Commentary 7th Sunday of Ordinary Time - Year A
February 23, 2014
FIRST READING - Leviticus 19, 1-2, 17-18
The LORD said to Moses,
“Speak to the whole Israelite community and tell them:
Be holy, for I, the LORD, your God, am holy.
“You shall not bear hatred for your brother or sister in
your heart.
Though you may have to reprove your fellow citizen,
do not incur sin because of him.
Take no revenge and cherish no grudge against any of
your people.
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
I am the LORD.”
Commentary
We
have all dreamed of being “like gods” at one time or another ... and the book
of Genesis, in recounting the sin of Adam and Eve, reveals that therein lies our problem!
"You will be like gods" had promised, or should I say, had lied the serpent,
and this idea had been their downfall.
But
now it is God himself who tells us: "Be holy like me" ... "Be holy, for I, the LORD, your God, am holy."
It is an order, better still, it is a call, it is our vocation. So we do not deceive
ourselves when we dream of being like gods! Psalm 8 says: "You have made mortals a little lower than God,
and crowned them with glory and honor" (v 5). Except that to really be
like God, we need to have a correct idea of God.
The
first chapters of the Bible already stated that we are made to resemble God. Still we need
to know in what this resemblance consists: "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness, and let
them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and
over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth "(Gn 1:
26). This phrase suggests that we are created to be king of creation. But the
language used by the author shows that the kingdom to which we are called is that
of a loving authority and not one of domination.
A
little later, in Chapter 5, the book of Genesis again uses the same formula twice: once in the same vein:
"When God created humankind, he made
them in the likeness of God", but the second time pertaining to Adam
and to his children: "Adam became
the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image". This
time we have the impression that the words ‘image’ and ‘likeness’ have the
usual meaning given to them when we say that a son resembles his father:
"like father like son".
Finally,
the familiar phrase, "God created humankind
in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created
them" (Gn 1: 27) tells us that the couple, created for love and
dialogue, is the image of the God of love.
It
took centuries for the people to understand that the words "holiness" and "love" are
synonymous. "Holy", you remember, is Isaiah’s famous word. In Chapter
6, he tells us about his vocation - how, when he was in the temple of Jerusalem,
he had a dazzling vision in which he heard the cherubim repeat "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of the universe."
The word "holy" means that God is the Wholly Other; an abyss
separates us from God. At the same time Isaiah had a revelation: it is God who reaches
across this abyss. So when God invites us to be like him, we are capable of it
... thanks to God
of course, or through grace, if you prefer.
The
last two verses of today's reading are merely the application of the phrase,
"Be holy, for I, the LORD, your God,
am holy."
Concretely,
this means "You
shall not bear hatred for your brother or sister in your heart... Take no revenge and cherish no
grudge… You shall love.” This is what it means to be
in the likeness of God - the One who knows no hatred, no vengeance, no resentment.
It is precisely because God is love that he is the Wholly Other. It is only
gradually that the prophets themselves understood and consequently helped the people
understand that to resemble the holy God is simply to develop one’s capacity to
love.
This
does not mean that one loses all ability to judge what is good or bad: "You shall not bear hatred for your brother or
sister in your heart. Though you may have to reprove your
fellow citizen…" To reprimand wisely is
a very difficult art! Yet this too is love. Those of us who are parents or
educators know well what it is to want the good of the other, which can sometimes
stop someone from going over the edge. Loving, constructive criticism helps us to
grow.
God
is patient with us; it is not in one day than our attitude can become like
God’s! Judging by the news that reaches us each day, we will need much more
time! ... All the same, God is progressively teaching us: when this text was
written, it did not yet speak of universal love, it only said, "You shall not bear hatred for your brother or sister… Take no revenge and cherish no grudge against any of your people. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (emphasis mine)
This
is already a first step in biblical teaching ... Centuries later, Jesus tells
the parable of
the Good Samaritan, extending to infinity the circle of kinship.
This
is the kingdom to which we are invited: when we dream of being like gods, we
think spontaneously of domination, power, especially the power required to
overcome disease and death; whereas when it is God who calls us to be Godlike, it
is to holiness that we are called, a holiness that has nothing to do with domination, a holiness which is love and
gentleness. It seems very difficult for us, but then again, maybe we are too
often "of little faith"....
Psalm 103 - 1-2, 3-4, 8-10, 12-13
R/ (8a) The Lord is kind and merciful.
Bless the LORD, O my soul;
and all my being, bless his holy name.
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits.
R/ The Lord is kind and merciful.
He pardons all your iniquities,
heals all your ills.
He redeems your life from destruction,
crowns you with kindness and compassion.
R/ The Lord is kind and merciful.
Merciful and gracious is the LORD,
slow to anger and abounding in kindness.
Not according to our sins does he deal with us,
nor does he requite us according to our crimes.
R/ The Lord is kind and merciful.
As far as the east is from the west,
so far has he put our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion on his children,
so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him.
R/ The Lord is kind and merciful.
Commentary
On
this Sunday only 8 of the 22 verses of this psalm are sung. Since the Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters we
call this psalm an ‘alphabetic acrostic
psalm’. And when a psalm is alphabetic we know in advance that it is a psalm of
thanksgiving for the gift of the Covenant. According to
Andre Chouraqui this psalm is the "Te Deum" of the Bible: a song of gratitude for all
the blessings that God has bestowed on the composer (meaning the people of
Israel).
A
second feature of this psalm is its "parallelism": each verse
consists of two lines that echo one another. Ideally it should be sung by alternating
voices; and indeed the composer may have had two alternating choirs in mind.
This parallelism is very common in the Bible, in poetry, but also in many prose passages. In an oral culture
this process of repetition is useful for memory, but also very suggestive: by
alternating the reading of the two lines within each verse, the poetic
dimension is heightened.
On
the other hand, the repetition of the same idea, successively, in two different
forms, obviously clarifies its meaning, and helps us better understand certain
biblical terms. For example, the first verse gives us two interesting
parallels: "Bless
the LORD, O my soul; and all my being, bless his holy
name."
Within
this verse we have two parallels. The first parallel: "Bless the Lord"/ "Bless his holy
name". Instead of saying "the
Lord" a second time, it says "holy
name", a reminder that THE NAME in the Bible is THE PERSON, which is one
of the reasons why the Jews never allow themselves to pronounce the NAME of
God.
The
second parallel in the first verse, "Bless the LORD, O my soul; and all my being, bless his holy
name," is between “soul”
and “all my being”. It is clear that
the word soul does not have the same meaning here that we spontaneously give it.
Influenced by Greek thought, we tend to think of a human being as the sum of
two different components, strangers to each other, the soul and the body. But over
the centuries the human sciences have shown that this dualism did not reflect
reality. Already, the biblical mentality had a much more unified approach to
the human being, and in the Old Testament, when we say "soul", it is
the whole being that is referred to. "Bless the LORD, O my soul; and all my being, bless his holy
name."
Another
example of parallelism, a little later in this psalm (verse 13) helps us better
understand an expression that is somewhat difficult for us: "fear of
God". We often encounter the word "fear" in the Bible and it does not a priori seem
very friendly to our ears. But here we have the word “fear” in a very
interesting parallel: "As a father
has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion for those who fear
him" - which really means that the fear of God is anything but fear;
it is rather the attitude of a son or daughter.
I
often talk about God’s pedagogy of his people; well here too, the pedagogy of
God has unfolded slowly, patiently, to convert the spontaneous fear of human
beings towards God to that of a filial attitude. What I mean is that,
confronted with God, with the sacred, human beings spontaneously feel fearful;
and what is required is a total conversion in the believers so that without
losing their respect for God, who is All-Other, this respect takes on the attitude
of a child towards his or her parent. The fear of God in the biblical sense is
really fear converted into a filial spirit. This pedagogy is not over yet, of
course; our attitude towards God, our relationship with God, continuously needs
to be converted. Perhaps this is the meaning of the phrase “become like little
children”: little children know that their father is affectionate. This
"fear" therefore, is at once a desire to return affection, a sense of gratitude, and a desire to obey the
father because the child knows that the father’s commands are guided only by
love - as in the case of a child who moves away from the fire because his
father warned him that he might get burnt. As a matter of fact, the literal
translation of this verse reads: "As
a father has compassion for his son, so the Lord has compassion for those who
keep his covenant, for those who fear him."
It
is therefore no coincidence that this psalm speaks of the fear of God by
quoting the famous words from the book of Exodus (Ex 34, 6): "The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to
anger and abounding in love ". This sentence is very famous in the Bible
because it is the definition
that God has given of himself to Moses at Sinai. It is often cited, especially
in the Psalms,
where it is both the definition of God and, inseparably, a reminder of the Covenant.
All psalms,
especially those expressing thanksgiving, are, above all else, wonderment
before the Covenant.
The
verses selected for today insist on one of the expressions of God’s compassion:
forgiveness. A God slow to anger, this is what Israel has experienced
throughout its history: from the crossing of the Sinai - in which Moses could
say to the people, “You have been
rebellious against the Lord from the day you came out of the land of Egypt"(Dt
9, 7b) - the long history of the Covenant has been the theater of God's
forgiveness, granted each time the people regressed. "Not according to our sins does he
deal with us, nor does he requite us according to
our crimes. As far as the east is from the
west, so
far has he put our transgressions from us."
The
true compassion that we need in order to start again is precisely the one that
forgets our sins,
our desertions; this is the compassion that Jesus paints in the parable of the father and the prodigal
son.
Addendum
THE
NAME: the famous four letters YHVH (the "Tetragrammaton"). To pronounce
it would claim to know God. Only the high priest, once a year at Yom Kippur, in
the Temple of Jerusalem, pronounced the holy NAME. Even today, Bibles written in Hebrew do not
transcribe the vowels that would pronounce the NAME. It is transcribed with
only four consonants YHVH. And when the reader sees the word, he immediately
replaces it by another (Adonai) which means "the Lord" but does not
claim to define God.
Ever
since the Synod of Bishops on the Word of God in 2008, all Catholics have been asked not
to say the NAME of God (Yahweh was the word we used), and this for several
reasons:
-
First of all, nobody knows which vowels separated the consonants in the NAME of
God, YHVH. "Yahweh" is certainly incorrect.
-
Second, it is a mark of respect for our Jewish brothers and sisters who
prohibit pronouncing the divine name.
-
Finally, and most importantly, it is good for us to learn to respect God's transcendence.
"As far as the east is from the
west, so
far has he put our transgressions from us ": in the baptismal liturgy of the first centuries, the
baptized turned towards the West to renounce evil and then turned to the East
to make their profession of faith before entering the baptistery.
SECOND READING - 1 Corinthians 3: 16 -23
Brothers and sisters:
Do you not know that you are the temple of God,
and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?
If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that
person;
for the temple of God, which you are, is holy.
Let no one deceive himself.
If any one among you considers himself wise in this age,
let him become a fool, so as to become wise.
For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes
of God,
for it is written:
God catches the wise in their own ruses,
and again:
The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise,
that they are vain.
So let no one boast about human beings, for everything
belongs to you,
Paul or Apollos or Cephas,
or the world or life or death,
or the present or the future:
all belong to you, and you to Christ, and Christ to God.
Commentary
If
you have ever visited Versailles and the Petit Trianon, you are familiar with
Marie-Antoinette’s hamlet and her Temple of Love. According to St. Paul each of
us is a temple of love ... "Do
you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells
in you?” But since God is love and the Spirit is the Spirit of Love, each
of us, and the whole Church, is the Temple of Love. Unfortunately, we must
acknowledge that this is not yet the present reality, and each day we make a
liar of St. Paul! Actually, he is well
aware of this, and in fact if he needs to remind us of our vocation, writing, "Do you not know," it is because the Corinthians (and we alike) have
a tendency to forget it.
The
reminder “not to forget" always indicates something fundamental, vital in
the Old Testament. The book of Deuteronomy often repeats, "Beware not to
forget!” Faith is the memory of the works
of God, and if the people of Israel forget their God, they will lose themselves
in pursuit of idols: "take care…so
as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip
from your mind all the days of your life"(Deut. 4, 9); "be careful not to forget the covenant that
the Lord your God made with you, and not to make for yourselves an idol ...
"(Deut. 4: 23). When the Bible says, "Do not forget" it is always to warn
against what would be a false path, a path of death. Memory is the believer’s
protection, his security.
Why
is it so important not to forget that we are called to be temples of love? It
is because God's plan of love can only be achieved through us. We have no other
purpose. It may sound pretentious to dare say such a thing, yet it is true.
When Jesus tells his apostles: "You give them something to eat" (Lk 9, 13), this is what he
means! We are the temples of love built over the entire surface of the earth, so
that God ‘s love will be manifested everywhere.
This
reminds me of the fact that Marie Antoinette’s Temple of Love is not closed in
on itself, rather it is completely open to the outside, supported only by
columns. It would obviously make no sense to be called a temple of love and to
be closed in on oneself! ... This can surely be said of each of us and of the
whole Church ... Here again St Paul echoes the preaching of the prophets: their constant emphasis on
the love of others ... love in deed and not just in words, of course.
It
would also be interesting to ask, of ourselves, and also of the Church: “what
are the pillars that support the temple that we are?” According to St Paul, it
would certainly not be the faculty of reason! "The wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of God (he
says) ... The Lord knows the thoughts of
the wise, that they are vain."
On
the other hand, those who have handed us the faith are columns: Paul, Apollos
or Peter for the Corinthians, others for us. Not that this makes them the
center - from the beginning of his letter Paul had clearly put things in
perspective: the apostle, however great, is only a gardener; when we applaud the evangelist
whose words resonated in us, words that sometimes led to our conversion, the
applause is not for him or her, but for the One who alone knows the depths of
our heart. Still, those to whom we owe our faith - our parents, our family or
community – remain for us supports that we cannot do without; we are never Christian
alone.
The
true apostles are
those who do not hold us back, who do not capture us, but guide us to Jesus
Christ. "Everything belongs to you,
Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or the present or the
future: all belong to you, and you to Christ, and Christ to God." What
we have here is an image of a building; and it seems to me, that here as always,
Paul is announcing God’s benevolent plan: we are in Christ, that is to say we belong
to Him, we are grafted unto him and he belongs to God. Everything is included
in this great building project: "The world and life and death, the present
and the future" ... In the letter to the Ephesians, Paul says that the
great plan of God is to bring together the entire universe, all that is in the
heavens and on earth, in Jesus Christ.
This
may be alien to our human way of thinking! Yet Paul tells us that this is the
only wisdom: "Let
no one deceive himself. If any one among you considers
himself wise in this age, let him become a fool, so as to become
wise." In Isaiah, we find the same insistence on the abyss that
separates the logic of God from our human logic. "My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways" (Is
55, 8). And the gulf between our thoughts and those of God is such that
if we let ourselves be won over by human ways of thinking, we risk being
severely shaken, destroying the temple that we are. Remember the words, “The
Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.”
In
rereading this text, we can better understand why the liturgy provides for the incensing of
the faithful during Mass: every time we are incensed, we the baptized are
reminded that we are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in us.
GOSPEL - Matthew 5: 38-48
Jesus said to his disciples:
“You have heard that it was said,
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is
evil.
When someone strikes you on your right cheek,
turn the other one as well.
If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic,
hand over your cloak as well.
Should anyone press you into service for one mile,
go for two miles.
Give to the one who asks of you,
and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow.
“You have heard that it was said,
You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I say to you, love your enemies
and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your heavenly Father,
for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,
and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
For if you love those who love you, what recompense will
you have?
Do not the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet your brothers only,
what is unusual about that?
Do not the pagans do the same?
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Commentary
To
begin with, a note on some vocabulary: Jesus says, "You have heard that it was said, You
shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy." In reality, you will not find anywhere in the Old
Testament the command to hate one’s enemies, and Jesus knows this better than
us. But in Hebrew, it is a manner of speaking - it means: start at least by loving your neighbor. It is
a modest ambition, a first step. In today's text in fact, Jesus invites us to
take a second step. Love of neighbor must be firmly established, and so he
invites us from now on to love our enemies as well.
Another
maxim shocks us in today's Gospel: Jesus says: "You have heard that it was said, an
eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" (what we call the law of retaliation). This maxim
is indeed in the Old Testament (although the OT writers did not invent it: this
law is already in the code of Hammurabi in 1750 BC in Mesopotamia). It seems
cruel to us, but we must not forget the context in which it was created. It actually represented a considerable
improvement! Remember how it was in the beginning: Cain avenged himself 7
times, and five generations later, his descendant Lamech prided himself in
avenging himself 77 times. Recall Lamech’s song to his two wives, Adah and Zillah:
"Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; you
wives of Lamech, listen to what I say: I
have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain is
avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-seven fold" (Gn 4, 23-24).
In
Israel, the so-called law of retaliation appears in the book of Exodus and its
purpose is to regulate violence. From now on punishment is limited: it should
be proportional to the offense. "If any
harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth,
hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe"
(Ex 21, 23-25). This indicates some progress: it is no longer hatred and
instinct alone that determine the extent of revenge; a legal principle is in
place that overrides the individual will. It is no longer 7 lives for one life or
77 lives for a life. God’s pedagogy is at work to liberate humanity from hatred;
of course, to really be in the likeness of God, there is some distance to cover,
but it's a step. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus offers the final step: to be
like our heavenly Father, is to hold back any injurious response at all, any
slap in the face; it is to turn the other cheek. "You have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a
tooth. But
I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When
someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other one as well." Why is it necessary to refrain from vengeance,
from all hatred? Simply to really become who we are: sons and daughters of our
Father in heaven.
In
fact, if we look carefully, this text is a lesson about God before being a
lesson for us. Jesus reveals who God really is. The Old Testament had already
said that God is Father, that God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and
abounding in love (according to the book of Exodus) and that our tears flow
down God’s cheek, for God is very near to us (these words are from Ben Sirach,
if you recall). All this had already been said in the Old Testament, but we are
hardheaded ... and very reluctant to believe in a God who is Pure Love. Jesus
tells us again, by way of an image: "God
makes his sun rise on the
bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just
and the unjust".
This image, of course, had more impact
in Jesus' time, in an agrarian civilization where the sun and the rain are both
welcomed as blessings. But the image is beautiful, and if I understand
correctly, it is not a lesson in morality that is given to us here – it is much
deeper than that: God charges us with a mission, that of being God’s reflection
in the world: "You, therefore, be
perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. "
If
I get it right, to believe that God is love is not an easy path: it becomes
extremely challenging for us in the realm of giving and forgiving on a daily
basis!
"Give to the one who asks of you, and
do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow": the Old Testament had
sought to develop love of neighbor, of racial and religious kin, and even of
the immigrant who shared one’s roof. This time Jesus breaks down all barriers: "Give to the one who asks of you, and
do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow" (meaning whoever he or
she is). We will encounter this same standard in the parable of the Good Samaritan.
All
this seems crazy, unreasonable, excessive, and yet this is exactly how God is
with each of us, day in and day out, and just as God has been with God’s people
throughout the ages.
I
cannot help but think of what we have read these past weeks in the first letter
to the Corinthians. Paul opposed our human reasoning to the wisdom of God.
Common sense (and a few well intentioned friends) prompt us ‘not to be taken
in’ as they say. Jesus is in a completely different logic: that of the Spirit
of love and kindness. This alone can hasten the coming of the Kingdom ... provided
that we do not forget who we are, as Paul says: "that you are the temple of God, and
that the Spirit of God dwells in you."
Addendum
"Should anyone press you into
service for one mile, go for two miles." Perhaps this refers to the requisition orders
imposed by the occupying Romans - like Simon of Cyrene who was requisitioned by
the Roman soldiers to carry the cross of Jesus. In other words, overcome your
reluctance, your aggressiveness, your inner revolt (a possible interpretation).
Translated with permission by Simone Baryliuk, from: Dimanche 23
fevrier: commentaires de Marie Noëlle Thabut
http://www.eglise.catholique.fr/foi-et-vie-chretienne/commentaires-de-marie-noelle-thabut.html
Leviticus 19:1-2; 17-18. The Lord said to Moses, "Say to all the congregation of the people of Israel, You shall be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy. "You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason with your neighbor, lest you bear sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord." EXPLANATION: This book gets its name from its contents, which for the greater part deal with matters and laws concerning the worship of God which was conducted by the tribe of Levi; hence the book of "Leviticus." it is the third book in the Old Testament bible, and although it has many very ancient rules and elements which go back to the time of Moses, it was given its final present form after the Babylonian exile (around 500 B.C.). It deals, as we said, with cultic and ceremonial rites and regulations. Chapters 17-26, from which today's reading is taken, form a body of laws commonly called the Law of Holiness. As well as cultic laws, these chapters contain ethical and civic precepts which show the lofty ideals and morals which inspired the sacred author of this section. Some of these moral and religious ideals will be apparent in the four verses read today.