Thursday, February 27, 2025

Thursday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

(Sirach 5:1-8; Mark 9:41-50)

A saying about God’s mercy and justice is both helpful and hopeful to recall: God’s justice never sinks lower than his mercy is able to retrieve.  People who commit grave crimes as well as regular sinners need to remember that God never abandons them.

Both readings today emphasize God’s justice.  In the first wise Ben Sira advises his readers not to presume God’s mercy.  Rather they are to live always carrying out God’s will.  In the gospel Jesus warns his disciples about giving scandal to the young.  He exaggerates when he says that body members should be destroyed if their use is involved in sin.  However, he definitely wants his disciples to avoid sinning.

God’s mercy foils severe judgment when sinners recognize their crimes, beseech God’s forgiveness, and resolve not to offend again.  Far from opposing His justice, mercy complements it since God’s commands are not given to condemn but to save.

Thursday, February 23, 2017

Thursday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

(Sirach 5:1-8; Mark 9:41-50)

Along with the comfortable images we use for God, today’s Scripture readings offer a couple that are not appealing.  Sirach mentions God’s anger and Mark’s Jesus speaks of punishment for sin as eternal fire.  How are we to reconcile these very different characterizations of God?

We have to avoid thinking of God as a human person like ourselves.  He is not friendly one day and distempered another.  He remains always as Jesus describes Him – loving.  Indeed, because of His love for us, He wants us to become more loving ourselves.  His “anger” is not an emotion, which is attributable only to humans.  Rather it is a way of projecting human frustration when a son or daughter disappoints a father. “Eternal fire” also need not be taken literally.  It is the absence of God when all is said and done.  It is never knowing peace but always being subject to the vagaries of the here and now. 

God offers us a way to Himself in Jesus.  The Savior’s words give us a roadmap to eternal life.  His death and resurrection provide us the wherewithal to follow it.  Becoming loving like the Father we will also be happier, kinder, and gentler.  We will have become the kind of people God has always intended.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Thursday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

(Sirach 5:1-8; Mark 9:41-50)

The class was discussing the morality of masturbation. The instructor pointed out the Church’s teaching that the presence of objective evil does not necessarily imply culpability, especially in cases regarding sexuality of adolescents. Then a student, who is also a parent, rose to say, “Remember the Scripture, ‘Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’” The man was only giving an echo to what the book of Sirach teaches us today.

The name Sirach comes from the book’s author, Eleazar ben Sira, who lived in Jerusalem during the third and second centuries before Christ. Ben Sira wrote in Hebrew although only Greek translations of his work remain. It is not accepted as canonically inspired by Jews and Protestants. Yet it was considered as Sacred Scripture by many rabbis through the centuries as well as the Catholic Church since her foundation. Who would disagree with the present lesson that humans only fool themselves when they think they might escape the consequences of their sins?

Questions of subjective culpability for sin are difficult to judge. Human freedom is always under constraint so that it is virtually impossible for us to say with complete certitude that we, much less others, are guilty of mortal sin. This fact, however, should not give us excuse not to repent of and confess our involvement in evil acts as sins. Jesus exaggerates in the gospel today when he tells us to cut off our hands and pluck out our eyes if we find them causing us to sin. Yet obviously he, like ben Sira, wants to warn us about wrong-doing. We must take care to distance ourselves from participating in evil and to teach our young people to do likewise.