Faith

 

Prayer list or hit list?- Friday, 1st Week of Lent- Matthew 5: 20-26

St Matthew’s presentation of Jesus is that of The Great Teacher who gives five discourses in the gospel. The opening discourse is the Sermon on the Mount (Chapter 5-7) in which Jesus, addressing His disciples, has placed identity before behaviour. This behaviour is given to them in the beatitudes; a behaviour that is in stark contrast to the scribes and Pharisees who have forgotten the commandments and have pandered to man-made traditions.

Jesus could have come merely to establish The Law, but He comes to fulfill it; and in doing so He goes way beyond what The Law demanded from Him and by extension, to us. This sets the stage for a scathing attack on the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. In the first of six hyper theses, Jesus demands that the disciples really push the envelope. The JBC says, “The present interpretations emphasize that Jesus seems to go beyond the Old Testament law teachings, by deepening and radicalizing it, by returning to the original will of God.” In lay man’s terms, Jesus finds the traditional interpretations of The Law presented by the Pharisees as inadequate, though not false. He begins by tackling the sixth commandment, “thou shalt not murder” which is found in verses 21-26.

For Jesus, the analysis of murder as good or bad, is a given! He wants us to take a deeper look at the ‘emotional prelude to murder’, namely anger. The act is but a reflection of a deeper activity in the heart. Even as a priest, I see that the one thing that everyone wants to rid themselves off, including myself, is anger. Yet, how seriously do we take its eradication from our life? Never in our wildest dreams would we think that we could be murderers. But Jesus goes beyond the improbability and addresses the possibility.

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Art/ Heritage

Picturing the Passion: ‘Taking of Christ’ by Caravaggio (1602)

 This is the story of betrayal, crime, murder and mystery. The protagonists vary; their passion prolongs!

We begin with the artist himself. The great and brilliant Caravaggio goes down in history as the legendary bad boy.  His life was termed turbulent; his attitude – mad, bad and perilous. He lived by the sword and was apparently prosecuted for having carried one in public without a license. His litany of infringements include throwing a plate of artichokes in the waiter’s face, casting a sword against another man in a love dispute, hurling stones at his landlady and the worst of all murdering a man over a tennis match brawl.

With the eventual death sentence hanging round his neck, he flees from Rome to Naples, Sicily and Malta. Thanks to his powerful Roman lobby, in the summer of 1610 he receives a pardon for his crime. As he sails northwards towards Rome the news of his sudden spasmodic death spreads throughout the region. The cause was cited to be fever but later argued to be a murder. The confusion and mystery surrounding his life and death is also reflected in his painting, ‘Taking of Christ’.

It is a moment of betrayal; a sellout of loyalty. Caravaggio captures this chaos with utmost integrity. In the dense darkness of the night a distressed Christ craves comfort.  He battles His spiritual agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. However the waiting trio can’t keep from sleep. Suddenly the stillness is shattered and the darkness is driven by leaping flames of torches and lanterns. As the sound of marching feet and clanking armour draws near, terror evades the now wide eyed apostles.

In the midst of clamouring confusion a familiar figure walks up to embrace his motionless and defenceless Master. His treacherous kiss recalled the agreement, ‘The one I kiss is the man. Arrest him and take him away under guard.’  Garbed in traditional yellow, Judas grips Jesus with his grubby left hand and stares at Him in perplexed anxiety. He almost fears Christ response. Ill at ease, his heart jerked in a sudden realisation of the stain and tarnished name he left to history. That was the beginning of a remorse that eventually led to a self murder.

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Faith

Feast of the chair of St Peter- Thursday, 1st week of Lent-  Matthew 16: 13-19

The confession of Peter, “you are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God”, seems all too easy an answer, given the question if asked today, to you and me.  But did Peter fully fathom what he answered? For Jesus says to Peter, ‘flesh and blood has not revealed it to you but my Father in heaven’. So did Peter get it right by himself or was he just prompted by God? Did he fully understand who the Messiah was ?

How do we know when God is speaking to us? How can we be sure that the voices we hear in our head are not simply the chatter of our minds reflecting our own wishes; mere ‘flesh and blood’ responses?  How did Peter know what to say when the other disciples got the answer so wrong?

To understand the word ‘Messiah’ as being uniquely attributed only to Jesus would be as fallacious as to understand that Jesus was the only one crucified in history; yet many Christians believe so. Crucifixion was perhaps the most brutal public execution carried out by the Romans and Jesus was one of the thousands put to death in this fashion. The same understanding must be applied to the meaning of the word Messiah; it would be sentimental to insist that this word must exclusively apply itself to Jesus.

In time, this word Messiah has crystalized in the mind of the modern Christian to be attributed exclusively to Christ, though we would use it loosely to describe a person who comes to our aid in time of great need.  First century Judaism understood ‘mashiah’ meaning ‘anointed one’, to be anyone; from prophet, to warrior or king.  

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Faith

Voice of HIS word versus vices in my heart – Wednesday,1st Week of Lent – Luke 11: 29-32

It’s not uncommon in the gospels, to find the Pharisees and the people demanding a sign from Jesus. Make no mistake they were not asking for a miracle but a sign. A sign points to a greater reality, a reality they were not ready to accept.  So let’s place reality in perspective. In Luke 11: 14, Jesus has healed a mute, yet some of his critics’ say that He  has cast out the demon through the prince of demons, Beelzebul.

Not once but twice in the same Chapter, they ask Jesus for a sign, to trap Him. So Jesus tells them that no sign will be given to them except that of Jonah. Now make no mistake, the sign of Jonah is most erroneously compared to the three days that Jonah spent in the belly of the fish vis-à-vis Jesus’ resurrection.

What is Jesus talking about then?  In answer to a woman who blessed the womb that bore Him and the breasts He suckled, Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hear the word of God and obey it.” For Jesus the living out of the ‘Word of God’ is paramount and it is this ‘living out’ that Jesus offers as ‘a sign’ in the narration of Jonah and the people of Nineveh.

Jonah was a reluctant prophet who did not want the people of Nineveh to repent. Jonah knew that God would have mercy on the enemies of his people. Nineveh was an ancient city located at the mouth of the Tigris River across from the modern day city of Mosul in Iraq. At one point of time it was the capital of Assyria. It was here that the Jews were forced to live in exile and understandably Jonah had no love for these ‘evil people’ or their land. It was they who had plundered and destroyed the temple in Jerusalem (325 BC) and forced the Israelites to spend half a century in exile.

Yet it is to them that Jonah is called to proclaim God’s call to repentance. An infuriated Jonah would rather die than communicate a message of repentance. In the story, he asks to be thrown into the sea and was swallowed by a big fish. The thought of preaching God’s word of repentance was unbearable; knowing that should they repent, God would pardon the people and the city. Jonah is most certain of His merciful God’s forgiveness to these hated enemies of his people, who in the story, eventually repent and are saved.

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Faith

When Jesus gave us a prayer- 1st Week of Lent- Tuesday- Matthew 6: 7-15

The Lord’s Prayer is to be found in all the three synoptic gospels, namely Matthew, Mark and Luke. In Matthew’s Gospel it consists of six verses, in Luke’s gospel; three verses and in Mark’s Gospel it is all of two verses. (Matthew 6: 9-15, Luke 11:2-4, Mark 11: 25-26). The context of the Lord’s Prayer differs in the three Gospels.

What is the context of the Lord’s Prayer as seen in Matthew’s Gospel? Jesus gives us this prayer in the context of ‘how not to pray’. He uses the ‘hypocrites’ as an example who love to pray standing up in the house of worship and in the street corners so that everyone may see them. So Jesus suggests that we go to our private room, close the door and pray to the Father in secret. That is, Jesus is telling us to pray privately, by ourselves, to God. He is giving us an instruction on ‘private prayer’ and in continuation of this instruction He gives us the Lord’s Prayer.

Even more, in verse 7, Jesus says, ‘do not babble like the pagans when you pray’. Why does he say babble?  The pagans would say the name of their gods again and again, mindlessly. Jesus did not want his disciples to be babblers but disciples who prayed. Disciples who meant what they said, to their Abba.

The Lord’s Prayer is part of the great Sermon on the Mount (Matthew chapters 5-7). This sermon is given primarily to his disciples (5:1). So from all of the above, we can conclude that the Lord’s Prayer as seen in Matthew’s gospel, is a disciple’s prayer to be prayed in private. Then why do we say the Lord’s Prayer in public?

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