Faith

Jan Sanders van Hemessen – Jesus Summons Matthew-1536,Germany.

Feast of Saint Matthew, Apostle and evangelist

Capernaum had just one word on its lips – Jesus. There was no nook or cranny that did not know or speak about Him. Jesus had made this town His home and that’s not all! He had already worked more than twelve miracles here, and many were hailing Him as the Messiah.

Capernaum was a small town but not a sleepy one. You can’t be inactive when you’re situated on one of the most popular Roman highways. The Via Maris or the way of the sea was the most ancient trade route, dating from the early Bronze Age, linking Egypt with the northern empires of Syria.

The fact that this was a trade route could mean only one thing – there were tax collectors. No one disliked these tax collectors more than the Jews did. So you can quite imagine Alpheus’ disappointment when Matthew, his son, chose this as a career. It seemed fast money was the order of the day and  the traditional occupations of Capernaum seemed to hold no charm.

Why could Matthew not be like Simon, Andrew, James or John? What was so wrong in honest living even if you smelled of fish the whole day? Matthew’s professional choice only added to the greying hair of Alpheus, to say nothing of the insults that he had to face.

Alpheus’ mind recalled that day when Matthew was to be named. Alpheus could only think of how blessed he was to have this child after so many years of waiting. His name would be called Mattityahu, a gift of Yahweh. But now this ‘gift’ seemed to become a liability. Alpheus could not even get his friends to enjoy his hospitality, for who would sit with Matthew’s new found tax collector friends?

Matthew had his tax booth on the main highway and collected duties on imported goods brought by farmers, merchants and caravans. Rome demanded a fixed amount to be paid by the tax collectors in advance. Rome was not concerned as to how the tax collectors recovered their money; that was their business. Matthew and his colleagues loved this system, for now they could collect not only what they paid for, but determine the profits they desired. No one dared question a tax collector, for their decisions were enforced by Roman soldiers.

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Faith

A band of Brothers- Wednesday, 24th week in ordinary time- 1 Timothy 3:14-16

Reading the text and its context will help you understand these reflections whose principle purpose is to teach

Most scholars agree that the letters of St Paul to Timothy are a creation of a pseudonymous (unknown), and later follower of Paul. There are a number of scholarly reasons to support this thought. However, even though it is written by someone else under Paul’s name, the Pastoral letters are not “forgeries”. The Jerome Biblical commentary explains this well.

“Within the Greco- Roman philosophical tradition, the writing of pseudonymous epistles was a long standing tradition. In such a case the writer sought to extend the thought of his or her intellectual master to the problems of a later day. What the writer was saying in effect was, ‘my master would surely have said this if faced with this set of problems or issues’. It is quite likely that the original readers of this letter knew very well that the letters represented an effort to extend his heritage to later generation” (JBC).

The writer and the readers of this letter knew that Paul’s death had caused a long delay. Yet he had been providing the Church with proper instructions for its conduct in God’s household (oikos).  We need to understand what this ‘household’ is and what we mean by the word ‘behave’.

The understanding of God’s house or household went through various stages in the Early Church. In its Biblical context, this word referred to Israel and pastorally it referred to the temple in Jerusalem. For the community that received this letter, written in Paul’s name, the household of God was a clear reference to the early Christian community. Paul uses it to reflect the character of the Christian communities that met in homes; they must be a band of brothers.

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Faith

Virtue lies in the middle – Tuesday, 24th week in ordinary time- 1 Timothy 3: 1-13

Christian leadership has and must always be guided by norms. St Paul realized that the infantile Churches in the Aegean area of Asia Minor (modern day Turkey) were in need of such direction. In this pericope, Paul focuses on three groups of people who are of importance in the Churches of this region. The English translation of the revised standard version of the Bible (RSV) lists them as bishops, deacons and women.

It is essential that we understand the terms before we understand the functions of leadership within the Church. The first in this list are Bishops.  Episkope, the word used for Bishops, is a generic term which has not yet come to mean ‘bishopric’ as we understand it, in the modern sense of skull cap and mitre wearing bishops.

In Paul’s letters we see that he uses two different Greek words which in English are translated as Bishop. In some cases  he uses the word presbuteros, which is used to indicate an ‘elder’ while in other cases he uses the word episkopos, which the RSV translates as bishop. The question is, are these two different offices?

Modern scholarship is unanimous in holding that in the early Church the presbuteros and episkopos were one and the same. But the question that begs itself is, ‘if they are the same, then why two names’? Presbuteros described these leaders of the Church as they personally were and Episkopos described their function. These ‘bishops’ were some kind of pastors in charge of house-churches with wider responsibilities in the community.

Paul holds the bishops to a high standard of accountability. They should be married only once; in its literal translation it implied that he must be the husband of one wife. He should be a man against whom no criticism (anepileptos) can be made, and must be sober (nephalios) indicating a more watchful and vigilant person rather than a drunkard; for wine was drunk more often than water, because water was often hard to find, or contaminated.  However, he must not be paroinos (addicted to wine).

But there was more, for Paul demanded that the Bishops also have qualities of the heart. He called for them to be prudent (sophron) and well behaved (kosmios)- attributes that could not be separated; for if a man is kosmios in his outer conduct it is because he is sophron in his inner conduct.  Above all he must be hospitable, have an aptitude for teaching, must not be a man who assaults others; he must be gentle, peaceable and free from the love of money.

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Faith

Faith trumps state- Monday- 24th week in ordinary time- 1 Timothy 2: 1-8

You are encouraged to read the text before you read the explanation

The community of Timothy was certainly under attack. There were the false teachers polluting the minds of the converts, and to top it all, there was a state sponsored threat to Christianity. The accusation from the Roman state was that the community of believers were traitors, because they refused to accept the cult of the Emperor, a custom of praying to the divinized Caesars.

The cult of the Emperor began after the assassination of Julius Caesar in 27 BC. Julius Caesar was proclaimed divine and accepted among the gods of the state, officially allowing for the initiation of his worship. It is the worship of the Emperors that ironically brought about a stabilizing force to the Empire.

Unity and peace was a hallmark of the Roman Empire and if this worship could guarantee stability in the Empire, it was worth implementing, even if it meant that it be done with force. This cult of the Emperor came to a standoff towards the end of the reign of Gaius Caligula. In his arrogance, Caligula attempted to erect a statue of himself within the Temple walls in Jerusalem, to be worshiped by the Jews. Fate however stepped in and Caligula died, averting a disaster.

Paul has boldly declared in 1:17 that there is only one God. He reiterates this core belief in 2:5; yet he sees the need to send a message to the Romans that this does not mean that the Christians oppose the Emperor’s authority. While Paul will not compromise on the worship of the one true God, he does not want to antagonize the Romans. It is for this reason that he cites the need for prayer.

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Art/ Heritage

Seven or seventy seven? Is there a magical number?–  24th Sunday in Ordinary time – Matthew 18: 21-35

Poor impetuous Peter, he did it again! It’s almost like he must say something at every occasion. But then again, it sounds like a lot of people we know. It would be hard to doubt the intentions of this good man who often shot his own mouth. On this occasion, he sought to push himself to a new limit of giving, perhaps in the hope of winning the Lord’s approval. It bombed again!

Rabbinical Judaism recommended that forgiveness be offered just thrice. Peter, who by now is quite accustomed to the Lord’s call to love more and give more, now more than doubles the Rabbis recommendations to forgive. Peter offers a perfect number, one more than the recommended double. Besides, seven was a perfect number for the Jews. Seven sounded like heaven! So how could the Lord not appreciate this magnanimous figure that outdid the Rabbis in the forgiveness of one’s brother? He surely had this one right? Errrr….wrong again!

Jesus outdoes ‘Petrine generosity’, hitting it out of the stadium to seventy seven times. This sounds very nice as a thought, but practically the thought of keeping such a count of forgiveness would be tedious, to say the least. So why does Jesus set this rather insane figure? Is there some magic in the number seventy times seven?

Jesus’ parables and teachings are filled with ‘extremes’. He is always asking the disciple for more. That is the heart of Christian discipleship; the teaching that St.Ignatius held close to him, ‘let’s give the Lord more (magis in Latin).’ So the call of Jesus to His disciples is to love more, give more and forgive more. This is encapsulated in the parable that Jesus proceeds to tell, to make clear His point; a parable of ‘exaggerated’ forgiveness.

For the sake of understanding the ‘exaggerations’ let’s look at what a talent is and how much the wicked servant owed his master. A “talent” is a measure of weight, close to about 59 kilograms. If the debt was in silver, it would be roughly equal to about 15 years’ worth of wages for the typical worker. The king in our parable is owed 10,000 talents, or about 1,50,000 years’ worth of income, which works out to more than 3,000 financial life sentences. This is no little debt!

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