Ordinary Time

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, were anxious to share the glory of Jesus in His kingdom. Clearly, they didn’t understand what they were asking for. Yes, they said that they were prepared to do whatever Jesus would to do, but they were thinking about the worldly power and prestige that would come through their association with Jesus. They had yet to learn the lesson that the kingdom of Jesus does not confer wealth and status. On the contrary, the reign of God can only come about through humble service. The first places in God’s thinking belong to those at the bottom of the pile rather that the top. Centuries earlier, the prophet Isaiah had foreseen that the leadership of Israel would no longer be in the hands of self-serving kings, but rather in those of a servant of God who would be prepared to suffer for the sake of His people. Jesus fulfills not only this new way of being a leader, but also becomes a new model of priesthood, as we read in today’s second reading. He is the supreme high priest who has access to God himself as he offers the sacrifice of His own blood in redemption for all of us. We can have absolute confidence, then, in Jesus, the servant king, the supreme high priest, who came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom of many.

As disciples of Jesus, are we moved to give of ourselves so that others may have a better life? Do we feel a human connection with people whose lives are in crisis for whatever reason? Or are we simply looking for ways to satisfy our hunger for power, possessions and pleasure? The choice to put ourselves at the service of others will never be easy. What will other people think? Is it a waste of a life when there is so much else that can be experienced in the world today? As followers of Jesus, we have the great reassurance that He has not only modelled a life of humble service and encouraged us to follow His example, He is now our intercessor in the presence of God the Father when we are in need of help. So today let us renew our commitment to follow Jesus in the way of humble service of those who need our help, trusting that He will help us to overcome our selfish tendencies to put ourselves in first place.

Jesus’ teaching in today’s Gospel tells us how serious a thing it is to offend against anyone in any way. Sin is always damaging, Jesus teaches us. Wrongdoing is never all right. Jesus speaks about a threefold way of sinning, with hand and foot and eye. These parts of our body are so precious and so vital in everything we do. His language is deliberately extreme, not meant to be interpreted in a literal fashion, for He is making the point that there are no half measures here. For example, different religious groups, different nationalities, difference of gender, none of these things should be an issue for us in the way we behave and treat one another. We are all human beings. What divides us, what has always divided us and always will divide us, unless we change our ways, is our inclination to sin and wrongdoing. It is then that we human beings create hell – a place where we have separated ourselves from God.

There are many places in this world that are truly a living hell. Wherever war breaks out, there is hell. Wherever persons persecute other people and make life hell for them, full of fear and threats and anger, such a place is a living Gehenna. Many people live in these conditions every day. God has nothing to do with sending people to hell. That is no part of Christian understanding. What we do understand is the ability of human beings to damn and to destroy; to destroy others and to damn themselves in the process. Jesus in His own life, would be a victim of this hellish behavior, when His opponents set out to destroy Him. Jesus knew what His suffering would be. That is why He had such a vivid realization if the seriousness of any kind of wrongdoing. Let us then rejoice in all good people everywhere, of any religion and of none. And let us remember that we, who are blessed to have faith in Christ Jesus, are called to follow His great example, and so be light to the world.

Today in the Gospel Jesus is telling His disciples about the kind of leadership He wants to see in His Church. But they seem deaf to what He says. He has told them already that His leadership will involve suffering and He will tell them a third time as they journey to Jerusalem. The disciples don’t understand why the Messiah should suffer and they are afraid to ask Him because it is a message they don’t want to hear. The conversation has been about who is the greatest among them, who wields the most power. Who is the top dog? Jesus knows His disciples are caught up in this desire for power, so He challenges them. Leadership in His Church must be based on service, so the one who wants to be first must be last. Jesus tells them they must learn to welcome not just the powerful but these insignificant children. If they do, they will be welcoming Jesus himself.

Jesus wants strong leadership for His Church. But He wants a leadership that does not dominate and insist on rank. It is a leadership that will inevitable come into conflict with alpha-male attitudes and, like Jesus, will have to suffer as it serves the weaker members of the community. In our parishes and homes, welcoming the “little children” will mean giving time for those who are sick, disabled, poor, mentally ill and vulnerable in all sorts of ways. In our competitive and often ruthless society, Christ is more likely to be found at the bottom of the social pile than at the top.

Today’s second reading suggests that discrimination between rich and poor people had even infiltrated the early Church. St. James invokes the Old Testament belief that God’s special care is given to poor people, choosing them to be “rich in faith” and “heirs to the kingdom which he promised to those who love him.” Jesus chose the life of a poor man; he had “nowhere to lay his head” and, in St. Paul’s words, “he became poor for your sake, to make you rich out of his poverty.” In His public ministry Jesus’ love embraced everyone, and He bridged the great divide between rich and poor people, not in a material way but through increasing their love and faith. The miracle in today’s Gospel, in which Jesus cures a man who is deaf and speaks with difficulty, can be seen not only as physical healing but also as a spiritual gift that brings the man to a deeper faith. St. Mark gives the incident a symbolic meaning: the man is taken apart from the crowd and receives the ability to hear and to speak of what he has heard and understood, whereas the disciples, though they were privileged to be constantly in the presence of Jesus, so often failed to understand what they had heard.

St. Francis was the son of a wealthy cloth merchant but as a young man, after returning from war, he made a pilgrimage to Rome. There his heart was moved by the sight of the beggars. He exchanged clothes with one of their number and, discovering for himself the reality of poverty, he resolved to commit his life to prayer and to serve all who were poor. St. Francis was known as “Il Poverello”, the poor man. He embraced poverty in imitation of Christ and by his way of life increased love and faith, healing, the gap between rich and poor. It is by imitating Christ, as Francis did, that we too can bridge whatever divides us from each other.

Customs, traditional ways of doing things, are part and parcel of every society, including every religious community. They can be extremely useful, but over time can become pointless. In today’s first reading Moses commands the people to follow their God-given “laws and customs.” And in the Gospel the Pharisees and scribes complain to Jesus that His disciples are eating with unwashed hands, and so are not complying with the Law. They mean that the disciples are ignoring some of the prescriptions that the scribes and Pharisees had added to the Law over the centuries. These regulations were not concerned with health and safety but with ritual purity. Jesus is not suggesting that matters of ritual purity are of no value, but He does insist that there are other things of greater importance. With a quotation from the Prophet Isaiah, He claims that the Pharisees are hypocrites: they are actors, showmen, who offer lip service to the Lord while in fact their hearts are far from Him; their service is worthless. He explains that they should look, not to what goes into the stomach, but what emerges from the heart. It is the human heart that is the source of of uncleanness, of “evil intentions.”

Today’s readings prompt us to examine our attitude towards our own religious customs and practices. We too can become rigid and narrow; we can behave like the Pharisees of old. We can loath to accept any changes in what we’ve been used; even changes that have been approved by the Church, changes made because circumstances have changed or because former practices have been replaced by more helpful ones. Jesus ends the controversy in today’s Gospel by insisting that the heart is the source of “evil things;” but, by implication, it is also the source of good things. Jesus wants a heart that is humble, a heart that knows its own limitations, a heart that is ready to accept change when change is called for, a heart that is in fact like unto His own; He calls to be like Him, “gentle and humble in heart.”

Daily decisions are a part of life: how to dress, what to eat, when to go to bed. In these matters our decisions are constantly changing, but there are some decisions which by their nature should be permanent. An excellent example of which is the decision to marry. Marriage is a covenant, a permanent, loving relationship of fidelity in which a man and woman become one.

God invited His people of the Old Testament to become His partner in a covenant which was a spiritual form of marriage. Joshua had made his decision.

Centuries later Jesus confronted those who had heard Him preach. He challenged them to make a decision about Himself. But that they take it seriously is exactly what Jesus demanded. When His objectors turned their backs on Him to walk away, He let them go. It was the day of decision. Peter, in a protestation of loyalty which has been repeated down through the ages by men and women of faith, declared, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe; we are convinced that You are God’s holy one.” He had made a decision to bind himself so closely to Christ that, despite his late momentary lapse, he would be of one mind in faith with Christ. In effect he said that he wanted to enter into a permanent, loving relationship of fidelity with Christ.

We have the same grace which means we have the same challenge, the same decisions to make. Christ made faith in the Eucharist the ultimate test of faith in Himself. To embrace the Eucharist and to make the celebration of this sacrament the center and heart of our lives is to live out the permanent, loving relationship which makes Christ and ourselves two in one flesh.

Jesus was also a human being of His time and place. This means He inherited all the traditions, scriptures and religious practice of His people. That is a part of the reality of incarnation. In today’s Gospel He draws on the Wisdom tradition of Israel, the Exodus story and, we can say, the tradition of the Temple liturgy. One of the aspects of bread is that is nourishes us. Jesus is pointing to himself as the ultimate nourishment for humanity. He also gives himself to us in the Eucharist. He is the fulfillment of all sacred bread and sacred meals of the Old Testament, as well as all the sacrifices.

The most obvious way that we can apply Jesus’ teaching to our lives is by believing in Him, putting Him at the center of our lives and worshiping Him in the Eucharist. There are several ways in which we can do these things, primarily by participating worthily in the sacraments and especially the Mass. As St. Francis de Sales said, “Prayer is the means by which we ascend to God; the sacraments are the channels by which God descends to us.” He also recommends that we go to Mass every week and receive Holy Communion, that we should be free from mortal sin. We can visit the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle and spend time in prayer and adoration. As well as living a sacramental life in the Church, we can try to do the works of love. The love of God, poured into our hearts by the Eucharist, can overflow into the lives of our family and neighbors, and the great family of humanity. Any good work that we do for the love of God and neighbor is a spreading of the goodness that radiates the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

In today’s Gospel Jesus uses the staple food of bread to point His followers to something more. He suggests that the crowd is following Him for a free meal as they did last week in the story of the feeding of 5,000. They should be looking to Him for so much more. Jesus refers to himself as the “bread of life.” He is saying He is essential for life. The life of Jesus is referring to is not physical life, but eternal life.

Jesus refers to himself as the bread that lasts for ever. Jesus has provided food for bodies, but He also feeds us spiritually with love, hope, grace and forgiveness. This is the true manna from heaven, which points beyond itself. As the source of all life, God meets us here and now as divine love made food, as life for humanity.

Whether we appreciate it or not, whenever we eat we commune with God. We experience the world as a place of gift – the “work of God’s hands.” Practically speaking, this means that as we give thanks for our food, we will also make sure that food we eat doesn’t involve unnecessary suffering to animals and does not degrade our soil and water sources. We could even learn to grow some food ourselves so that we can see, smell, touch and taste the miraculous and fragile process of birth, growth, death, decay and rebirth going on all around us. Sharing a meal gives us opportunities for discipleship, for eating with others creates a profound sense of community.