Faith

3rd Week of Lent – Saturday- Luke 1: 26-38
Annunciation- An angel in the bedroom

Somewhere in the loud voice of the Church, projecting over the centuries, the big “yes” of Mary, is an adolescent girl who was terrified on seeing an angel. Centuries of romanticizing Mary’s ‘yes’ has perhaps taken away from her, the overwhelmingly shocking fear of finding an angel hovering in her bedroom (the bedroom part is prose license). This was big news for Mary and it would take a lot more than a ‘I think you need to sit down and listen to this one’. And yet from this simple Jewish maiden comes the ‘yes’ that gave us so great a redeemer.

Was it easy for Mary to say yes? Did she truly understand what was even going on? To rob Mary of her human emotions and feelings would do grave injustice to her and to us. We usually tend to get to the end of the story, but what about the beginning? This narrative tells us she was ‘afraid’. I guess that’s putting it mildly. She should have been ‘freaked out’, for that’s what happens when you get an angel in your bedroom, news of your pregnancy, an immaculate conception, promises of a great Son of the Most High who is to get a throne and bewilderment, as to what you are to tell your fiancé, parents, neighbours and God knows who else.

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Faith

Hate, in a Holy Week- 3rd Week of Lent- Friday- Mark 12: 28- 34

The text of today corresponds to the Tuesday of the Holy Week. Jesus in Mark Chapter 11 entered Jerusalem on a donkey in triumph. He spends the evening of Palm Sunday at Bethany and returns to the temple on Monday morning, driving away the money changers. The next day was testing and trying Tuesday. All through chapter 11 and 12, the Pharisees, Sadducees and their common enemy the Herodians, now ‘bosom buddies’ in their anti-Jesus cause, are out to trap the Lord.

They are relentless. “What is your authority?”, they ask and so He tells them the parable of the wicked tenants. Too late do they realise that He has turned the tables against them (12:12). So they send the Pharisees and the Herodians, hated enemies, now friends, in an evil cause, to trap Him. This time the issue is about paying taxes. When they fail again they send in the big guns, the Sadducees, the interpreters of the law, with the question on the resurrection.

In all this insanity of hate, a scribe of seemingly good disposition, “seeing that He (Jesus) had answered well”, asks Him a question that was once asked to the great Jewish rabbi, Hillel; ‘Which is the greatest commandment?’ Hillel’s answer was, “What you hate for yourself, do not do to your neighbour.” So was Jesus’ answer very different from the Rabbis? Jesus’ answer is a combination of orthodoxy and His fondness for going to the root of things (JBC).

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Faith

3rd Week of Lent – Thursday
Luke 11: 14-23

Hate is a very, very dangerous and extreme emotion. It is accompanied by a feeling of anger and hostility. One can quell anger, but quelling hate can be like scaling Mount Everest. Allowed to breed, hate grows rapidly, spreading its cancerous cells, infecting the mind and ravaging the body with evil. It finally infects the brain to even believe that God is the devil! That’s what the Jews called Jesus.

The Jews found the oldest trick in the book to attack Jesus. When you can’t attack a man on facts, simply get ‘ad hominem’ (Latin for, ‘to the man’ or personal attack). ‘So because the Jews could not attack the FACT of the exorcism, they attacked the SOURCE of Jesus’ power and also those who followed His way (JBC).’ For them, the source of His power was Beelzebul.

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3rd Week of Lent – Wednesday
Matthew 5: 17- 19

In the 400 years of the absence of prophets in Israel, the Scribes and Pharisees became the interpreters of the law. All Jews were subject to the first five books of the Bible, which was commonly called the Torah and also to the Mishna which was a commentary on the Torah and also to the Talmud which was commentary on the Mishna. That’s a lot of interpretation; twisting people in a thousand knots of ‘you can’t do’s.’

Jesus clearly wants us to get back to the truth of God’s law and that’s why through the rest of chapter five He will say six times “you have heard it say…but I say to you.” He is not only going to expose the selective misinterpretation of the law by the Pharisees, but He will challenge His disciples to go beyond it, in the way they live it. That’s what it was for Jesus; not something written on stone, but a living law.

In contrast, Jesus words were plain and uncomplicated. His actions were liberating and perhaps this got the Pharisees really uptight. And so the whisper campaign began; “this man is here to ‘tear apart’ the law and the traditions.” Jesus, in answering them, clearly states He is not here to abolish or ‘kataluo’ (tear apart) the law, nor is He here to ‘oikodomeo’ (build any more). He uses the word pleroo, which means to fulfill, as in ‘to complete’.

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3rd Week of Lent – Tuesday
Matthew 18: 21-35
Seven or seventy seven? Is there a magical number?

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!

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