Can I not do to you, house of Israel, as this potter has done?
In the Catholic press, much has been said recently about an idea called the “Benedict Option”. The idea is that Christians would opt to imitate the example of Saint Benedict of Norcia in the face of the disorder within civil society. Is the example of St. Benedict apropos to our day? To what extent is Western culture vulnerable to collapse?
Regardless, only an ostrich would be unable to notice the red flags that the high priests of secular culture wave in the faces of everyone. So ought Christians flee as much as possible from civil society, and form small communities of dedicated Christians? Or ought Christians engage the secular culture as much as possible in the public square, even until the dying day of that culture?
Regardless of whether Christians choose the “Benedict Option”, or the “Dominican Option”, or the “Gregorian Option”, or any other option, today’s First Reading places before us a salient reminder. If secular culture is subject to decay and collapse, so also is the spiritual life of a child of God, and of His entire People. The image of the potter, and the Lord’s message regarding the potter’s work, is an Old Testament complement to Jesus’ exhortation to remove the plank from one’s own eye before attempting to remove the speck from another’s. “Indeed, like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand”.
“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things.”
On this feast of Saint Martha, the Gospel Reading must come from the feast day. The other readings may come from the day in Ordinary Time, which the feast supersedes. However, there are two options for the Gospel Reading on this feast. Both, of course, feature Martha.
The first option offers a bit more flattering portrait of Martha. The occasion is the death of Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary. Martha goes out to meet Jesus, while Mary sits at home, which is an interesting contrast to the sisters’ respective roles in the other Gospel Reading for the feast. Martha’s words to Jesus express not only her love for her deceased brother, but also for Jesus, as well as faith in Jesus. Yet Martha is missing something. When Jesus declares to Martha, “Your brother will rise”, she does not understand fully what Jesus means. Jesus is promising that her brother will return to her, not on “the last day”, but on that very day when Jesus and Martha are speaking. It’s to Martha’s credit that when Jesus makes more clear His intention, Martha makes clear her faith in Jesus. This faith in Jesus, who is “the resurrection and the life”, is a model for our own faith.
The second option for the feast’s Gospel Reading is perhaps the better-known Gospel story about Martha. Martha is overshadowed by her sister Mary, the latter being an example of putting “first things first”. Nonetheless, perhaps the example of Martha in this passage is more like most of us Christians. To identify with Martha in this passage is to humble ourselves and to recall that our good works are empty if they don’t proceed from a faith that’s nourished by the Word of God.
In today’s Gospel passage Jesus offers a point-by-point explanation of the parable that He had preached about the weeds in the field, proclaimed at Holy Mass on Saturday of this past week. The evangelists rarely offer us examples of Jesus explaining one of His parables. So today’s passage is insightful both in terms of the parable’s content, and also in terms of understanding how Jesus uses parables.
We might wonder, to start with, what the significance is of the evangelist telling us that it’s after “Jesus dismissed the crowds” that “His disciples approached Him” to ask for an explanation of the parable. This is an important distinction that the evangelist didn’t have to note for Jesus’ explanation of the parable to make sense. Perhaps the evangelist is highlighting the importance of petitioning God for deeper insight into His revealed Word.
Jesus then explains the meanings of seven persons or things within the parable. This allegorical explanation of the parable is important because it’s in accord with the method of interpreting Jesus’ parables commonly found in the writings of patristic and medieval saints. The allegorical method of understanding Sacred Scripture is often rejected today by scholars who prefer to use only rationalistic forms of the historical-critical method. Nonetheless, central to all the elements of Jesus’ allegorical interpretation is His call for each of us to be among the “good seed”, sown by the Son of Man in His preaching, Passion, Death and Resurrection.
Monday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time Matthew 13:31-35
All these things Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables.
Jesus today proclaims two parables about the Kingdom of Heaven. In wanting to understand these parables, we might wonder what exactly the Kingdom of Heaven is. Is the Kingdom of Heaven the realm of Heaven? Is it the Church, or some measure of both the Church and Heaven, or something else entirely, such as the individual Christian’s soul?
Jesus never directly answers this question. But even without defining “the Kingdom of Heaven”, we can say that the kernel of each “Kingdom parable” describes in some way the reality of Heaven, and/or the Church, and/or the Christian’s soul.
Take Jesus’ first parable in today’s Gospel passage. The change from the “smallest of all the seeds” to “the largest of plants” seems more easily applied to the Church and the Christian soul than to Heaven. Tertullian wrote that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church”, a phrase through which we can see how this parable applies to the Church. With God, all things are possible: from a natural death springs supernatural life. Or as the Church prays to God the Father in one of the prefaces for martyrs at Holy Mass: by “your marvelous works” “in our weakness you perfect your power / and on the feeble bestow strength to bear you witness….”
… so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
Today the Church celebrates the feast of the apostle James. But two of the apostles were named James. The apostle whose feast we celebrate today is usually called “James the Greater”. This James was the brother of St. John the Apostle.
Saint James the Greater was “greater” than the other James because he followed Jesus for a longer time. But even though this “Great James” followed Jesus for so long a time, he still didn’t exactly understand who Jesus was. We can tell that from today’s Gospel passage.
James and John, the apostle-brothers, have a mom who wants what’s best for them. She knows that Jesus is a great person, very important, and even believes that Jesus is some sort of king. That’s why she asks Jesus if her sons can sit right next to Jesus’ throne. She wants her sons to be important.
But Jesus says something that none of them expects. Jesus says that if you want to be with Him in Heaven, you have to drink from the chalice that Jesus was going to drink from during Holy Week. When Jesus says this, He’s not only talking about the chalice that He’s going to use at the Last Supper. Jesus is also talking about the cup of suffering: He’s talking about the Cross. Remember that after the Last Supper, Jesus went to the Garden of Gethsemane, and prayed to God the Father about the cup of suffering that He knew was coming very soon.
You will actually grow stronger in your life whenever you suffer for Jesus’ sake. Jesus taught us this in the Beatitudes: “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” [Matthew 5:11]. Always remember that this is one of the ways that God will give you grace throughout your life: by sticking with Jesus, even when it’s very difficult.
“But the seed sown on rich soil is the one who hears the word and understands it ….”
If you use a computer at all, you know how many different things you can accomplish with it. Computers can help us with our homework, with our finances, with preparing a talk, and with sending messages and pictures to our loved ones. The list seems endless.
The more we get used to working with computers, the more we get used to doing what the professionals call “multi-tasking”: that is, trying to do several things at once. With computers, this means printing one thing, sending an email, downloading a file, and so on and so forth, all at once. With computers, the more you can multi-task, the smarter you are. Or so the theory supposes.
Jesus is saying something very different in today’s Gospel passage. The parable that He tells us has a simple point: we need to focus on God in order to love Him. In a way, Jesus’ parable reminds us of what Jesus said to Martha when He visited the home of Martha and Mary. Martha and Mary were very different sisters. Mary sat at the feet of Jesus, listening to His words, while Martha was multi-tasking all over the house. Mary focused her attention on Jesus, while Martha did not.
Your soul is like a field. Jesus wants to sow good seed in your soul so that, at the end of your life in this world, He can find a rich field of grace to harvest. But the parable that Jesus tells us shows that even though Jesus takes good seed everywhere He goes, some fields—some souls—are better than others. The good soul, ready to accept the seed of God’s Word, is the soul that focuses on God. This is the person who prays daily to God, asks His help, and knows that God will forgive all sins. When we look at the crucifix, and pray to Jesus, focusing on His love for us, we see the One who will lead us to life forever with Him in Heaven.
CCC 407: cannot ignore wound of sin in discerning human situation CCC 1777-1785: moral decision making in rapport with God’s will CCC 1786-1789: seeking will of God in divine law in difficult circumstances CCC 1038-1041: separation of good and evil at Judgment CCC 1037: God predestines no one to hell
Ten centuries before Christ, the son of David became the King of Israel. Solomon was a young man. He recognized his lack of experience and lack of ability to govern Israel. Yet the Lord told Solomon that any gift he asked for would be given to him.
Solomon could have asked for absolute wealth, since with such wealth he could buy off any kingdom that got in his way. Or he could have asked for absolute power, since then he could destroy any opposing kingdom. He could have asked for any number of things. He decided to ask for wisdom.
Wisdom is insight into the ultimate meaning of things. This becomes clearer when we reflect upon the differences among wisdom, intelligence, and what we might call “smarts”. Even computers can be smart in terms of recalling facts and calculating equations. But intelligence transcends smartness, while a computer cannot transcend its programming. Intelligence goes beyond what is known by means of a desire to explore the unknown.
Wisdom, however, transcends intelligence because it ponders the ultimate meaning of things. Wisdom explores the origin, the nature, and the goal of everything that is, culminating in the contemplation of the Most Holy Trinity. Divine wisdom is a gift of God the Holy Spirit.
It is through the power of the Holy Spirit that St. Paul’s words in today’s Second Reading ring true: “all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose.” We need to recognize this purpose as God the Father’s providential will. This divine, providential will converges in Christ. St. Paul explains this as he continues: “those He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He might be the firstborn”.
However, before the advent of this firstborn, the Jewish Scriptures already held seven books called “Wisdom Literature”: the Books of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Wisdom, Song of Songs, and Sirach. The wisdom expressed in these books of the People of Israel was unlike the wisdom taught by many ancient cultures. It’s also unlike the conventional wisdom according to which Western culture operates today.
The wisdom that God revealed to Israel isn’t based upon self-interest or self-promotion. It is founded upon nothing and no one other than the Lord God Himself. If God is part of our lives, then even if our life seems a puzzle, we have reason to hope. It doesn’t matter if we don’t understand every piece of the puzzle. God teaches us, over time, to move one piece of the puzzle over here, and another piece there. Over time the picture God has had in His Mind all along emerges.
This might make divine wisdom sound rather lofty, other-worldly, and as a consequence, impractical: good for monks and nuns, but not so for the layperson on the street. But wisdom is not some “pie in the sky” virtue. It’s eminently practical, especially in our world today.
When individuals live for themselves, discord grows: first in families and then in communities and nations. This is why St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summary of Theology ascribes the seventh beatitude—“Blessedare the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children ofGod”—to the Holy Spirit’s gift of Wisdom [ST II-II 45,6]. In our world today the teaching of St. Thomas on this point is sorely needed.
He notes first that a peacemaker is one who makes peace either within himself or in others. In either case peace results from setting all matters in due order. The highest form of order can only be seen, however, and therefore set in place, in view of divine wisdom.
Second, the reward of peacemakers is that they become children of God. St. Thomas here quotes from this Sunday’s Second Reading. In making peace, one shares in the likeness of God’s only-begotten Son: or in the words of Saint Paul, one is “conformed to the image of his Son, so that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” This divine Son is “Wisdom Begotten”, St. Thomas points out. On the Cross, Jesus makes peace between His Father and sinful man. Blessed are those who are called to the Supper of this “Wisdom Begotten”.
When the disciples in today’s Gospel passage ask Jesus why He speaks to “the crowd” in parables, He responds with what we might call a “theology of parables”. Jesus contrasts the disciples with the crowd. The disciples, He explains, have been granted “knowledge of the mysteries of the Kingdom of heaven”. But the crowd has not. Jesus also points out that the crowd “look but do not see” and “hear but do not listen or understand”. So given this two-fold deficit on the part of the crowd, why is it fitting for Jesus to speak to them in parables?
Since Jesus then reveals that Isaiah 6:9-10 has been fulfilled in the midst of the crowd, parables seem to be a sort of pabulum. By way of analogy, we might consider Saint Paul’s explanation of his own preaching to the Corinthians, who had been torn by jealousy and strife: “I, brethren, could not address you as spiritual men, but as men of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food; for you were not ready for it; and even yet you are not ready” [1 Corinthians 3:1-2].
In other words, parables are for the weak of spirit, for those not yet ready for the full strength of the Gospel message, nor for living this message through their own lives. Aren’t we ourselves often among their number?
Early in the morning on the first day of the week… that is to say, in the beginning… we see Mary Magdalene huddled at the tomb weeping. We must give her credit for this, since the apostles themselves were not faithful to the Crucified Lord in this way. For ourselves, we pray for the grace to persevere in the midst of suffering, to allow our souls to thirst for Our Lord and God without despair in the midst of suffering. We pray for the ability to hope during those times when we cannot see the Lord present before us.
Only in the midst of such suffering, of such weeping, of such self-emptying, can the Lord be seen clearly, as He calls us by name. We recognize Christ, and we accept the commission He offers us. He has news for Mary Magdalene to report: namely, that He is ascending to His Father and our Father. Perhaps, though, this is even more difficult: to rejoice at someone’s return when he tells you he’s getting ready to leave you forever.
After all, on that Easter morning, who wants to hear about the Ascension? We want to glory in the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead! And yet that is not where Jesus points us. Throughout His life, and in His death, he always points away from Himself toward the Father, even on the very morning of His Resurrection.
Reflections on the Sacred Liturgy 