30th Sunday of Ordinary Time (26.10.14)<\/p>\n
Re-Form<\/strong><\/p>\n Jesus addressed his many questioners with a listening heart. He does so irrespective of the manner in which his questioners addressed him. A prime example is when Jesus, after his arrest and initial suffering, is questioned by Pilate, the Roman Governor (John 19:10). Jesus, responding to Pilate, presents the Governor with a gentle invitation to consider the role of God in his own life.<\/p>\n “Where are you from?” But Jesus gave him no answer. <\/em> Our Gospel extract for this 30th<\/sup> Sunday (Matthew 22: 34-40) posits a Pharisee\u2019s question to Jesus as a continuation of an earlier verbal exchange between other Pharisees and Jesus.<\/p>\n Interestingly, Mark, recalls the same incident in his Gospel (12: 28-34) but paints the prevailing atmosphere quite differently. For Mark, Jesus\u2019 questioner was more interested in hearing the quality of Jesus\u2019 response. The exchange concludes with harmony between Jesus and his questioner. Both interpretations have legitimacy because each Gospel compiler was addressing a different audience.<\/p>\n How do you think of Jesus? Do you regard him as a reformer or as the founder of a new religion? Jesus did not found a new religion. He came to re-form Judaism, to replenish and bring to completion God\u2019s fundamental covenant with his chosen people \u2013 originally the Twelve Tribes of Israel but now expanded to embrace the Gentile world too. Jesus defined his re-forming mission in Matthew (5:17-18):<\/p>\n “Do not think that I have come to do away with the Law of Moses and the teachings of the prophets. I have not come to do away with them, but to make their teachings come true.<\/em> Jesus\u2019 re-formational mission continues today, within us and through us his Baptised members.<\/p>\n It\u2019s generally accepted that reformers rarely teach something new. They reorder what already exists. In so doing they re-establish an emphasis or priority that, over time and for spurious reasons, was overlooked.<\/p>\n For example, in the 16th<\/sup> century, Cardinal Thomas Cajetan was sent, as a Papal Legate, by Pope Leo X to interrogate Martin Luther (1483-1546) on his beliefs. Luther, a German monk, Catholic priest, professor of theology and seminal figure of the 16th-century movement in Christianity known later as the Protestant Reformation, had been teaching, among others things, that freedom from God’s punishment for sin could not be purchased for money. In other words Luther opposed the sellers of \u2018indulgences\u2019 who at the time, besides being a travesty of true Christianity, were a highly profitable source of revenue for the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n Cardinal Cajetan reported to the Pope Leo that \u2018he found no heresy in much of what this troublesome German monk (Luther) was preaching. But,\u2019 Cajetan added, \u2018Catholics hadn\u2019t heard some of his teaching for many centuries\u2019. Just because a teaching or practice is new to some, doesn\u2019t mean it is either new or, of necessity, erroneous. Today, the Catholic Church\u2019s opinion of Martin Luther has itself been much reformed. The most recent contributor to Luther\u2019s restoration was Emeritus Pope Benedict XVl during a visit to his homeland in conversation with the Lutheran church.<\/p>\n It may surprise some Catholics to know that the Second Vatican Council (1962 – 1965) was a re-forming Council of the Church. It taught no new doctrine. The Council Fathers, in the Documents they produced, reordered the Church\u2019s approach to the mission it had received from Jesus. The much-loved Pope St. John XXlll believed that the Church had become remote from the world and, therefore, from its mission. Vatican ll set about re-presenting the Truth, revealed through Jesus, for the salvation of men and women everywhere.<\/p>\n In this Sunday\u2019s Matthew extract, Jesus invites his questioner to revisit the basics of the Decalogue.<\/p>\n “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, <\/em> The questioner is heartened by Jesus\u2019 answer as, in addition to it being a quotation from the Decalogue, it forms the core of an Israelite\u2019s daily prayer, the Shema (Deuteronomy 6.4). Jesus, in turn, endorses his questioner: \u201cYou are not far from the Kingdom of God.\u201d<\/p>\n Parents and teachers are forever encouraging those in their charge to lay down good foundations for their future. Jesus did the same. One of his most famous parables told of the person who built their house on sand! (Matt 7:24-27)<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone then who hears these words of mine and keeps them will be like a wise person who built their house on rock.<\/em>\u00a0And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock.<\/em> Building character involves personal cost as well as commitment. It can be tempting to take a short cut, take a risk. Referencing Jesus\u2019 parable, there are those who risk building on part rock and part sand. Their hope is, either, that the rains and wind won\u2019t come or that, when they do, they, as builders, will have sold, pocketed the profits and moved on! In God\u2019s sight there is no time limit for being responsible! Parents and teachers know how hard it is to put an old head on young shoulders!<\/p>\n It is accepted that reformers identify with the \u2018good people\u2019 who are seriously trying to do what they believe God wants them to do. Rarely do reformers seek confrontations with the \u2018enemies\u2019 of their faith. The classical biblical prophets of Old Testament times challenged their people to return to what they had originally learnt and believed but had, somehow, let slip to the margins of their life and faith.<\/p>\n The Pharisees, in the New Testament, appear to some as Jesus\u2019 archenemies. Yet Jesus invested so much time in dialoguing with them. Did he see the Pharisees of his day as successors to good people whose worthy roots went back to the 6th<\/sup> century BC when the Jews were exiles in Babylon? After all, it was the Pharisees who, during the exile, kept the Jews together by founding synagogues.<\/p>\n When, in 538 BC, the Jews came back to Jerusalem they began the rebuilding of The Temple. They also continued the establishment of synagogues in every large Jewish town which is why we are told that Jesus was accustomed to \u2018go to the synagogue on the Sabbath\u2019. Jesus taught in synagogues as well as in The Temple.<\/p>\n The Pharisees believed in the afterlife so why was Jesus so critical of them? Could it have been that the Pharisees had lost their way becoming mesmerised with minutiae and with politics? So in Matthew 23:23-24 we read:<\/p>\n “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!<\/em> Preoccupied with legal trivia and Roman politics, the Pharisees had lost sight of the purpose of the Mosaic Law. It\u2019s a picture not unfamiliar to Catholics who remember how the Church behaved prior to Vatican ll.<\/p>\n A survey of Catholic opinion in the 1960\u2019s asked: \u2018Which is the more important Catholic law \u2013 to love your neighbour or to abstain from meat on Fridays (which was then Church law)? Unbelievably, over 50% responded that abstaining from meat was the more important law! If a meatless Friday can trump loving our neighbour then we Catholics should know we have problems! Jesus found the scribes and Pharisees \u2018wanting\u2019 because they observed the precepts of Law more closely than the spirit of the Second Commandment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 30th Sunday of Ordinary Time (26.10.14) Re-Form Jesus addressed his many questioners with a listening heart. He does so irrespective of the manner in which his questioners addressed him. A prime example is when Jesus, after his arrest and initial … Continue reading
\nSo Pilate said to Him, “You do not speak to me? <\/em>
\nDo you not know that I have authority to release you,<\/em>
\n\u00a0and I have authority to crucify you?” <\/em>
\nJesus answered, “You would have no authority over me, unless it had been given you from above \u2026.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n
\n\u00a0Remember that as long as heaven and earth last, not the least point nor the smallest detail of the Law will be done away with – not until all is brought to completion.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n
\nwith all your soul, and with all your mind. <\/em>
\nThis is the greatest and the first commandment. <\/em>
\nThe second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”<\/em><\/p>\n
\n\u00a0And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not keep them will be like a foolish person who built their house on sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n
\n\u00a0For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done<\/em>
\n\u00a0without neglecting the others. <\/em>
\nYou blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel !\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n