Monday, August 21, 2023 - Homily

 

Monday, August 21, 2023 - What is the wealth that has so possessed you; so as to leave you unfree to say a total YES to Jesus? What will you do about it today?

To read the texts click on the texts: Judges 2:11-19; Mt 19:16-22

The story found in Matthew has sometimes been called the one of “The Rich young ruler”. However, these words appear nowhere in the New Testament, and is a conglomerate of the figures in Mark (rich), Matthew (who alone adds “young”) and Luke (who alone adds “ruler”). Matthew alone gives us a picture of a youth, twice calling him “a young man”. He would thus be a person in his twenties. He addresses Jesus as “teacher’, which signals that he is an outsider – in Matthew, real disciples address Jesus as “Lord”. In his answer to the young man, Jesus is portrayed as an advocate of the Law rather than its opponent. In response to the second question of the young man, Jesus takes him further to “perfection”, which does not mean “to be blameless”, but rather to be “whole”, “undivided” in love.

However, he was not able to say YES to the call of Jesus not merely because he was a man of great wealth, but rather because instead of possessing wealth, he let wealth possess him. This “being possessed”, did not leave him free, and consequently, he was unable to make a free choice.

We are living in a world in which it is easy to get so taken up with material things that we lose sight of everything and everyone else. We can if are not careful make the acquisition of things an end in itself.

Sunday, August 20, 2023 - Homily

 

Saturday, August 19, 2023 - Homily

 

Sunday, August 20, 2023 - Never give up!

To read the texts click on the texts: Isa 56:1, 6-7; Rom 11:13-15, 29-32; Mt 15:21-28

It took Winston Churchill three years to get through the eighth grade, because he couldn’t pass English. Ironically, many years later he was asked to give the commencement address at the Oxford University. His now famous speech consisted of only three words: “Never give up!” While this theme of perseverance and never giving up is surely one of the themes of the readings of today, another theme that also comes out powerfully is the movement from particularity to the universality of God’s love.

There is no doubt that Jesus appears to be speaking to the Canaanite woman in the Gospel text of today in extremely harsh terms. He disregards the heartfelt and sincere plea for mercy made by the woman, and makes it clear that his mission, at this time, is for the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and even likens the woman to a dog. Some have attempted to soften this harshness by suggesting that Jesus’ retort to the woman was said with a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his lips or that Jesus did not mean stray dogs but house pets.  However, nothing in the text warrants such interpretations and when compared with the similar incident in Mark, which allows for a mission to the Gentiles following the mission to the Jews, the retort of Jesus in Matthew is harsher, leaving no apparent scope for a Gentile mission: “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

The Jews are the children and the Gentiles are the dogs. The epithet “dogs” for Gentiles had derogatory connotations. Dogs roamed the streets scavenging for food, and the Jews considered them unclean animals. The Gentiles cannot get what belongs to the Jews. Thus Jesus not only flatly refuses the woman’s request; he also seems to insult her.

The woman, however, will neither be excluded nor allow herself to be insulted. She will persevere and will overcome. She will keep on keeping on. She will neither give up nor give in. She meets Jesus’ initial stony silence with more pleading. She drowns out the disciples’ request for Jesus to send her away with her own repeated requests for Jesus to have mercy. She factually negates his exclusive mission to the Jews when she, a Gentile calls him Lord and worships him. Finally, she cleverly turns his own maxim supporting exclusivism into an illustration of inclusivism in salvation. Accepting the designation “dogs” for Gentiles, she turns it to the Gentiles’ advantage. “Yes, Lord,” she counters Jesus, “but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” In her maxim the dogs and the children both eat. And they eat simultaneously. She bests the Matthean Jesus: She denies both exclusivism and sequential priority in salvation based on ethnic identity. The Gentiles can have at least the crumbs of salvation if not the bread, and they can have it now. She challenges Jesus to rise up to a new, ethnically broadened sense of his mission and his Lordship. The woman’s brash courage actually “converts” Jesus. Though Jesus had limited his mission to the sons and daughters of Israel, here he crosses this self-imposed boundary to bring merciful healing to a Gentile. The woman brings him to the full implications of his mission.

This gospel passage thus reveals that Jesus’ understanding of God’s saving work entails both the particular and the universal. He knew that this woman was a Canaanite; he knew that he was a Jew and had been sent to Israel yet this did not exclude the limits of God’s gracious work in and through him. He also knew that God’s redemptive work reached across the boundaries of difference without necessarily obliterating them. God in Christ did not make this woman and her daughter into something other than Canaanites, but in response to the woman’s faith he did bring healing to her daughter.

This is reiterated by Paul in the second reading of today who, writing to the Romans, asserts that he who is, “an Israelite himself, a descendant of Abraham”, expresses hope for Israel because “salvation has come to the Gentiles”. When either Gentiles or Jews, women or men, are saved, they remain Gentiles or Jews, women or men, yet they are saved in the same way i.e. through faith. And, this salvation is the result of God’s grace and mercy which is blind to differences of ethnicity, gender, or nationality.

The fact that such differences to not constitute a barrier to the love of God do not mean, however, that God’s saving work is meaninglessly indiscriminate. Those whom God welcomes into his “house of prayer for all nations” are those who “bind themselves to the Lord… to be his servants.” They are vessels of God’s justice. As people of faith hey hear the Lord in the depths of their hearts calling them to, “do what is right.” These are people like the Canaanite woman, who persevered in faith in the only hope she had.

The call and challenge to us today is to continue to persevere, even if at times it seems that our prayers are not being answered and that there seems to be no solution in sight. It is also an invitation to realize the inclusive nature of God’s unconditional and magnanimous love.                                                

Saturday, August 19, 2023 - Humility is a funny thing. Once you think you’ve got it you’ve lost it. What do you think of this statement?

To read the texts click on the texts: Joshua 24:14-29; Mt 19:13-15

The text of today is on the one level about Jesus’ attitude to children, but is more importantly and on a deeper level about the kingdom. While in Mark and Luke the children were being brought to Jesus that he might “touch” them (Mk 10,13; Lk 18,15), in Matthew the children are brought that he “might lay his hands on them and pray” (19,13). These two acts are the typical acts of blessing by a revered teacher and Matthew intends to show that Jesus is regarded as such by the people. Jesus goes further than the blessing to make a pronouncement about who will inherit the kingdom, and he identifies not just the children but also “such as these”. This means that anyone no matter of what chronological age will inherit the kingdom if he/she receives it without presumption and self-justification.

As Christians we are blessed in that all that we receive from God is not through any effort on our part but is given gratis. We have only to receive. Even this, however, is difficult because sometimes we mistakenly think that it is our effort that brings us what we have.

Friday, August 18, 2023 - Homily

 

Friday, August 18, 2023 - Do you usually take the “easy way” or the “right way”?

To read the texts click on the texts: Joshua 24:1-13;Mt 19:3-12

The context of today’s reading is immediately after Jesus has finished instructing his disciples (19,1-2) in the “Community Discourse” (18, 1-35). The text is found also in Mark 10, 1-12, but Matthew has made some changes to suit his purpose. In Matthew, Jesus begins his response to the Pharisees question about the legality of divorce by going back to Genesis 1,27 and 2,24 (in Mark the quotations from Genesis come later). In Matthew, the Pharisees respond to Jesus’ quotation by citing Deut. 24,1, which allowed divorce, and this prompts Jesus to move to the situational application. The union of husband and wife is the creation of God and must be regarded as such (in Mark, they respond in this manner after a question from Jesus about what Moses commanded them). Matthew omits 10,12 of Mark, which reflects the Gentile provision for a woman’s initiating a divorce, since this is not applicable from his Jewish perspective. Matthew adds an exception clause; “except for unchastity” as he did earlier in 5,32, and in doing so makes the teaching of Jesus, a situational application rather than a legalistic code.

19,10-12 is exclusive to Matthew, and in them Jesus responds to the comment of the disciples that it is better not to marry. Those “who are made eunuchs by men” seems to refer to the pagan practice of literal castration as a religious practice, and this is rejected by Jesus. Those “who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom” seems to refer to those who choose to remain celibate in order to concentrate more fully on the kingdom, rather than get weighed down by family cares.

No matter what state of life one chooses, one must remain faithful to one’s commitment in that state of life. The grass seems greener on the other side, but only till we go to the other side.

Thursday, August 17, 2023 - Homily

 

Thursday, August 17, 2023 - What would be your position if God kept a grudge against you for every sin you committed? Will you give up all your un-forgiveness today?

To read the texts click on the texts: Joshua 3:7-11,13-17; Mt 18:21 – 19:1

The text of today is the conclusion to Matthew’s “Community Discourse” (18,1-35). It begins with a question from Peter about the number of times one is expected to forgive. While Peter proposes seven times, Jesus’ response far exceeds that proposal. The number seventy-seven can be understood in this way or even as four hundred ninety (seventy times seven). The point is not so much about numbers but about forgiveness from the heart. If one has to count the number of times one is forgiving, it means that one is not really forgiving at all. The story that follows in 18,23-35 about the king who forgave his servant a debt of ten thousand talents (a talent was more than fifteen years wages of a labourer) and that same servant who would not forgive another servant who owed him a mere hundred denarii (a denarius was the usual day’s wage for a labourer) makes the same point.

We expect to be forgiven by other when we do them harm after we have said sorry, and sometimes if they do not forgive us, we get upset with them even more. We need to apply the same yardstick to ourselves when others ask for forgiveness from us.