Wednesday, May 5, 2021

Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Easter

(Acts 15:1-6; John 15:1-8)

A second-century layman named Marcion taught that Christians did not need the Old Testament.  For him the God of the Old Testament was fierce and distinct from the loving Father of Jesus Christ.  If Marcion had been in charge when Paul was converting gentiles, Paul might not have needed to go to Jerusalem in today’s first reading.

But Paul would certainly have rejected Marcion’s theology.  He would have acknowledged the continuity between the Old Testament and the New.  He certainly saw Christ as the fulfillment of the promise God made to the Jews since Abraham.  This truth, however, did not resolve the most pressing issue in the first century Church: did a male Gentile have to be circumcised before he could be incorporated into Christ.  If he had to be circumcised, the thrust of preaching Christ to the Gentiles, would have been almost surely thwarted.  But Paul was not looking for an easy way to convert Gentiles.  He always insisted on practicing “the truth of the gospel.”

The text says that the apostles and “the presbyters of the Jerusalem community met together” to resolve the matter.  It could not be decided by the fiat of one person but necessitated the injunction of the Holy Spirit.  Knotty issues of our time need the same kind of deliberation and prayer.  Should the Church deny Holy Communion to politicians who defy its explicit teaching on abortion?  Should the Church accept married men for ordination to the priesthood where there is an acute shortage of priests?  How might the Church allow women into positions of governance?  These are the kind of concerns that requires intensive solicitation of the Holy Spirit. 

Homilette for Thursday, July 31, 2008

Memorial of St. Ignatius of Loyola, priest

(Matthew 13:47-53)

A second century theologian named Marcion taught that Christianity has no need of the Old Testament. Rather, he proposed that St. Paul’s letters along with his own version of the gospel were enough to relate the message of salvation. Although he attracted a considerable following, Marcion was eventually excommunicated. But his ideas have endured. Today some Christians have little use for the story of Israel or mistakenly claim that the God revealed in the Old Testament (whom they mistakenly consider driven by justice) is fundamentally different the God of the New Testament (whom they rightfully associate with love).

In today’s gospel Jesus relates a parable that refutes Marcion and subsequent subscribers to the idea that the Old Testament is excisable. He compares a worthy scribe or, we might say, theologian to a homeowner with a large storeroom. Just as the homeowner brings out both old and new items from his storeroom to accommodate the household so the theologian uses both the New and the Old Testament to describe the Kingdom of heaven. We should note the order the homeowner employs – the new comes first and then the old. Jesus means to say that his teaching, what we find in the New Testament, has a priority over the still indispensable revelation in the Old Testament.

Today we celebrate St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus. He too resembles a homeowner using both new and old. He lived in the sixteenth century, a time of challenge for the Church. Protestantism was taking root then throughout northern Europe and the recent discovery of new lands made evangelization a primary concern. Ignatius drew upon new ideas to form his Jesuits without foregoing tradition. He maintained that Jesuits were to incarnate the ideal of “contemplation in action” – active in engaging the new challenges and contemplative in appreciating the Christian legacy.