In Friday’s reflection I outlined times in Abraham’s story in which Scripture shows the patriarch doubted God. I compared that with the times Abraham followed God’s instructions. But I also noted, this life is not a balance sheet. The story of Abraham is a story that serves as a testament to the idea that faith can coexist with human imperfection. Abraham’s journey, marked by both faith and human flaws, is a central narrative in the Book of Genesis. Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Lectionary Cycle A.
34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and one of them (a scholar of the law) tested him by asking, 36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the greatest and the first commandment. 39 The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”
If you are old enough you will remember the 1990s-television ad campaign for Canon cameras featuring the then very young Andre Agassi. He was a brash young tennis pro sporting long hair, a head band, and was ready to take on the world. He was flashy, a media star, a great tennis player. He was hot, happening, the icon of cool. At the end of the commercial he looks into the camera – into your soul and simply says, “Image is everything.” Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The word “give” in Jesus’ answer, can mean “give back” (apodidomi). The word was used in the sense of “paying back” a debt in the parable of the unforgiving servant (18:25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 34). It is the word used of the new tenants who will “give (back)” the owner the fruit at the proper time (21:41). The word carries the sense of giving (back) that which already belongs to the other person. How do we know what things belong to Caesar? They have his image on them! How do we know what things belong to God? They have God’s image on them! Continue reading
Today’s first reading is from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, one of the most challenging and complex of all the New Testament books – and addresses an equally complex character in the person of Abraham. Known for his unwavering faith in God he is a person who is not always righteous and forthright; a person who sometimes acts in ways not in accord with the will of God. Consider some moments in the story of Abraham. Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Jesus’ answer calls into question the basic presupposition behind their question, that there is an essential incompatibility between loyalty to the governing authority and loyalty to God. This was precisely Judas the Galilean’s position as explained by Josephus (War 2.118 and Ant. 18.23): to pay the tax was to tolerate a mortal sovereign in place of God. It was loyalty to God which was the basis for Zealots’ objections to Roman taxation, but Jesus, without reducing the demands of loyalty to God, indicates that political allegiance even to a pagan state is not incompatible with it. This is not a rigid division of life into the ‘sacred’ and the ‘secular’, but rather a recognition that the ‘secular’ finds its proper place within the overriding claim of the ‘sacred’. Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time. “Why are you testing me?” is the response, using the same word as in Mt 4:3 where the interlocutor is Satan. Here the Pharisee plays the role. The narrator’s comment to the reader in Mark’s gospel becomes Jesus’ direct address to the Pharisees in Matthew, “hypocrites” and will become the keynote of 23:1–36 (“…The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses. Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example. For they preach but they do not practice…Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites…”). Continue reading
Over the last six months or more I have been reading about Critical Theory. Perhaps as you read this you are thinking about Critical Race Theory (CRT). That is but one specific focus of Critical Theory; there are many others. The broad and narrow focus of Critical Theory designates several generations of German philosophers and social theorists in the Western European Marxist tradition known as the Frankfurt School. According to these theorists, a “critical” theory may be distinguished from a “traditional” theory according to a specific practical purpose: a theory is critical to the extent that it seeks human “emancipation from slavery”, acts as a “liberating … influence”, and works “to create a world which satisfies the needs and powers” of human beings. So offers Max Horkheimer, one of the leading and founding philosophers of the Frankfurt School. Continue reading
The coming Sunday is the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The question comes only after some false praise. The opening address to Jesus “Teacher” (didaskalos) uses a secular term rather than the religious connotation of Rabbi. Nonetheless the opening lines note that Jesus is a “truthful man” and teach “the way of God in accordance with the truth.” It is not clear who the words are intended for. It is easy to imagine these words are intended for the listening crowds. The opening contains the sort of complimentary words with which a rhetorician might seek an audience’s favor at the same time seeking to have their opponent lower his guard. Continue reading
Today’s first reading is from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, one of the most challenging and complex of all the New Testament books. After opening his epistle, Paul provides a summary of covenant history in just a few verses.
For what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them. Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made. As a result, they have no excuse; for although they knew God they did not accord him glory as God or give him thanks (Rom 1:19-21).
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