz-im-leben or circumstances of the writing of a biblical text. John’s Gospel was composed very late in the New Testament era, possibly as late as 110 A.D. The entire Gospel of John contains themes of importance to a well-established Christian Church. We know from outside sources that the earliest heresies in Christian experience involved the very nature and identity of Jesus Christ—some denying his humanity, some his divinity. Other Scriptural works attributed to John or his influence, such as the three Epistles of John, plead for unity {“Little children, love one another”) suggesting fragmentation, perhaps in reference to Jews or to Christians among themselves. It is also known from outside sources that the Church at the turn of the century was organizing around stronger bishops and developing a teaching hierarchy and structure of authority. Thus, in the upper room John is careful to depict Jesus in both his human and divine natures. John reminds his readers that Jesus is the source of the peace of God through his Holy Spirit, a peace that should affect unity and tamp down fears and angers. The association of Pentecost with forgiveness of sin serves multiple theological purposes: it underscores the seriousness of disunion between believers and it establishes that a power reserved to God has now been shared with the disciples, and presumably their successors. In short, there is a statement here of Church authority, that Church leaders have been empowered to impart the forgiveness of God. John’s Resurrection narrative teaches a great deal about the impact of the risen and glorified Christ upon the Church, and in its original time of composition, the message was particularly pertinent to Christians of whom none were alive to hear the original Apostolic preaching. These were Christians “orphaned by time,” one might put it. [Luke addresses something of this problem in his Gospel, Luke 24: 13-35, how does the Risen Lord interact with the Christians of a later age?] For these “orphaned souls,” enter the great doubter, Thomas. Father Brown writes that there is no other mention of Thomas’s crisis of faith in the New Testament. This episode is unique to John, because this evangelist is facing a growing crisis that his predecessors did not. There is no indication that Thomas’s absence from the upper room on Easter Sunday night was deliberate, or some sort of boycott or abandonment. On the contrary, it is only when Thomas returns that problems begin. His brothers tell him they have seen the Lord (divine term); Thomas replies that unless he sees the human Jesus raised to life—the scars of the crucifixion—he would not believe. His demand is to see that Jesus of Nazareth is the Kurios of Lord of life. Jesus returns with his salutation of “Peace.” He is not angry with Thomas—quite the opposite of Mark’s 16: 9-19 account. He then invites Thomas to place his fingers inside his wounds. There is much conjecture that since Jesus told Mary Magdalene not to touch him, “for I have not yet ascended to my Father,” but invites Thomas (and the other disciples?) to do so, Thomas is beholding the full divinity and humanity of Jesus when he makes his famous profession, “My Lord and My God.” In the original Greek both terms connote divinity. Jesus’ response should be read sympathetically. Jesus concedes that Thomas’s act of faith was appropriate for a man who has seen what Thomas has seen with his eyes and his disposition of faith. But he goes on to commend those who have not seen but have believed. Who are “those who have not seen but have believed?” John’s turn of the century community, to be sure, but the author understands his audience to be much bigger than that. John writes that not every sign of Jesus has been passed along, but those that have are intended to rouse faith in Jesus the Lord throughout history. Christians can trust their Spirit-filled leaders to pass on the truth. John’s signs are recorded so that every age may know “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name.” We have a lot of ground to cover today, as multiple narratives of the Resurrection come into play this weekend. The Gospel reading you hear in your parish will depend upon the time of day you attend Mass and the discretion of your local pastor. The most solemn Mass of the Liturgical year is the Easter Vigil Mass on Saturday night. The Lectionary calls for the reading of the Resurrection Gospel from the evangelist of the liturgical cycle. Thus, St. Matthew’s account will be proclaimed on Saturday night. In 2018 B Cycle the reading will come from St. Mark, and in 2019 from St. Luke in the C Cycle.
Easter Sunday itself becomes more complex. The preferred Easter morning reading by long tradition—in both the Tridentine Mass and the Mass of Pope Paul VI—is John 20: 1-9, where Mary Magdalene discovers the empty tomb, followed by Peter and the unnamed disciple in this Gospel. However, the lectionary allows the proclamation of “the Cycle Resurrection narrative” as an alternative—in our case in 2017, St. Matthew’s reading from the night before. But what happens if you go to Mass in the afternoon or evening of Easter Sunday? The Lectionary allows for another alternative, the reading from St. Luke 24: 13-35, which describes the afternoon/evening encounter of Jesus with two demoralized disciples on the road to Emmaus. (I would just add from a local perspective that the churches in my neighborhood have cancelled their Sunday evening Masses. As a pastor years ago, I can recall collapsing exhaustedly after the final morning Mass of Easter and maybe waking up for supper. I don’t recall ever using the Lukan alternative on Easter.) Most likely you will hear either Matthew’s or John’s account depending on your circumstances. I will focus on Matthew’s text today. When doing presentations on the Resurrection narratives in general, my outline begins with six essential points: (1) The works and deeds of Jesus were passed down by believers in an oral format or formats. (2) The writing of this "Good News" (or Gospels) extended from about 65 A.D. through 100 A.D. (3) Each Gospel is an attempt to present the historical Jesus in what we might call a unique theological or catechetical perspective. (4) The Resurrection accounts of each evangelist can only be understood when joined to the preceding Passion Account. (5) No direct account of the Resurrection appears in revealed Scriptures. (6.) The Gospel Resurrection narratives take two forms: empty tomb accounts and appearance accounts. It is clear then that a lot of years and considerable reflection passed from the first time a believer encountered the living Christ after his death and the composition of these four unique and exquisite narratives of the Resurrection. One of the most basic premises of Ecclesiology or the Theology of the Church is that our faith rests upon the eyewitness and faith of the Apostles, and not upon forensic or material evidence. An empty tomb, for example, does not prove Resurrection. In last Sunday’s Passion narrative, Jewish leaders went to Pilate to obtain a guard for the tomb on the grounds that the disciples might steal the body and “claim” resurrection. It is the content of faith experience of individuals we remember at Easter. As Easter Sunday’s first reading (Acts of the Apostles) explains, on the third day God raised up Jesus that he be seen “not by all, but only by such witnesses as had been chosen beforehand by God—by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.” All four Resurrection narratives bring their respective Gospels to fulfillment, tying up all the hanging threads of their respective texts. It is not surprising then that Matthew’s Resurrection narrative begins on a most dramatically apocalyptic note, the appearance of a dazzling deliverance angel straight from the tales of the end times. (Recall that on Good Friday, according to Matthew, the earth quaked, the tombs opened, and the dead came to life at the moment of Jesus’ death.) For all of that, the angel has come to make an announcement to the startled women of something that had already happened. Having opened the tomb, the Angel invites the women to inspect it. He explains that Jesus has been raised and that the disciples will see him alive when they return to Galilee. The women are commissioned to give this good news and instruction to the disciples, but when they have distanced themselves on the way to do their duty, the risen Jesus appears to them and greets them in a folksy way. R.T. France picks up the detail that perhaps many of you have already noted—all four Gospels agree that the first appearance of Jesus was to a woman (Mary Magdalene) or women. (p. 1097) Matthew’s description is warm and touching—literally so, as they approached his personal space and embraced his feet—and quite different from John’s narrative, where Jesus says to Mary Magdalene, “Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my father.” But John had other theological purposes to serve in his narrative. This appearance to the women underscores the point that Jesus has forgiven the disciples for their abandonment, for in conversation he refers to them as “my brothers.” It is interesting, too, that Jesus’ request that the women notify the disciples suggests that the disciples were still in the environs of Jerusalem, and not home in Galilee just yet. In other words, the disciples had not geographically abandoned the cause just yet. Matthew, for whom Jesus is the new and perfect Moses and fulfillment of the New Israel, still has business to settle with the old Jerusalem. He turns his attention away from the joyful exodus to Galilee to publicize the nefarious doings of Jesus’ enemies, the Jewish leaders. By now they have heard from the recovered guards that their worst fears are fulfilled (recall Good Friday’s “this last imposture would be worse than the first”) and they are forced into lies and bribery to suppress what they themselves admit is an empty tomb. Again, France steps forward: “So the last view we have of Jerusalem is of its leaders engaged in a sordid face-saving exercise…. Jerusalem, which has throughout the Gospel been a symbol of opposition to God’s purpose and judgment to come, can be left to wallow in its own discomfiture, while the reader turns with relief to Galilee, the place where once again light is dawning (4:14-16).” (p. 1104) Put bluntly, out with the old, in with the new. We can only imagine how Matthew’s portrayal of the Christ must have comforted Jewish Christian converts exiled from the Temple brotherhood of prayer and tradition they had known all their lives, and probably facing pressures from all sides, religious and civil, as Matthew wrote around 80 A.D. The New Israel would be worldwide, originating at some distance from Jerusalem. Matthew’s entire Gospel concludes with a reunion of the risen Jesus with “his brothers,” the command to preach the Gospel to all the nations, and the assurance that “behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” As a personal observation, the Resurrection narratives—including Matthew’s—are best understood in the context of the entire Gospel they complete, which is why I advocate a full study of each Gospel from beginning to end. I am not a fan of cherry-picking or flitting about the New Testament on impulse or mood of the moment. I also recommend a good commentary; a work like Dr. France’s, for example, is worth the money and the time as a personal investment in one’s faith and ministry. NEXT SUNDAY’S GOSPEL: Matthew 21: 1-11 (Procession with Palms) and Matthew 26: 14-27:66 (The Passion Narrative)
USCCB Link to all Palm Sunday Readings here. Last week’s post on Matthew’s Passion narrative concluded as Jesus and his disciples headed to a designated place called Gethsemane. St. John refers to the spot as a large garden; R.T. France translates the word as “an estate.” France comments that the garden scene has a duality of purpose: Jesus’ intense prayer which restores his sense of purpose and determination in contrast to the deterioration of three closest disciples (Peter, James, and John are singled out as the only three to witness Jesus at prayer) who, like the others, will ultimately abandon him as Jesus had predicted. (p. 1001) Matthew elongates Jesus’ prayer from Mark’s account into three distinct invocations that “if it is possible, let this cup pass away from me; and yet not as I wish but as you wish.” France’s commentary is powerful and moving. That Jesus prays three times for release from his mission but remains faithful to his Father is a straightforward parallel to the three denials of the lesser man Peter. But until Chapter 26 Matthew has not revealed much of the inner stress of Jesus’ mission; he has been portrayed as in command throughout, even in the Temptation in the desert. In the Passion narrative, however, Matthew allows his readers—themselves under great stress to break faith—to see just how much fidelity to discipleship cost Jesus. This anguish will continue through till 27:46 when Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus is arrested of his own will, with no attempt to flee and no attempt by his followers to save him except for the pathetic swing of a sword that cost a slave his ear. Jesus addresses his captors that their “success” at his capture came about “so that the scriptures of the prophets may be fulfilled.” Since we began the Gospel of Matthew back in Advent, I have not much commented on Matthew’s use of the phrase “according to the Scriptures” or a close parallel. Matthew understands Jesus as the fulfillment of the entire body of Hebrew Scripture, the New Moses who will bring the law and the prophets to dramatic fulfillment, as we will see as the narrative unfolds. There are two trial vignettes, though as France observes wryly, there is little doubt in Matthew’s or the reader’s mind about which of the two actually mattered. Candidly, Matthew wants to lay the blame for Jesus’ unjust death squarely at the feet of the Jewish leadership. His theological reason for doing so is his contention that the Judaism of his day—which had publicly expelled its Christian brethren—was a bankrupt shadow of itself that needed to be discredited; Jesus and his followers constituted the New Israel. Matthew is the only evangelist to record Judas’s unexpected remorse and suicide (a dramatic difference from Luke’s tale of denouement in Acts 1:17), as if to show that even an accursed traitor showed more insight than Jewish leadership. The climax of Jesus’ trial before the Sanhedrin is the direct question put to him by the high priest, and Jesus’ reply. Technically speaking, to claim messiahship was not itself a capital offense. But in his response to the question of whether he was the messiah, Jesus answers …” from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven.” Even though the exact meaning of the apocalyptic term “Son of Man” remains unclear even today, in this context the statement can only be understood as Jesus’ announcement that he is divinely involved in the cataclysmic events of the end of time. Jesus did establish a claim to divinity and a dramatic vindication after his death. The far-flung Roman Empire had a considerable wealth of experience in dealing with native populations it controlled by conquest. In Jesus’ day, a Roman governor on the frontier, such as Pontius Pilate, probably had little concern about religious squabbles, in this case between a Galilean frontiersman and the religious aristocrats of the city. What Roman governors did fear was word of insurrection and costly public disorder reaching the emperor’s palace in Rome. When Jesus is brought to Pilate, his Jewish accusers do not accuse Jesus for his religious claims, but rather reword the charge in a way that would get the governor’s attention and prompt him to crucify Jesus, alleging that Jesus claimed to be a king in his own right, the King of the Jews, an implicit assault upon Roman authority. In Matthew’s Gospel Pilate is something of a Hamlet figure (and his wife a Lady Macbeth.) Matthew 27:18 indicates that Pilate saw the matter as one of “jealousy” of the chief priests, and he is reluctant to crucify Jesus on what he knows. Casting about for a solution, he offers the release of Jesus as his annual Passover good will gesture. In Matthew’s context, Pilate may have suspected that the people in the streets—in the holy city in great numbers due to the Passover—would shout down the Sanhedrin in favor of a man they presumably admired enough to make the elders jealous. Pilate also presumed that Barabbas’ reputation would sour any thought of selecting this notorious prisoner over Jesus. Amid Pilate’s turmoil, he receives a message from his wife, who reports a troubling dream about Jesus, suggesting that Pilate’s household had some previous information about the action of the Sanhedrin. Matthew is the only evangelist to record this domestic intervention on behalf of Jesus’ innocence, and it may be part of his grand strategy to illustrate that even the governor’s Gentile wife thought Jesus was innocent. It is worth noting that the other dreams in this Gospel are divine messages to Joseph to take Mary as his wife and to the Magi to avoid Herod’s machinations. Unfortunately, the “crowd” has been turned by the leaders into a pro-Barabbas and anti-Jesus throng. Pilate, in his most remembered gesture, washes his hands and denies responsibility for Jesus’ death, to which “all the people replied, ‘His blood is on us and on our children.’” These word, of course, have had a long and tragic impact throughout the Christian era. Matthew’s Gospel was written about a decade after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., and contemporary thinking seems to be that Matthew had the sufferings of “our children” in mind as victims of the fall of Jerusalem. Early Christian theology interpreted the fall of Jerusalem as punishment of the Jews for rejecting Jesus as the Messiah. Vatican II and twentieth century popes have vigorously denounced accusations of deicide and antisemitism based upon Gospel texts, particularly from Matthew and John. Jesus is cruelly tortured and manhandled by Roman soldiers before taking his cross. France answers his own question about why the torture and humiliation of Jesus is put forward by Matthew in grisly detail. First and foremost, Matthew wants to depict Jesus’ fulfillment of Isaiah 50:6 as the suffering servant who gave his back “to those who beat me.” The verbal taunts of the soldiers are statements of fact, “All hail, king of the Jews.” And most powerfully, these tormenters will be the first to say, “Truly, this was the Son of God” at the moment of Jesus’ death. Hanging upon the cross Jesus rejects the offer of “wine mixed with bile.” The explanation for such an offer seems to have been the potion’s narcotic effect. Crucified individuals might linger for several days. Jesus’ rejection is symbolic of his commitment to drink only his Father’s cup. After his anguished cry in the darkness, Jesus dies, unleashing an incredible stream of events of which the earthquake was the least remarkable. Matthew records that the veil of the sanctuary of the Temple was torn from top to bottom; the symbolism needs no commentary. But then he records that “tombs were opened and the bodies of many saints who had fallen asleep were raised. And coming forth from their tombs after his resurrection, they entered the holy city and appeared to many.” What an event! I never notice an eyebrow raised in my congregation when this text is read at Mass, nor have I ever heard a homilist address the opening of tombs and the rising of the dead on Good Friday. Matthew is the only evangelist to describe this—there is no mention in other Christian, Jewish, or secular sources to confirm such a thing. So, we must draw our conclusions from the entirety of Matthew’s Gospel and interpret these lines in his apocalyptic way as a projection of what will come for those who remain faithful. Jesus, in his description of himself to the chief priest at his trial as the divine figure of the Son of Man who is to come with endless life was right all along. The opening of Good Friday tombs is a prelude to Matthew’s description of another tomb to be opened in even more dramatic fashion three days hence. The usual Tuesday post will be up on Wednesday, the Passion according to St. Matthew, Part II. It will appear on the usual Tuesday stream. Thanks for your patience.
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