Friday, October 10, 2014

Friday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time

(Galatians 3:7-14; Luke 11:15-26)

Pelagius was a fifth century monk who thought like many moderns. He taught that humans do not need God to be good. Rather, he claimed that human nature has the wherewithal to avoid sin.  These ideas were condemned by the Church, and the passage from St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians that we read today indicates why.

For Paul the experience of trying to fulfill the 613 precepts of the Jewish Law inevitably ends in failure. It is like trying to cross the ocean in a Volkswagen.  The vehicle is simply not up to the task.  But God in His mercy has sent His son to provide viable means.  Acknowledging him as Lord and undergoing his death and resurrection through Baptism will provide the necessary grace for a holy life.

“Is the act of believing then a human work?” we may want to ask.  In other words, do we cooperate with God’s grace?  These are highly nuanced and hotly debated questions.  Certainly, the act of faith engages the human will.  But it hardly takes an effort for the wise to believe when God’s graciousness is juxtaposed with human folly.

Thursday, October 9, 2014

Thursday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time

(Galatians 3:1-5; Luke 11:5-13)

Paul’s frontal attack against the Galatians – “O stupid Galatians, who has bewitched you?” – makes us wonder what kind of people would tolerate such criticism.  Most likely Paul is addressing a community of Christians he founded in the northern part of the province of Galatia.  The fair-haired and light complexioned inhabitants of that area migrated in the third century before Christ from the region of the Pyrenees Mountains separating what is presently France and Spain.  “Galatians” comes from the same root as the Latin word Gallia which refers to the expansive tract of Western Europe that includes modern France. 

In Paul’s day Galatians were considered something like the giant but amicable Brobdingnagians of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.  One biblical commentator describes the Galatian as “large, unpredictable simpletons, instinctively generous, ferocious and highly dangerous when angry, but without stamina and easy to trick.”  Paul evidently considers them good-hearted enough to accept his sharp disapproval without rejecting the gospel he preached.  He likely developed a deep rapport when ill health caused him to stay with them for an extended time.

Paul’s language, however, reveals more about himself than about the Galatians.  For Paul the single, most important fact of life is God’s redemption of humanity in Jesus Christ.  To his mind Christ commissioned him to preach this truth to non-Jews.  He does not mean to subjugate anyone with his harsh speech but only to urge them to accept the salvation won by Christ.  If strong language is necessary, he would muster the highest indignation.  If refined rhetoric would do the job, he would polish his argument.  As he himself would write to the Corinthians, “I have become all things to all, so that I might save at least some” (I Cor 9:22).

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Wednesday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time

(Galatians 2:1-2.7-14; Luke 11:1-14)

Pope John Paul II, who is legitimately called “the Great,” received his doctorate degree from the University of St. Thomas in Rome.  One of his professors, an elderly Dominican priest whom the pope credited as having special influence on him, was once asked how he remembered the future pope.  The old man confessed that he had so many students over the decades he taught at the university that he could not remember him.  His candor has been cited as an example of genuine honesty. 

St. Paul writes of a situation in which he was called to respond with equal honesty.  He saw Peter eating what was probably pork with the non-Jews of the Christian community in Antioch.  But as soon as Jewish officials from Jerusalem arrived, Peter separated himself from the ham eaters.  In order not to confuse non-Jewish Christians, Paul reprimanded Peter for what he calls in today’s reading from Galatians “hypocrisy.”

Too often we try to please others by disregarding the truth.  It is not easy to tell a friend that he is doing something sinful or to speak up when an official equivocates about what is happening in one’s firm.  Yet there is an obligation to do so when such action results in serious harm.  Paul is not afraid of being honest because he knows that Christ is with him.  He is with us as well.  After thoughtful, prayerful reflection we should not remain silent when we see people being hurt by another’s lies. 

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Tuesday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time

(Galatians 1:13-24; Luke 10:38-42)

LeBron James, the designated king of basketball, is returning to his hometown.  He feels called back to Cleveland to win a championship for the people among whom he grew up.  To say the least, he is gifted enough to be a major factor in a victorious.  He might be compared to St. Paul on that fated journey to Damascus which he mentions in the first reading today.

As Paul describes himself, he was well prepared for the task to which God was calling him.  He knew the Scriptures as well as anyone and had zeal beyond compare.  God, it seems, planned the encounter between him and God’s Son.  Paul is reticent to say exactly what took beyond that Jesus was revealed to him.  In the First Letter to the Corinthians Paul mentioned that Jesus “appeared” to him but without any elaboration.  The event must have been monumental to turn completely around this rock-hard persecutor of the Church.

Hearing the story again, we stand in awe.  Paul not only gave the rest of his life to preaching the gospel but in the end suffered martyrdom for it.  We are more certain that what we believe is true because of his eloquent testimony.

Monday, October 6, 2014

Monday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time

(Galatians 1:6-12; Luke 10:25-37)

Along with the parable of the Prodigal Son, the parable of the Good Samaritan has always been one of the most favored readings of the four gospels.  Normally it is interpreted today as a lesson on loving one’s enemies.  Jews and Samaritans were distrustful of one another as Blacks and Whites, Hindus and Muslims, Russians and Ukrainians are today.  The Samaritan’s more than generous care of the wounded Jew shows us that to gain eternal life – the issue motivating the story – one must love her supposed enemies.

In Patristic times this same parable was given a very different reading.  Church Fathers did not see it as a story to be contemporized but as an allegory of Salvation History.  The man going down the road was Adam, the symbol of all humans.  Jerusalem, as the name implies, is the heavenly city of peace. Jericho, which evidently means moon, indicates human mortality.  The thieves are the devils who entice the man to sin and then leave him far from God or “half-dead.”  The priest and Levite, according to this reading, represent the Old Covenant which is unable to save the sinner.  The Samaritan is Jesus himself who ministers to the wounded by binding him, that is symbolically restraining him from sin.  The animal represents Christ’s own flesh which carries the wounded man to the inn, a symbol of the Church where people find comfort from the crazed and often dangerous world.

However one reads it, the parable of the Good Samaritan demonstrates Jesus’ mastery of both as story-telling and prophecy.  The passage begins by saying the scholar wants to test Jesus.  That’s like testing Yo-Yo Ma on the cello.  Jesus is the master.  He tests the scholar and the rest of us.  But his testing is not meant to put us down.  Just the opposite, he means to lift us up to the possibility of achieving true happiness.