Reflections on the Readings at Daily Mass
by Derek Reeve
Sunday, October 23rd, Thirtieth Sunday in Year Three
Readings: Ecclesiasticus 35/12-14, 16-19; Paul’s 2nd letter to Timothy 4/6-8, 16-18; Luke 18/9-14
Today’s readings are dominated by the wonderful story in the Gospel reading of the Tax Collector and the Pharisee at prayer. The Gospel writer introduces the story to make it quite clear that it was aimed, firstly at the Pharisees and the lawyers. It is, though, a story that invites everyone who hears it to examine themselves and to search their own consciences.
Once again, the story shows how God turns things upside down and accepts the man who acknowledges his sinfulness rather than the Pharisee who congratulates himself on his own righteousness.
The story invites the hearer to reflect on their own attitudes. For the Pharisee the love of God has turned into an idolatrous self-love, and the gifts that he has have become for him his own possessions. What has been given him by God has become something which he sees as self-accomplishment. Prayer has been turned into boastfulness and piety has become a posture.
The Pharisee’s prayer is all comparison and contrast with others and, worst of all, he has assumed God’s role and dares to judge himself. Not only does he list his own claims to being just, but he reminds God of the deficiencies of the Tax-collector, in case God may not have noticed!
By contrast, the Tax collector is utter simplicity and truth. He believes himself to be a sinner, and he acknowledges this before God. He needs God’s righteousness because he has none of his own, he says, but it is because he both needs and recognises his need for God’s gift that he receives it. Righteousness is a way of expressing being right with God.
This story together with the one about the unjust judge and the widow, which was read last Sunday, is a reminder that prayer is a theme in both Luke’s Gospel and his further work, the Acts of the Apostles.
For Luke, prayer is faith in action. It is not an optional act of piety, carried out to demonstrate our relationship with God. Prayer is that relationship with God. The way a person prays shows their relationship with God. If Jesus’ disciples do not ‘cry out day and night’ to the Lord, like the widow in last Sunday’s story, then they are lacking in faith because it is faith which makes the disciple do that. If prayer, like the prayer of the Pharisee. is no more than self-praise in the presence of God, telling God how good the person praying is, then it cannot be answered by God’s gift of righteousness because the person praying has already assumed that they have it.
It is most unlikely that we will pray like the Pharisee, listing all our achievements and all that is good about us and relating them to God. There is, however, a danger that we have something of the Pharisee’s attitude by simply assuming that we have every right to approach God because we are good Christians and trying to live a Christian life. What the story reminds us is that we ought never to take God for granted and ought always to approach God with awe as we dare to even contemplate the One who is beyond all our understanding. The wonder is that, in spite of this, Jesus teaches us that we may call this wondrous God ‘Abba’, ‘Father’, in such a familiar way. This too must throw us to our knees.
Our prayer, as Jesus’ disciples, must be like that of the Tax-collector. We must humbly acknowledge our faults and our failings before God, but always trusting in God’s merciful love. Even though we may not be great sinners, we know how much we fail to live the lives of love to which Jesus calls us, and it is this that must humble us.
One of the great prayers that comes to us from our sisters and brothers of the ancient Eastern churches is what is called the “Jesus’ prayer” and Western Christians have been rediscovering this treasure over recent decades. It consists of repeating quietly and slowly, in the heart, the words of the Tax-collector and addressing them to the Lord. It is a wonderful way of stilling the mind and helping us to be still and silent before the God who loves us. It is, very simply:
‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
This short repetitive prayer can be enormously helpful if we can find a moment to stop and be quiet, perhaps between daily tasks and jobs.
The first reading from Ecclesiasticus re-iterates what Jesus has been saying in the Gospel readings of last week and this. The prayer of the humble pierces to the clouds, the writer says. It is important not to mistake humility for the sort of grovelling attitude that Uriah Heep, the Dickens’ character had. His was, almost, the attitude of the Pharisee in reverse in that he gloried in his own humility! True humility is just accepting things as they truly are, like the Tax-collector. We are sinners, we know it, and God knows it, and humility is just accepting that fact.
The writer also repeats Jesus’ injunction to pray with perseverance, even when it seems our prayer goes unheard. The God whom we worship, the God who Jesus reveals to us, is not a different God from the One whom the Jews worshipped, as can be seen in this extract. Jesus’ teaching was quintessentially Jewish.
God knows us through and through and loves us as we are, sins and all. Our prayer must be to accept that gratefully believing with all our hearts that God does hear our prayer and will always answer it though not, perhaps, as we would have hoped or wished.
The reading from Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy is the last to be read at Sunday Mass, written, possibly, by Paul, though probably by a disciple of his. This extract is a final encouragement to Timothy, based on Paul’s own example as he prepared for death. It is also an invitation to Timothy to have faith and trust in the Lord who has stood by Paul and given him the power to proclaim the whole of the Gospel message. That same Lord will stand by Timothy, the writer says, and he ends with the words ‘To him be glory for ever and ever. Amen’.
The reading encourages us to have faith and trust in the God who loves us and who will always stand by us, even when things seem very dark and there seems little cause for hope as seems to be the case today!
This Sunday is also kept as ‘World Mission Sunday’. This is a day, not just to pray for ‘the Foreign Missions’ as we used to call them but to remember that the Church herself is always ‘in mission’. In the past this day has been a reminder of how the so-called Christian countries would send missionaries to convert those who were not Christians to the Christian and, in our case, specifically, to the Catholic faith.
Jesus sent his followers ‘on mission, to proclaim the Good News and to invite people to repent or to change their way of life. This is not quite the same thing as converting people to membership of the Church!
The Church is ‘on mission’ by our very existence, demonstrating the new way of life by the way we are and the way we live and, inviting people, mostly by our example, to change their way of life and to share in the building up of the Kingdom or Reign of God. There may be those who will join us along the way but being missionary is much bigger than that and each of us has our part to play by our life and our example and by our involvement in the world. Maybe, we can think about this today.
Monday, October 24th, Commemoration of Anthony Mary Claret, bishop (1807-1870)
Anthony Mary Claret was born in northern Spain and followed his father’s trade as a weaver before deciding to study to become a priest, and he was ordained at the age of 28. He then went to Rome to join the Jesuits with a view to becoming a missionary and working overseas.
However, his health broke down, and he returned to Spain where, for some ten years, he went around preaching in the parishes and gathering around him a group of young men who would become, eventually, a religious Congregation, the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Their purpose was to preach the Gospel, and they were very similar to the Jesuits in their spirit and structure.
Anthony became well-known, and he was appointed to be archbishop of Cuba. Anthony’s diocese covered half of the island and, in the eight years that he spent there, he opened new parishes, started religious education and worked for the reform of the priests of the diocese who had become very lax. He also founded Credit Unions to loan money to the poor. To this day, because of the effect he had on the island, Anthony is known as the ‘spiritual father of Cuba’.
Many of the problems in Cuba were the result of racism and slavery, and the Church did not always treat coloured people as human beings! Anthony insisted on their rights and, especially, that inter-racial marriages were valid and legitimate.
Some of the wealthy farmers forced the people to grow only one crop, sugar cane, so that they had to buy all their food and supplies from the rich, and the people became trapped in poverty. Anthony believed that the whole country should be made up of small family farms in order that people could produce their own food. These efforts made Anthony extremely unpopular and there were no less than fifteen attempts on his life!
In 1857, Anthony resigned and returned to Spain where he devoted himself to preaching and writing. One feature of the apostolate of Anthony’s new religious family, soon to become known as the Claretians, was the printed word, and Anthony himself published some two hundred books and pamphlets. He was a man of wide interests, establishing schools of music and language, a science laboratory and a science museum.
At the revolution of 1868, being chaplain to Queen Isabella, Anthony went into exile with her and died at the Cistercian monastery of Fontfroide near Narbonne, in 1870. He was canonised in 1950, and he is a good example of what missionary activity ought to mean, not just converting people but bringing them to fullness and wholeness of life.
Today we pray for the Church and people of Cuba and for Claretians working throughout the world.
Readings: Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians 4/32-5/8 : Luke 13/10-17
In today’s reading from the Letter to the Ephesians, after speaking about the ‘great plan of God’, which was part of last Saturday’s reading, the writer has gone on to remind the non-Jewish Christians how they had to give up their former way of life, which was the result of their living in ‘dark ignorance’.
Now today the writer invites his readers to ‘be friends with one another, and kind, forgiving each other as readily as God forgave you in Christ’. This should be the basic way of life for any Christian community. He then goes on to give them the rules for this new life, which reflects the Ten Commandments, and tell them how they were to treat each other.
They are to ‘imitate God’ as they have come to know God in Christ. They must behave as ‘children that he loves’, and they must ‘follow Christ by loving as he loved’ them. The writer sees this as two contrasting ways of ‘walking’, either in the darkness of their previous life or in the ‘light’ of their new life in Christ.
The writer emphasises, in particular, the loose morals of the pagan society around these new Christians which were very corrupt. Their way of life, the writer tells them, must make these Christians like ‘children of the light’ so that others will see how they live and want to imitate them.
One thing that might be singled out from the list of sins to be avoided is the writer’s condemnation of ‘coarseness, salacious talk and jokes’. We live in a society where people’s lives are ruined, not by spoken words but by words transmitted by all the means of modern technology and where dreadful things like the promotion of self-destruction are encouraged. It is surely incumbent upon us to resist the passing on of remarks and observations about other people and to avoid the whole world of chatter that seems so prevalent and which can be so damaging.
We must also stand up for what is right when we hear anything which insults or belittles women or people of other races or faiths or, indeed, anything which is unkind. Perhaps we can give this some thought today?
After the warnings, which occurred in last Saturday’s Gospel reading, today’s comes as somewhat of a surprise. This interlude forms part of the gradual build-up of the opposition to Jesus from the Scribes and the Pharisees.
This story is found only in Luke’s Gospel, but it serves as an opportunity for the conflict between Jesus and the religious authorities to develop. Instead of it being about the healing of the woman it becomes a dispute about whether healing might take place on the Sabbath. Jesus shows the hypocrisy of his critics by asking them whether they would untie their ox or ass and take them to water on the Sabbath, which would, technically, not be allowed by the Law. Yet, Jesus says, they criticise him for unbinding this woman from her ailment which has afflicted her for eighteen years. Not only is it possible to bring healing to the woman on the Sabbath, it is absolutely necessary to heal her, Jesus says.
This episode is also an example of how Luke brings women into his picture and shows Jesus to be, especially, concerned for them and their needs. Sexism is still rampant in our society and, one has to say, even in the Church. We must be constantly on the lookout to combat this with the compassion that Jesus showed to this poor afflicted woman.
There are proper readings for Anthony Mary Claret though, almost certainly, those of the day will be read. Those for Anthony Mary are: Isaiah 52/7-10, in which the prophet speaks of those who, like Anthony Mary, bring the Good News to the ends of the earth. Mark 1/14-20, which tells how Jesus calls the Apostles to become fishers of people, which was how Anthony Mary felt himself to have been called by the Lord.
Tuesday, October 25th, Week Thirty in Year Two
Readings: Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians 5/21-33 : Luke 13/18-21
The extract from the Letter to the Ephesians today speaks of the Christian life in community in terms of a household. This is not an easy passage to read and accept, but the writer is comparing the relationship between Christ and the Church with that between a husband and wife. Although there he speaks of the subjection of the wife to the husband, this is seen in the light of the relationship between the Church and Christ, its head.
The passage begins with the injunction that Christians ought to give way to one another out of reverence for Christ and this is then applied to the relationship between wife and husband.
The lyrical language of verses 25 to 27, which is sometimes thought to have come from a Baptismal hymn, puts Christ and the church into the relationship of husband and wife so that both the love and the subjection of wife to husband are given a uniquely Christian’s stamp. The obligation of the husband to love his wife is actually treated more extensively than the obligation of the wife to be subject to her husband. This reflects the fact that the love of Christ for the Church is infinitely more than the Church’s response to him. This is essentially a passage about the Church first and marriage afterwards.
We must remember that though it is rooted in an understanding of God’s original plan for the union between man and woman, it elevates the relationship to a higher level than the understanding of marriage, even amongst the Jewish people at that time. It must also be remembered that this is a development of what was normal in the world of the time, that women should be subject to men. The image of marriage being applied to the relationship between the Church and its Lord can be retained, but it might be asked whether any relationship of friendship or love does not reflect this relationship of Christ and the Church?
The Gospel reading today continues from that of yesterday and is placed here quite deliberately by Luke. The Kingdom of God proclaimed by Jesus is like the seed planted and hidden and which grows into a tree. It is like the yeast lost in the flour which leavens the whole of the dough.
So it is that with small and hidden acts of liberation like that which Jesus has just worked in the Synagogue. By his freeing the woman from her eighteen years of physical handicap, the victory over the kingdom of evil is won and Jesus’ prophetic mission to ‘proclaim liberty to captives’ is fulfilled.
So it is that we must look out for all those situations and events where the Kingdom of God is growing quietly and in a hidden way among us and springing up in unexpected ways and places.
Wednesday, October 26th, Commemoration of Chad and Cedd, bishops (+672 and +664)
Chad and Cedd were brothers, educated at Lindisfarne under the great Aidan who was commemorated back in August.
Cedd was the founder of many monasteries and was sent to bring the Gospel to the East Saxons. His preaching was so successful that Finan of Lindisfarne ordained him bishop, and he established his seat at Bradwell-on-Sea and Tilbury. He founded numerous monasteries there and, on a visit to Northumbria in 658, he was given land for the foundation of a monastery at Lastingham in North Yorkshire. Cedd took part in the Synod of Whitby from 663-4 but shortly after he died of the plague at Lastingham. He was buried there but his relics were taken later to Lichfield to join those of his brother, Chad. The ancient church of Bradwell, still there, shows the influence of Rome on Cedd and has a very Roman style.
Chad was abbot of Lastingham when he was chosen to be bishop of Northumbria, but his ordination was contested by Wilfred, who was celebrated recently, and Chad withdrew to his monastery. He was then chosen to be bishop of Mercia and founded the see of Lichfield. Despite the shortness of his life, Chad was revered as a saint because of his holiness, his outstanding humility and his dedication to the preaching of the Gospel. He died on March 2nd, 672 and was buried at Lichfield where his shrine still remains.
These two are celebrated together today on the anniversary of the death of Cedd. We pray for the churches of the north of this country and, especially, the bishop, the diocese and the people of Lichfield and all who visit the shrine of Cedd and Chad.
Readings: Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians 6/1-9 : Luke 13/22-30
In the reading yesterday the writer of the Letter to the Ephesians made the comparison between marriage and the relationship between Christ and the Church. In today’s reading, the writer again relates what he says to the Jewish Scriptures and the Ten Commandments.
He enjoins children to obey their parents but adds that parents also have a duty not to make their children resentful by the way in which they treat them. In bringing up their children, parents must correct them and guide them ‘as the Lord does’, in other words, with great love.
Slavery was a normal part of life at the time this letter was written and so the writer takes this for granted. However, he puts a new slant on it, reminding those who were slaves that they were slaves of Christ and their obedience to their master was to be seen as obedience to Christ. The main thrust of the passage, however, is the way in which masters ought to treat their slaves. They ought to treat them all in the same way, and they must remember, above all, that both slave and master are subject to the one Master in heaven who ‘is not impressed by one person more than another’.
Although the writer accepts the reality of the institution of slavery, he makes of it a much more mutual relationship where both parties are responsible to the Lord for the way in which they behave. It would take centuries for Christians to recognise that slavery is not compatible with Jesus’ teaching. This is a good example of how, reflection on that teaching over the centuries would bring about a change and the recognition that slavery is an evil thing in itself.
The Gospel reading today is quite problematical and, although it is placed in the context of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, it is possible that there are some additions to the original text.
The question put to Jesus reflects the anxiety that was felt at the time of the Gospel being written, as to who was truly a member of the Chosen People. The concept of a ‘remnant’ chosen by God from among the wider population of the Jews was prevalent at the time. So it is not surprising that this question was put to Jesus after the warnings that he had given in the previous chapters of Luke’s Gospel.
‘How many would be saved?’ was a very pertinent question. Typically, Jesus turns the theoretical question into a challenge. He suggests that his hearers would have to ‘do their best to enter by the narrow door’ to squeeze past the many, so as to be among those who were saved.
In the following verses the master of the house has to ‘get up’ or ‘rise up’ to lose the door and this may be an allusion to the resurrection. Those who do join the banquet come from every direction to ‘take their places at the feast in the Kingdom of God’. Here again, this is most probably, an allusion to the actual situation where some of the Jews were resisting the Gospel message and so would find themselves excluded from the banquet. Again, God reverses things so that the first are last and the last first.
What can be drawn from this passage? Firstly, Jesus doesn’t give an answer so that we are not told who will be saved. We know, however, that he does reveal a God to us whose will it is that everyone should be saved and so enter the kingdom. There must be no delay, however, in joining the remnant people, which is the community of the Church. Reading Jesus’ words, we must commit ourselves once again to following him in order that we may be saved in our daily lives, coming to fullness and wholeness and eventually to that final salvation when God will be all in all.
There are no proper readings for Chad and Cedd so almost certainly those for the day will be used.
Thursday, October 27th, Week Thirty in Year Two
Readings: Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians 6/10-10 : Luke 13/31-35
Today the last extract from the Letter to the Ephesians is read, and the writer uses the language of armour and weapons in a final exhortation about the ongoing battle with the principalities and powers of this world. Earlier in this letter the writer had said that Christ is seated above all such powers (Eph. 1/20-21), and that God’s mysterious plan for all had been made known through the Church (Eph. 3/9-10). Now it becomes clear that the divine struggle with the powers of evil continues even though the end is known. It is this struggle in which the Church is engaged in order to bring about the Kingdom and to bring the reign of God’s love to the whole world.
Finally, the writer, Paul or another, asks for prayers for himself that, in this struggle, he may be allowed to proclaim the mystery of the Gospel.
The magnificent self-description of Paul as ‘an ambassador in chains’ brings to an end the theme of Paul, triumphant with God’s help, so that no human hindrance can prevent him from pursuing his calling. This he had announced at the beginning of the Letter, that he was ‘an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God’.
The Gospel reading is again a passage unique to Luke’s Gospel. It is difficult because it seems to contain contradictions. Jesus was moving away from Galilee, which was Herod’s territory, in order to go up to Jerusalem so that it is difficult to understand why the Pharisees should tell him to move on. The whole episode, however, needs to be seen as part of Luke’s design to show how the Pharisees are putting Jesus to the test. If Jesus seeks to save himself from Herod, then he would be a false prophet, they reason. If he insists on going up to Jerusalem, where he says he ‘must’ go, then they will have to treat the matter more seriously.
The reference to Jesus’ attaining his end on the third day will be read by the Christians for whom Luke was writing his Gospel, as a reference to the resurrection.
This whole passage ends with Jesus’ mourning over Jerusalem. There prophets have been killed in the past and the messengers of God stoned to death, the punishment for blasphemy, because their message had not been accepted but seen as such.
Jesus uses the beautiful image of the hen gathering her chicks under her wings to show his care for Jerusalem and its people. This is an image used frequently in Scripture to show the love that God has for his people. Sadly, though, their refusal to accept him and his message will mean that they will be left desolate and abandoned and for this reason Jesus mourns over them.
The reading ends with Jesus quoting psalm 117. This is the psalm that the crowds will shout out when Jesus enters Jerusalem. It looks forward to Jesus achieving his purpose through his death and resurrection.
This reading shows us, above all, Jesus’ determination to press on in order to achieve his purpose and, finally, to offer himself to death in Jerusalem, a fate he knows will be his if he continues. This must inspire us to persevere and to press on in the Christian way, even when the going gets difficult and not to allow anything to interfere with our doing what we know to be the right course of action.
Friday, October 28th, Feast of the Apostles Simon and Jude
The Scriptures tell us very little about these two apostles and after the resurrection, they virtually disappear.
In Luke’s Gospel Simon is called ‘the Zealot’ which may mean no more than that he was a man of strong beliefs and actions who took the Jewish Law and customs very seriously. On the other hand, this may mean that he belonged to a radical group among the Jews, known as the Zealots, who hated the Romans for occupying their land and wanted to use force to remove them. An Eastern tradition says that Simon met his death in Edessa, but the Roman tradition has him proclaiming the Gospel in Egypt after which he joined Jude who had been in Mesopotamia and went to Persia where they were martyred together.
In the Gospels of Matthew and Mark Jude is called Thaddaeus and is usually identified with Jude, the brother of James and one of ‘the brethren of the Lord’. He is also said to be the author of the Epistle of Jude. Legend has it that he suffered martyrdom with Simon in Persia.
In more recent times Jude has become the patron saint of ‘hopeless cases’. This is thought to be, perhaps, because his name was so similar to that of Judas who betrayed the Lord, that no-one prayed to him for help and this made him more available to those who were in dire need!
Their relics are believed to have been taken to Rome in the 7th or 8th century and the date of their feast today may be the date of this happening when these relics were buried in Saint Peter’s Basilica.
Readings: Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians 1/18-26 : Luke 14/1, 7-11
There is virtually nothing about these two apostles in the New Testament so that the two readings are about the apostles generally.
In the reading from the Letter to the Ephesians, the writer speaks of the Church being built on the foundation of the prophets and the apostles.
The Gospel reading relates how Jesus chose the Twelve after spending the night in prayer, which shows what a serious matter this was.
Today we remember how we are members of that Church which is built on the foundation of the apostles. They bore witness to the risen Christ wherever they went and proclaimed him everywhere. In this way they laid the foundations of many Christian communities from which sprang the Church. It is an awe-inspiring thought that we are part of a movement which began two thousand years ago and which depended for its growth on these men, who were for the most part, simple fishermen and uneducated.
We pray today for all who have inherited the task for which the apostles were commissioned by Christ, our bishops. We pray too that we may be faithful to the apostolic faith that they have passed on to us.
We might also remember all those who we know to be ‘hopeless cases’ and all those who believe themselves to be such.
Saturday, October 29th, Week Thirty in Year Two
Readings: Paul’s Letter to the Philippians 1/18-26 : Luke 14/1, 7-11
Because it was the feast of the Apostles yesterday the daily readings were not used but, in fact, we should have begun to read from Paul’s letter to the Philippians (Philippians 1/1-11). It would be good to read this first before looking at the reading for today since this letter will be read for the whole of next week.
Paul had crossed over from the Province of Asia (present day Turkey) to Macedonia (in present day northern Greece) in the year 50-51. He was accompanied by Silas and Timothy.
They had landed at the port of Neapolis where the great Roman highway, the Via Egnatia, ran down to the sea. Since the roads were not always well maintained, Philippi, some ten miles inland, depended heavily on commerce coming up the short stretch of road from the Mediterranean. It was to Philippi that Paul and his companions had gone immediately since it was a major Roman city and many veterans of earlier army victories lived there.
It was there that Paul proclaimed the Gospel and founded the first church in Europe! (Acts of the Apostles 16/11-15.) Though their stay was quite short they had considerable success among both Jews and non-Jews. A century later Polycarp (c.69-155) was able to speak of their faith, which was still strong and flourishing.
Initially, it was a merchant woman, Lydia, a seller of purple goods and a sympathiser with Judaism, who was baptised with her household and who offered her house as somewhere Paul and his companions could stay.
It would seem that the position of women in Philippi was quite prominent and, later in his letter, Paul refers to two other women, Evodia and Syntyche, who had been co-workers with him. Their names and the names of Epaphroditus and Clement would seem to indicate that there was a high proportion of non-Jews in the Christian community in Philippi.
Another incident in Philippi caused Paul and Silas to be brought before the magistrates as ‘troublesome Jews’ and so it is not surprising that Paul alludes to what they had suffered there and how they were shamefully treated in Philippi (1 Thessalonians 2/2). After this episode Paul and Silas had left for Thessalonika.
Scholars generally agree that this letter was written by Paul himself, probably about the year 56 C.E., though some would put it later in 58-60 C.E. if written from Caesarea or even in 61-63 C.E. if written from Rome. Some scholars also suggest that this letter is composed of two or even three letters put together though most agree that is all of one piece.
This letter is a strong confirmation of the special relationship which the Christian community in Philippi had with Paul. There is a strong bond of friendship between them, and the human attraction of Paul is demonstrated in the loyalty which the Philippian Christians had towards him.
Besides the bonds of friendship, which are evident in this letter, it also reflects the thoughts which have been forced upon Paul by his imprisonment for preaching the Gospel.
Paul’s motives for writing this letter are to encourage the Philippian Christians and to attempt to deal with some of the internal problems which they were facing.
The extract for yesterday (Philippians 1/1-11) begins with a greeting to the church and then a prolonged thanksgiving for their faith and witness and a prayer that they may grow in their love for one another.
In the reading appointed for today (Philippians 1/18-26) Paul speaks of his situation in prison and his attitude towards death. It would seem to show that Paul’s thinking about the coming again of Christ has changed. He finds himself having to wrestle with whether it would be better to die and to be with Christ or to live on and await his coming. He seems to come to the decision that it would be better to survive so that he could continue to be of use to the Philippian church when he sees them again.
This is an illuminating passage because it reveals Paul’s mental struggle about what would be best both for the Philippian Christians who are so dear to him and for himself. Here, as elsewhere in this letter there is a clear picture of the warm affection Paul has for his sisters and brothers in Christ. This letter has, in fact, been singled out as an example of what friendship in Christ truly means.
The Gospel reading for yesterday (Luke 14/1-6) begins what will be continued in that for today. Jesus had been invited to dine with one of the chief Pharisees. His fellow guests were all lawyers and Pharisees and they had met on the Sabbath day. The invitation would seem to have been hypocritical since they were ‘watching him closely’ to see if they might be able to catch him out. There is a man there suffering from dropsy and Jesus must have healed him in the course of the meal, though this is not actually described in the text. This however gives the Pharisees the opportunity to criticise Jesus for his action, but Jesus outwits them by asking them a question which they could not answer without appearing foolish.
In today’s reading, the story continues. Jesus knows how these men believe themselves to be law-abiding, righteous and worthy of respect from the ordinary people. He reproaches them for this and points out how the truly humble person would not take the first place at table if invited for a meal but would take the lowest place and, perhaps, be singled out for honour by the host as a result of this.
The message from this story however is plain: ‘Everyone who exalts themselves will be humbled’, Jesus says, and ‘whoever humbles themselves will be exalted’. Again, God turns things upside down. It is not the great and important who should be first but the little people and the outcasts of society.
These attitudes ought to be evident in our communities but, are they? Who do we treat as the most important? Who is given the first place when we meet together? The very structure of our churches reveals the opposite, the priest’s seat, the bishop’s ‘throne’ and the separation between the ‘clergy’ and the people are all signs that we have got it wrong but what can be done about it? A little furniture moving would be a good start. Why must the person presiding at the Eucharist sit apart in a special place?
Brother Roger of Taize always insisted that at every celebration in their church he, although their leader, would have a child each side of him to remind them of Jesus’ words and who is the most important among them. Something to think about!