This coming Sunday is the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time.“Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answered him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.  In the Hebrew Scriptures only God is called “good,” although it was permissible to speak of “the good man” (e.g. Proverbs 12:2 etc.) as a characteristic derived from one’s fidelity to God. But the expression “Good teacher” has no parallel in Scripture or Jewish sources. One can only take it as a true expression of the man’s estimation of Jesus as someone close to God who would teach with wisdom. Continue reading →

This coming Sunday is the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time.The beginning of the Gospel according to Mark begins with John the Baptist citing Isaiah speaking of the messenger: “he will prepare your way…Prepare the way of the Lord.” (Mark 1:2-3) In both verses the underlying word is hodos. There are other places in Mark when hodos is used and is translated as ‘way” – e.g., “the way of God in accordance with the truth,” and describing Jesus and the apostles “on the way” in 8:27 and 10:32. So it is odd that in 10:17, the same word hodos is translated as journey in the New American Bible (NAB). Continue reading →

This coming Sunday is the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, lectionary cycle B. Jesus has been consistently teaching his disciples the meaning of the Kingdom in his examples and explanations: greatness means to serve the least among the people (9:36-37).  He has already told them that the path of discipleship will consist, not just of demonstrations of power (healing and casting out demons), but also one in which one “must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” (8:34) At times these lessons have come at the end of a dispute with the Pharisees or scribes as we saw in the previous Sunday gospel. There Jesus tells the disciples about the creative intent of God in the formation of marriage and family (10:2-16) as a means of describing the Kingdom echoed in human experience. Continue reading →