Daily Reflections

October 26 - November 1

Friday, October 26

James 1:1-11: The first verse of this epistle indicates already that James was an authority recognized outside of the Holy Land. The churches addressed here—“the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad”—were apparently of a Jewish makeup, and they looked to this first Bishop of Jerusalem, the Lord’s own kinsman, as their spiritual father. In this sense, James is not only our first example of a bishop; he is also our earliest model for a patriarch.

In this connection let us recall that the Apostle Paul, when he wrote of those whom he consulted at Jerusalem, named James first, before Peter and John (Galatians 2:9). It is worth observing, likewise, that this same sequence—James, Peter, John—is identical to the order in which the epistles of these same three men appear in the New Testament.

James, in a series of apparently unsystematic exhortations, begins with patience, prompting the careful reader to recall that St. Paul too, when he commenced his description of Christian love, began with the succinct thesis, “Love is patient”—Charitas patiens est in the Vulgate. James’ word for “patience,” hypomone—-verses 3,4) will later appear when James speaks of the example of Job (5:11). He begins and ends this work, then, on the need of patience in the time of trial (verses 2,12,13,14).

The English reader, as he reads “when you fall into various trials,” may not suspect the skillful play of sounds in James’ original Greek: perasmois peripesete poikilois. In fact, James displays such verbal flourishing right from the start, going from “greetings” (verse 1) to “all joy” (verse 2)—chairein pasa charan.

The theme of rejoicing in times of trial is a common one in the New Testament (Matthew 5:10-12; Acts 5:41; 1 Thessalonians 1:6). This active attitude toward the experience of trial, as distinct from a merely passive endurance, brings about a kind of perfection, an ergon teleion (verse 4), perfection being a quality of great interest to James (verse 17,25; 3:2).

Those who attain unto perfection “lack nothing” (en medeni leipomenoi—verse 4). What a man may “lack” (leipetai--verse 5) first of all, says James, is wisdom, a gift that he may obtain through prayer to the generous God. This sudden mention of prayer and wisdom may not seem at first to fit the context of patience, which James has already introduced. The author is inspired here, however, by the Wisdom Scriptures, where wisdom is attained by prayer (1 Kings 3:5-9; Wisdom 9:10-18) and the patient endurance of trials (Wisdom 9:6; Sirach 4:17).

James’ mention of prayer leads to a consideration of faith and constancy (verse 6), because the prayer of faith is contrasted with wavering and hesitation. The expression used for wavering and hesitation here is diakrinomai (verses 6,7), the middle voice of a verb meaning to make judgments. The use of this word suggests that the contrast of prayerful faith is some kind of inner debate, perhaps a bewilderment about the efficacy of prayer itself. The same contrast between the inconstancy and the prayer of faith, using the identical words, is also found in the sayings of Jesus (Matthew 21:21; Mark 11:23).

Such hesitancy and inner debate produces a “man of two souls”—aner dipsyhos (verse 8). This metaphor, which appears to be James’ own invention (the fragment in Philo seems not to be authentic), became common in early Christian literature. James’ adjective is found numerous times in Clement of Rome, Pseudo-Clement, Hermas, Origen, and later Christian writers, along with the corresponding noun dipsychia (“double-soul-ness”) and verb dipsychein (“to be double-soul-ed”). Such a person, animated sometimes by fervor toward God and at other times by friendship with the world, did not love God with his “whole” heart. He was certainly “unstable in all his ways.”

James next introduces the contrast of wealth and poverty (verses 9-11), which will become a notable theme in the entire epistle (1:27; 2:1-7,15-17; 4:10,13-16; 5:1-6). As we shall reflect in the next chapter, this sense of poverty and riches is not theoretical in James; it pertains, rather, to the concrete life of the Church, the one place on earth where the poor can expect to be treated with honor. Indeed, as James suggests here, it is also in the Church that the rich man will receive salutary instruction on the transitory nature of wealth, and in this instruction he too will be honored (verse 10).

Saturday, October 27

James 1:12-20: The blessedness of the man who endures trial is related to that man’s love for God (verse 12). Love, that is to say, is really what is on trial; it is the reason for the endurance of the trial. This love for God, the love that is tried, is a gift of the Holy Spirit: “. . . we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Romans 5:3-5).

God puts His faithful ones through trial, but He does not “tempt” them in the sense of enticing them to sin (verse 13). God does not “tempt” in that sense. When man is enticed toward sin, it has to do with his own passions, his disposition to sin (verse 14). The source of this sort of temptation is internal to man; even the world and Satan cannot get at a man except through his own inner disposition. (Thus, Jesus was not “tempted” in this sense. Jesus was certainly put to the trial, and Satan used every effort to entice Him, but Jesus had no inner disposition to sin.)

Those who suffer temptation may be plagued by the thought that God has abandoned them, that He has forgotten them, that He no longer holds them in regard. To address this erroneous thought James insists that God is unchanging toward those that love Him. Unlike the lights in the heavens, the Father of these lights, their Creator (Genesis 1:13-18), does not diminish in His gifts to those who love Him. Indeed, James has already mentioned that God “gives to all liberally and without reproach” (verse 5).

This Father of lights has become our Father by begetting us in the Word (verse 18). Peter says the same, when he describes believers as “having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever” (1 Peter 1:23).

Having spoken of God’s Word of truth (or “true Word”), by which He engenders us as His children (verse 18), James devotes the next section to the proper hearing and doing of this “implanted” Word (verse 21).

Sunday, October 28

James 1:21-27

Having spoken of God’s Word of truth (or “true Word”), by which He engenders us as His children (verse 18), James devotes this next section to the proper hearing and doing of this “implanted” Word (verse 21).

First, there are certain moral and ascetical conditions preparatory to receiving this Word. Although the inseminated ground produces fruit of itself (avtomate [see the root of “automatically”?] he ge karpophorei—Mark 4:28), this ground must be prepared to receive it. This is the burden of the Lord’s most famous parable, the story of the sower who sowed the seed on various sort of soil, with greatly varying results.

Thus, says James, the man that would properly listen to God’s Word must be, first of all, a listener. He must be slow to speak, especially purging his heart of anger (verses 19-20) and foul thought (verse 21; cf. Sirach 5:11-13; 20:5-8). In chapters 3 and 4 James will return to this theme of tongue-control.

Second, the proper moral climate for attending to God’s Word is “meekness” (praütes—verse 21), the notable quality of Jesus’ own heart (Matthew 11:29).

Third, the Word must be received in active obedience, whereby the listeners become “doers of the Word”—literally “poets of the Word” (poietai Logou—verse 22; cf. Romans 2:13). If this is not the case, they “deceive” themselves (paralogizomenoi), especially with a deception of the heart (apaton kardian—verse 26).

We appreciate James’ warning that hearing the Word of God may be an occasion of spiritual danger, particularly the peril of self-deception. The major danger faced by the Bible-reader is that of imagining himself to be a religious person (verse 26). Such a one must learn to bridle his tongue, for he may not be who he thinks he is.

It is not unlikely that James has in mind here the newly converted Bible-reader that is too anxious to display his recently discovered wisdom by proclaiming it to others. What such a man must first learn to do is carry out the most basic, simplest, humblest mandates of the Gospel—charity toward the misfortunate and the purging of worldliness from his heart (verse 27).

Fourth, the study of God’s Word is the school of self-knowledge, because it serves as a mirror to the soul itself (verses 23-24). Thus, the man who studies God’s Word assiduously looks into a mirror, in which he learns his own blemishes reflected there. This will be the case, however, only if the hearer of the Word comes o it in the active obedience of faith (verse 25). He must not take leave of the Word too soon but “continue” (parameinas) in it.

Fifth, the “doer of the Word” must also be the “doer of the work” (poietes ergou—verse 25). As we shall see in the next chapter, James rejects any theory of justification that is not emphatic about the necessity of works. These works are what constitutes a man’s religion (threskia—verses 26,27).

Monday, October 29

James 2:1-13: The message of this section is straightforward and unsubtle. James points to a common trait of fallen man, the disposition to cultivate favor with the powerful over the weak, to prefer the approval of the rich to that of the poor. James begins by noting the easiest, most immediate way of distinguishing between the two—their clothing. Because the wealthier man can afford better clothes, he is better able to honor his own body, prompting others to comply with that honor. As modern men sometimes say, “Clothing makes a statement.”

For James, however, who has just mentioned that true religion consists in care for the poor and keeping oneself unspotted from the world (1:27), such deference towards the wealthy is only another form of worldliness. The New King James Version calls this vice “partiality.” The King James’ rendering “respect of persons” comes closer to the sense of the Greek prosopolempsia, literally translated in the Vulgate as personarum acceptatio, “acceptance of persons.” This word means that distinctions are made, according to which some people are treated with greater honor and respect than others.

The thing chiefly to be noted about this prosopolempsia is that God doesn’t have any (Romans 2:11), and neither should the Church. A preference for the wealthy, even with the excuse that the wealthy are in a better position to aid the work of the Church, would seem to be the very antithesis of visiting orphans and widows in their affliction and keeping oneself unsullied by the world. As such it has no legitimate place in the social life of the Church (verses 2-3).

Indeed, in many places in Holy Scripture it appears that God, if He can be said to have a preference, prefers the poor. He is called the protector of the orphan and the defense of the widow, and even the most casual Bible-reader will observe, from time to time, that God fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty. In fact, God “chooses the poor” (exselexsato tous ptochous—verse 5) and makes them heirs of the Kingdom (Matthew 5:3; Luke 6:20).

If his readers need any further incentive to be freed from such worldliness, James reminds them that their own oppressors come from the ranks of the rich rather than the poor (verses 6-7; Amos 8:4; Wisdom 2:10). The Christian Church, in short, must side with the poor, the disadvantaged, and the oppressed, not with the wealthy, the powerful, and the oppressors.

What, finally, is called for is the love of one’s neighbor as oneself (verse 8; Romans 13:8-10; Galatians 5:14), for this is the standard by which we shall be judged (verse 12; Matthew 19:17-19).

Tuesday, October 30

James 2:14-26: This section contains James’ response to an erroneous interpretation of St. Paul. The latter apostle, in fact, seems often to have been misunderstood by some early Christians (1 Peter 3:15-16), a misfortune of which Paul himself complained (Romans 3:8). The problem of misinterpreting Paul continued, moreover, well into the next century (cf. Irenaeus, Against the Heresies 3.13.1), and some believe it is still with us.

Here in James it appears that Paul was misunderstood with respect to justification through faith. Paul had by this time written Galatians. Against the Judaizers, who taught that Christians must observe all or part of the Mosaic Law, Paul’s letter to the Galatians insisted that the works of the Mosaic Law (circumcision, the dietary rules, and so forth) were not required of those who committed their lives to Christ in faith. Some of Paul’s readers exaggerated this teaching to imply a theology of justification “through faith alone”—ek pisteos monon (verse 24). According to this theory, no works of a man are necessary for his justification. All human works are superfluous for justification. James goes here into some detail to refute and condemn such a notion.

James observes, first, that a hungry man is not fed by my faith; I must actually do something to feed him. A naked person is not covered nor warmed by my faith; I must act in order to clothe him. A faith without such activity accomplishes nothing. It provides no advantage, to the needy man or to myself—“What does it profit?” (Ti to ophelos, verses 14,16), asks James.

We observe here that James does not contrast faith with works. He contrasts, rather, a living, profitable faith with an empty, dead faith. For James, then living faith is giving and not merely receptive, active and not solely passive. A faith that is not “lived” is not real faith; it is, at best, a religious preference, perhaps only a faint religious opinion. Salvific faith is a matter, says James, of faith and works.

The demons, after all, who are fallen angels (2 Peter 2:4; Jude 6), can be said to have faith, inasmuch as they believe in the oneness of God. Such “faith,” however, is of no avail to them (verse 19). A devil that believes in God is no better off than an atheist who doesn’t, and a person who believes but doesn’t act on that belief has no advantage over either. “Faith alone” of this sort is the lot of the damned.

James next turns to Holy Scripture for examples of saints justified by their works. The first is Abraham, whom Paul himself had invoked in the Epistle to the Galatians (chapters 3-4). Although Abraham, living earlier than Moses, had not observed the works of the Mosaic Law (and, consequently, was justified apart from those works), he never imagined himself exempt from the obligation of “works,” in the sense of obedience to God’s will and command.

Abraham’s faith, thus, “worked with (synergei) his works” (verse 22). This text lays the down the principle of the biblical doctrine of “synergism,” according to which both God and man must “work together” with respect to justification. Our works, according to James, are the animating spirit of our faith (verse 26).

Especially striking here is James’ interpretation of Genesis 15:6 (“And he believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness”) as “fulfilled” (eplerothe) in Genesis 22, where Abraham obeys God’s injunction to offer Isaac in sacrifice. His emphasis here is very different from that of St. Paul (Galatians 2:16; 3:6-12,24; Romans 3:28), though the latter too agrees that faith “works through love” (Galatians 5:6; 1 Corinthians 13:2).

James’s second example is Rahab, the Canaanite woman that received and protected the two spies sent by Joshua. She too had faith (Joshua 2:11), but she actually did something with it. She acted on it. Her faith was alive, so it was able to save the two spies. By her deeds, therefore, as much as her faith, Rahab and her household were “saved” (Joshua 6:22-25). Consequently, the Epistle to the Hebrews (11:31) lists Rahab among the heroes of the faith, and she became a popular figure among the early Christians (Clement of Rome, Corinthians 12).

Wednesday, October 31

James 3:1-12: James begins by warning of the more severe judgment that awaits teachers, who must answer, not only for their own offenses, but also for the conduct of those badly influenced by their teaching. This more severe judgment, warns James, will make a person cautious about becoming a teacher (verse 1; Matthew 5:19; 23:7-8).

This attention to teaching—since teaching involves speech—prompts James to turn his attention to the moral life of the tongue. He had earlier introduced this theme by the exhortation, “let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak” (1:19).

Although each of us fails in many ways, says, James, the description “perfect man” may be ascribed to someone who places adequate moral restraint on his tongue (verse 2). In elaborating this theme, of course, James is heir to the Bible’s Wisdom literature (cf. Proverbs 15:1-4,7,23,26,28; Sirach 5:11—6:1; 28:13-26).

To illustrate his point about the moral control of the tongue, James provides a series of analogies to the tongue—small objects of either great import or capable of potentially massive harm: a horse’s bit, a ship’s rudder, the small flame that causes a great conflagration (verses 3-6). A seemingly small thing is capable of things vastly greater than itself. So is it with the tongue. By its proper mastery the entire moral life is brought under discipline.

Left unrestrained, however, the tongue is able to create great spiritual harm, inflaming “the course of nature,” becoming thereby “the sum total of evil” (ho kosmos tes adikias). Wild animals, James continues, are easier to tame than the tongue, which is an “uncontrolled evil, full of death-bearing poison” (verses 7-8).

An example of such poison are the curses that the tongue direct to human beings made in God’s likeness, the same tongue that blesses God Himself (verse 9). How can this be? How can good and evil proceed from a common source?

James’ rhetorical style here is subtler than at first it seems. In his explicit pronouncements he appears to despair of a man’s controlling his tongue: “no man can tame the tongue.” This would almost seem to be his thesis. Yet, despair on this point is the furthest thing from his mind. In fact, James’ analogies convey the opposite impression, and it is this impression that he leaves with the reader. After all we do manage to master the horse by means of the bit. We are able to govern ships by means of the rudder, and a flame, while it is yet small, can normally be controlled. Even as his sentences seem to despair of the project, then, James’ metaphors indicate that this moral endeavor is, in fact, quite manageable.

Thursday, November 1

The Feast of All Saints: This feast day, celebrated in the Eastern Orthodox Church on the Sunday following Pentecost, was for a long time observed among the Western churches on various days of the year. It was not until the ninth century that November 1 became the established date, and it happened in the following way:

In 27 b.c., during the reign of Caesar Augustus (63 b.c.—a.d. 4; see Luke 2:1), his lieutenant and son-in-law, Marcus Agrippa, constructed in Rome a temple dedicated to “all the gods.” Hence its Greek name Pantheon. Rebuilt by the Emperor Hadrian in the early second century, it remains to this day one of the most remarkable edifices in that city where great buildings are virtually common. A masterpiece of design and construction, the Pantheon is shaped as a half-globe, with its base walls about 20 feet thick and tapering progressively as the structure rises to a dome 142 feet in diameter. It is illuminated entirely by the large skylight, or oculus (eye), in that vault. The Pantheon still has its original and massive bronze doors and bears Agrippa’s original inscription.

The building fell into disuse, however, with the decline of Roman paganism during the fifth and sixth centuries and would eventually have been destroyed except for its transformation to Christian use. (In this it was similar to a number of other pagan shrines, like the oracular spring of Apollo at Delphi, which was converted into a baptistry.) On May 13, 610, Pope Boniface IV consecrated the Pantheon as a Christian church called “St. Mary and All the Martyrs,” and to it he transferred many of the bodies of the martyrs from the catacombs. It seems divinely ironical that a structure once dedicated to “all the gods” should be rededicated to the Christian martyrs, since the latter had been slain for their refusal to honor those very gods.

In 835 Pope Gregory IV rededicated the church to “all the saints” and fixed the date of the dedication to November 1. The rest of the churches in the West followed his course, and the custom of celebrating this day in honor of all the saints is now more than a thousand years old.

 

October 19th - October 26th

Friday, October 19

Galatians 4:1-11: Not least among the striking features of this text is the apostle’s use of exactly the same verb to speak of the sending forth of both the Son and the Holy Spirit. In each case he says, exsapesteilen ho Theos—“God sent forth his Son. . . . God sent forth the Spirit of his Son.” This is a summary of how we know God: We know him because he has revealed himself by his sending forth of his Son and Holy Spirit.

This text of Galatians speaks of the sending of the Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit as two realities subject to distinction. In thus distinguishing them, Holy Scripture justifies our investigating each of them in distinctive (though not separate nor separable) ways. Let us, then, speak of each distinctly.

We may begin where the Bible does, with God’s revelation through his Son. How should we describe this revelation? Two adjectives that come to mind are empirical and historical.

In investigating the empirical aspect of God’s sending forth of his Son, we can hardly do better than to start with the Johannine literature. This theme’s most graphic text is found at the beginning of the First Epistle of John:

"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life—the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us—that which we have seen and heard we declare to you. . . ." (1:1–3).

In this passage we are impressed by the sustained repetition of verbs expressing the sense experience of the Incarnation: heard, seen, looked upon, handled, manifested, seen, manifested, seen, heard. Later in the same epistle John proclaims, “And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world” (4:14).

This sensual dimension of the Incarnation is likewise characteristic of the Johannine Gospel. Thus, the Lord says to the Samaritan woman, “I who speak to you am he” (4:26). And to the man healed of his blindness, “You have both seen him, and it is he who is speaking with you” (9:37). And to the citizens of Jerusalem, “ He who sees me sees him who sent me” (12:45). And to the apostle, “Have I been with you so long, and you have not known me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father” (14:9). All these lines illustrate the principle stated early in the Gospel of John: “No man has seen God at any time. The only-begotten God (monogenes Theos), who is in the bosom of the Father, he has explained him (ekeinos exsegesato)” (1:18).

Thus, in his incarnate Person, the Son is the living exegesis of the Father. The Lord must tell his enemies, “You know neither me nor my Father. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also” (8:19). So much is this the case, that no man has access to the Father except through the Son. On the other hand, God does not have, nor has God ever had, any relationship to this world except through his Son. Even in Creation, “all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made” (1:3).

This Johannine accent on the empirical experience of the Father’s revelation in his Son justifies our speaking of the Incarnation as the divine entrance into the historical, categorical order. Theologically we may describe it as God’s unanswerable vindication of man’s empirical faculties that operate within the classical categories of where, when, quantity, quality, and so forth. Specifically, John’s emphasis on the visual, the auditory, and the tactile prompts us to speak of God’s fleshly intrusion into space.

When we speak of the historical, categorical order, however, we must regard more than the senses operating in space. We must also consider the memory operating within time. Those who saw the Son, heard him, and touched him did so, not only within the limiting confines of human space, but also in the living context of human time.

The Son did not reveal the Father to just anyone, after all. He made his revelation to the Jews, who had been especially prepared, during many centuries, for precisely that revelation. It was God’s historical, categorical revelation in his Son that brought that historical pedagogy of Israel to its defining fulfillment. According to the opening words of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the defining truth of that history is the truth revealed in the Son “in the last of these days”—ep’ eschatou ton hemeron touton—“God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, spoke in times past to our fathers through the prophets, has in the last of these days, spoken to us by a Son, whom he has appointed heir of everything.” God’s revelation in his Son is inseparable from time, the experience of before and after, of tense and becoming.

The Synoptic Gospels contain a dominical parable that stands in striking parallel to this opening verse of the Epistle to the Hebrews. I cite it in the Gospel of Mark, where the Lord describes God’s activity in Old Testament history as that of a man sending his servants to the keepers of his vineyard, so that they might hand over the fruit of the vineyard. “Last of all,” says the text, “He sent his beloved Son”—huion agapeton . . . apesteilen auton eschaton. This Son is recognized, even by the wicked vine-keepers, to be the “Heir”(12:6f), the same word used in the foregoing passage from Hebrews. In both of these texts, history is interpreted solely with respect to eschatology, and eschatology is defined by God’s revelation in his Son.

In summary, in the revelation in his Son, God transforms the knowability of the empirical, historical, categorical order, and all of God’s speaking in history is determined by, and to be interpreted with reference to, his revelation in the Son. From the very first time that he uttered a human word, God started to become incarnate. By speaking this word in history, God transforms the knowable structure and content of history.

These reflections bring us to God’s revelation to us in the Holy Spirit. For the purpose of this inquiry, it is neither possible nor necessary to examine this theme in all its amplitude, for Holy Scripture tells a good many things about the mission of the Holy Spirit. I propose, rather, to consider the mission under one aspect only. Namely—the Holy Spirit’s transformation of man’s knowledge, a theme developed in both the Pauline and Johannine sources of the New Testament.

We may begin with St. Paul, who addresses this matter in the Epistle to the Romans, in a passage strikingly similar to the Galatians text that we have already seen: “For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship, by whom we cry out ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit himself bears joint witness to our spirit that we are children of God” (8:15f). We observe in this text that the Holy Spirit bears witness, not only to who God is, but also to who we are—not only to God as Father, but also to us as his children. The Holy Spirit testifies, not only that something is so, but also that Someone is such-and-such in regard to us, and we in regard to him. It is the personal knowledge of the relationship between God and ourselves. We now know God, because we now stand in a different relationship to God as his children.

Likewise in the Corinthian literature, St. Paul speaks of the wisdom conferred by the Holy Spirit. Thus, of those things that the eye has not seen and the ear has not heard, he says, “God has revealed them to us through his Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. . . . Even so, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches . . .” (1 Cor. 2:9–13).

This instruction of the Holy Spirit is directed to the person and activity of God’s Son, Jesus Christ. It is the Holy Spirit that gives “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6), so that “we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same icon from glory to glory, as by the Lord of the Spirit (apo kyriou pneumatos)” (3:18). This is the meaning of Paul’s assertion that “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3). The Holy Spirit not only tells us to proclaim “Jesus is Lord,” he also grants us the vision to see the glory of that lordship. We proclaim only what we see.

Saturday, October 20

Luke 12:49-53: A crisis has been mounting. Jesus already observed that His disciples now form only a “little flock” (verse 32), not a massive movement of repentance. Moreover, He has already enjoined vigilance upon them (verses 39-42), coupled with a warning (verses 45-48). It is clear that our Lord and the disciples stand at a critical threshold. In spite of the angelic proclamation of peace (2:14), Jesus can assert that He did not come to bring peace (51), in the sense that His message, critical of habitual ways of men, was certain to provoke animosity and invite rejection (verse 52).

There will be, therefore, a first of testing (verse 40), as John the Baptist had earlier foretold (3:16-17). Indeed, in the present text Jesus seems to remember His baptism by John (3:21), because He now uses the metaphor of baptism in the context of this fire of judgment (verses 49-50). Whereas John had prophesied that Jesus “will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire,” Jesus Himself, according to the present passage, has “a baptism to be baptized with.” This image refers to His impending sufferings (cf. Mark 10:38), concerning which He feels “constrained until it be accomplished.”

Was our Lord becoming a bit impatient to do what needed to be done? Doubtless there were days when He did, notwithstanding the terror presented in that prospect (22:42). Nothing about the time of His Passion, however, was within Jesus’ power to determine. While He knew that it would come to pass by “the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23), He was obliged to wait for the plot of His enemies to be worked out. It would happen soon enough (cf. 22:2-6). Meanwhile, our Lord would be “left hanging,” a long and monstrous foretaste of His hanging on the cross. In this passage He shares these feeling with His disciples.

It is the physician Luke, professionally sensitive to concerns of psychology, who records this inner experience of turmoil in the incarnate Word.

Sunday, October 21

Galatians 4:21-31: It seems significant that the covenants of God with Abraham and David are each ushered into history by an account of a barren woman. Thus, Holy Scripture introduces the covenant with Abraham by telling of the barrenness of Sarah, and the narrative of the Davidic covenant is introduced by the story of barren Hannah. It is not surprising, then, that the account of barren Elizabeth should introduce the story of the Incarnation. Jesus Christ is, after all, “the Son of David, the Son of Abraham” (Matthew 1:1).

St. Paul, moreover, explicitly appeals to the story of barren Sarah in order to illustrate the Christian covenant. He writes, “it is written that Abraham had two sons: the one by a bondwoman, the other by a freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and he of the freewoman through promise, which things are symbolic” (verses 22-24).

The Greek word translated by the NKJV as “symbolic” is allegoroumena, which literally means “things said in allegory.” This is our first instance of the work “allegory” in Christian thought, where it properly means the New Testament meaning of the Old Testament text. Indeed, this is why Paul brings up the subject of barren Sarah—her historical and symbolic relevance to the Christian covenant.

Paul’s insertion of this image into his exposition of the Christian covenant prompts us to reflect more in detail on what the story of ancient Sarah means to the Christian mind. Perhaps we may summarize these reflections under three headings: frustration, humor, and faith.

First, let us recall Sarah's frustration. She wanted a son, and she was willing to do just about anything to get one. We all know the story of her attempt to use ancient Middle Eastern adoption laws to have her handmaid act as her surrogate. We recall how she urged Abraham to father a child with that servant, Hagar. We also remember that the arrangement did not work out very well.

This should not have been surprising. God alone gives life, and human life in particular is not just a matter of biology. Sarah stands in history as an excellent example of those who tried to take the place of God with respect to their offspring. In the case of Hagar, this was very much a "planned pregnancy." Forgetting that children are a gift and a blessing from God, Sarah contrived to impose her own will on the order of nature in order to achieve what she wanted. "Planned parenthood" is a very bad way to start raising children, because it treats those children as the products of a human strategy instead as precious gifts from the creating hand of God.

She stands, then, as an early example of all attempts to produce human life by medical contrivances, to overcome human barrenness through artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, and all other mechanical attempts to produce a baby, to make a child as a merely human product, something other than a pure gift from God.

In Sarah’s case, the entire enterprise backfired, of course, and after the birth of Ishmael her life became more frustrated than ever. Eventually Hagar and her baby were driven out into the desert, where Ishmael became the father of the Arabs. That is to say, things did not turn out as the mother of the Jews had in mind. The God that brings good out of evil, however, had His own plans, and this consideration brings us to our second point.

Second, let us consider the humor of Sarah. We recall the famous scene where Abraham and his wife showed hospitality to the Three Strangers in Genesis 18. We remember well the promise that God made to them at that time: “I will certainly return to you according to the time of life, and behold, Sarah your wife shall have a son." Sarah, 89 years old at the time, was listening to this conversation behind the flap of the family’s tent, and when she heard the divine promise, says Holy Scripture, she laughed.

Really, what else could she do? The whole idea was so preposterous. I suspect that most of us, in such circumstances, might giggle a bit. The Lord, however, was very serious on the matter, so He inquired of Abraham, “"Why did Sarah laugh, saying, 'Shall I surely bear a child, since I am old?' Is anything too hard for the Lord?”

Sarah herself was rather embarrassed by the whole episode, and not a little frightened, so much so that she denied having laughed. The Lord, however, who knows all things, even a giggle behind a tent flap, answered her, “"No, but you did laugh!"

For all that, there is nothing in the Sacred Text to suggest that the laughter of Sarah was a moral failing. She was reprimanded, not for laughing, but for denying that she had laughed. One suspects that her laughter was in some measure a sign of her humility. It probably indicated that she did not take herself too seriously. Perhaps it is the case that Sarah should have laughed more often than she did. If she had laughed at herself at earlier periods in her life, perhaps she would not have been so hard on Hagar and Ishmael. Perhaps she would have been less critical of Abraham himself.

Third, let us consider the faith of Sarah. If we had only the Old Testament by which to reflect on this point, we might doubt that Sarah had much faith. Fortunately, however, we have the testimony of the Epistle to the Hebrews: “By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised” (11:11).

Indeed, the faith of Sarah illustrates something truly essential to the very nature of faith—it accomplishes what is humanly impossible. Sarah did not regard the prospects of bearing a child at age 90. On the contrary, “she judged Him faithful who had promised.” That is to say, she trusted the fidelity of God to do what He has promised to do.

Hagar’s childbearing was a physical thing, says Paul. It was “according to the flesh.” Sarah’s, on the other hand, was “according to promise.” Faith is always “according to promise.” It is beyond all human guarantees, because it is rooted in God’s fidelity to His word. He is a God that keeps His promises. Thus Paul concludes his argument in Galatians, “Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise.” Like Sarah, we live in the expectation that God, in fidelity to His word, will always keep His promises.

Luke 12:54-56: Up to the present point in this chapter Jesus has spoken to His disciples. Indeed, He has addressed them as a group distinct from the crowds, calling them a “little flock” (verse 32), and He had begun by warning them against the “hypocrisy” of the Jewish leaders (verse 1). Now the Lord turns His attention to the “crowds” (verse 54).

The crisis soon to arise, warns Jesus, is not only for His disciples and Himself, but also for the Chosen People and their leaders (cf. Matthew 16:2-3). However, these latter, being hypocrites (verse 56), are unable to discern the signs of the times. Consequently, they fail “to interpret the present time,” the current kairos that is full of impending significance.

Using the one to explain the other, Jesus draws a distinction between space and time, nature and history. Those whom He addresses area able to interpret the meaning of space and nature, the western cloud and the south wind, but the imminent events of time and history are lost to them. A cloud arriving from the west come from over the Mediterranean Sea and brings rain (cf. 1 Kings 18:44), whereas a southerly wind, arising from the Negev Desert, carries with it the dry heat.

Such things the people know from long experience; they are familiar with how to read nature. They seem far less familiar with history, however, or they would apply to its current period the same level of discernment that enables them to interpret the signs of imminent weather.

Both nature and history, after all, give indications of pattern and periodic recurrence. In the case of their present history the indications were unmistakable. Throughout the centuries the Chosen People had been instructed by their relations to the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, and the Greeks. How is it that they seem so clueless with respect to the Romans? Those crises of olden days were correctly interpreted by the biblical prophets, who bequeathed to Israel a godly insight in the proper understanding of history. Israel has evidently failed to learn the lesson. Hence its rejections of Jesus (verses 49-53).

In the present text, moreover, it is clear that Jesus did understand Israel’s impending crisis, and in this respect He appears here as the heir of the prophets, calling the Chosen People to repentance in face of the disaster soon to befall the nation at the hands of the Romans.

It was in the context of that impending judgment that Jesus understood His own vocation. Israel’s rejection of His message led directly to the nation’s downfall and colossal displacement in history. The signs of this catastrophe, said Jesus, were plain for all to see.

Monday, October 22

Luke 12:57-59: The foregoing verses have struck a note of true urgency. A crisis is imminent, and how does a sane man prepare for a crisis? If he can, he will try to avert it.

The Lord gives a simple illustration. If a rational man knows that a creditor is about to take him to claims court, he will use what time he has—for these matters do take time—to “settle with him,” in order to avoid the judicial process. The latter, after all, is hard to undo.

In the social context of this parable a debtor could be incarcerated for his debt, thereby losing the opportunity to pay. In such a case, payment of the debt would have to be redeemed by the debtor’s family and friends. It takes much longer to accomplish, and meanwhile the debtor sits in prison.

How much easier, says our Lord, to deal ahead of time with the creditor. After all, the latter wants only his money; it is not to his advantage that the debtor should go to jail.

Israel, this parable says, still has a limited time to make good, to “settle” with God, so that it will not be obliged to pay “the very last copper.” This Creditor, once again, has nothing to gain by the punishment of the debtor. God is not honored by anyone’s being lost. Israel’s failure does not bring God glory. Indeed, He is entirely merciful and prefers forgiveness to sacrifice. It is high time for Israel, while history is still “on the way,” to make its peace with this creditor, but time is running out, and disaster is already discernable on the prophetic horizon. The barren fig tree has another year, as it were (13:6-9).

Tuesday, October 23

Luke 13:1-5: The lessons of the previous chapter stressed the necessity of repentance in advance of the historical judgment soon to be visited on Israel. Whereas the verses immediately before (12:57-59) and immediately after (verses 6-9) emphasize the shortness of time left for decision, the present pericope underlines the grave consequences of not repenting.

Here we have no parable but a couple of contemporary tragedies that convey the necessity for repentance.

First, Jesus is told of the incident in which Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, had recourse to violence in order to repress a sedition of Galileans (verse 1; Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews 18.85-89; The Jewish War 2.169-177). Were those that perished in that incident worse than anyone else? asks Jesus. Certainly not!

The example is particularly telling, inasmuch as Pilate represented the authority of Rome in the Holy Land. This story implies to the Jews what sort of treatment they may receive at the hands of the imperial forces, which the Lord of history is about to employ as a scourge on an unrepentant people. In the case of Israel too, the divine judgment willfall swiftly and without remorse (verse 3).

The second incident (verse 4), which is unrecorded outside of the Gospel of Luke, conveys the same message. Those that perished in the collapse of the tower were not sinful beyond their compatriots. Yet, destruction had come upon them quickly and unawares. The message is the same: Repent now, and do no delay!

Wednesday, October 24

2 Chronicles 11: Because the stories about the northern prophets in the Books of Kings are so colorful and memorable (Michaiah, Elijah, Elisha), one may too easily suppose that the ministry of the prophets, at least until the eighth century, was concentrated mainly in the north. The present chapter of Chronicles, however, which narrates the prophetic intervention of Shemaiah (verses 2-4, paralleled in 1 Kings 12:21-24), is a first argument against that supposition. Second Chronicles goes on to tell of other active prophets in the south, prior to the eighth century, accounts not found in the Books of Kings. This list includes stories of Azariah ben Obed (15:1-7), Hanani (16:7-9), Jehu ben Hanani (19:2-3), Zechariah ben Jehoiada (24:20-22), and the anonymous prophet sent to King Amaziah (25:7-9). According to the Chronicler (21:12-15), even Elijah the Tishbite intervened in the south by way of a letter (21:12-15).

Given all these accounts of southern prophets narrated only in the Chronicler, it is curious and ironical that the story of Shemaiah in this chapter is the only part of the chapter that is found in Kings. It is followed by three accounts that are not told in Kings.

First, there is a list of the cities fortified by Rehoboam on his southern flank against attack from Egypt (verses 5-12). This system of defense, well known to archeology, is sometimes called antiquity’s Maginot Line.

Second, the Chronicler tells of northern Levitical families that remained loyal to the government and Temple in Jerusalem (verses 13-17). Because of Jeroboam’s persecution of them, these families fled south for asylum, and the schismatic king of the north appointed non-Levites in their place (1 Kings 12:31-32; 13:33). One is disposed to speculate that the Chronicler himself may have been a descendent from that group, but in such a case we would expect a record of actual names here in the text.

Third, there is a detailed account of Rehoboam’s apostasy in the south (verses 18-23). This defection of Solomon’s son had to be particularly distressing to the northern Levites who had fled to the south in fidelity to the Davidic covenant and the orthodox worship in the Jerusalem Temple. Their disappointment is perhaps more readily understood if we think of certain contemporary Christians conscientiously driven from one church to another, only to find the second church just about as unfaithful as the first. In the case of these Levites, moreover, the move involved uprooting their families from lands they had cultivated for more than two centuries. (Taken from P. H. Reardon, Chronicles of History and Worship, Conciliar Press 2006).

Thursday, October 25

Psalm 37: If we think of prayer as speaking to God, Psalm 37 appears at first to challenge the very notion of the psalms as prayers, inasmuch as not a single word of it is explicitly addressed to God. It speaks about God, of course, but never to Him, at least not overtly.

This psalm is also strangely constructed, even if the construction is rather simple. It is one of those twelve psalms built on what is known as an alphabetic acrostic pattern—that is to say: starting with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, aleph, each new line (in this case, every other line) of the psalm begins with the next successive letter of the alphabet. Thus, if one looks for some sort of logical or thematic progression in the course of the psalm, he may be mightily disappointed. The arrangement of the psalm’s ideas is determined only by something so artificial and arbitrary as the sequence of the alphabet, so the meditation does not really progress. It is, on the other hand, insistent and repetitive.

It is obvious at once that Psalm 37 has close ties to the Bible’s Wisdom tradition. If it were not part of the Psalter, we would expect to find it in Proverbs or one of the other Wisdom books. It appears to be a kind of discourse given by a parent to a child, or a wise man to a disciple. It is full of sound and godly counsel: “Fret not thyself because of evildoers . . . Trust in the Lord and do good . . . Cease from anger and forsake wrath . . . Wait on the Lord and keep His way,” and so forth. Such admonitions, along with the psalm’s allied warnings and promises, are stock material of the Wisdom literature.

So how does one pray such a psalm? To begin with, by respecting its tone, which is one of admonition, warning, and promise. Surely prayer is talking to God, but it also involves listening to God, and this is a psalm in which one will do more listening than talking. It is a psalm in which the believer prays by placing his heart open and receptive to God’s word of admonition, warning, and promise.

One may likewise think of Psalm 37 as the soul speaking to itself: “Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him . . . But the meek shall inherit the earth . . . The little that the righteous has is better than the riches of many wicked . . . The Lord knows the days of the upright . . . The Law of his God is in his heart,” and so on. The human soul, after all, is not of simple construction. The great thinkers who have examined the soul over many centuries seem all to agree that it is composed of parts, and sometimes these parts are at odds one with another. This mixture of conflicting experiences in the soul leads one to utter such petitions as, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.” It is one part of the soul praying for the other.

In this psalm, one part of the soul admonishes the other, reminds the other, cautions the other, encourages the other. And this inner conversation of the human spirit all takes place in the sight of God, the Giver of wisdom.

This inner discussion is rendered necessary because of frequent temptations to discouragement. As far as empirical evidence bears witness, the wicked do seem, on many occasions, to be better off than the just. By the standards of this world, they prosper.

Our psalm is at pains to insist, however, that this prosperity is only apparent, in the sense that it will certainly be short-lived. As regards the workers of iniquity, “they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb . . . For evildoers shall be cut off . . . For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be . . . For the arms of the wicked shall be broken . . . The transgressors shall be cut off together.”

The suffering lot of the just man is likewise temporary and of brief duration. He need only wait on the Lord in patience and trust: “Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He will give thee the desires of thy heart. Commit your way unto the Lord, and trust in Him, and He shall bring it to pass . . . But the salvation of the righteous is of the Lord; He is their strength in the time of trouble. And the Lord will help them and deliver them; He will deliver them from the wicked and save them, because they trust in Him.”

This, then, is a psalm of faith and confidence in God, without which there is no Christian prayer. It is also faith and hope under fire, exposed to struggle and the endurance that calls for patience. After all, “faith is the substance of things hoped for” (Heb. 11:1), and “We were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope . . . But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance” (Rom. 8:24, 25). Our psalm is a meditative lesson on not being deceived by appearances, and a summons to wait patiently for God’s deliverance. (Taken from P. H. Reardon, Christ in the Psalms, Conciliar Press 2000)

Friday, October 26

James 1:1-11: The first verse of this epistle indicates already that James was an authority recognized outside of the Holy Land. The churches addressed here—“the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad”—were apparently of a Jewish makeup, and they looked to this first Bishop of Jerusalem, the Lord’s own kinsman, as their spiritual father. In this sense, James is not only our first example of a bishop; he is also our earliest model for a patriarch.

In this connection let us recall that the Apostle Paul, when he wrote of those whom he consulted at Jerusalem, named James first, before Peter and John (Galatians 2:9). It is worth observing, likewise, that this same sequence—James, Peter, John—is identical to the order in which the epistles of these same three men appear in the New Testament.

James, in a series of apparently unsystematic exhortations, begins with patience, prompting the careful reader to recall that St. Paul too, when he commenced his description of Christian love, began with the succinct thesis, “Love is patient”--Charitas patiens est in the Vulgate. James’ word for “patience,” hypomone--verses 3,4) will later appear when James speaks of the example of Job (5:11). He begins and ends this work, then, on the need of patience in the time of trial (verses 2,12,13,14).

The English reader, as he reads “when you fall into various trials,” may not suspect the skillful play of sounds in James’ original Greek: perasmois peripesete poikilois. In fact, James displays such verbal flourishing right from the start, going from “greetings” (verse 1) to “all joy” (verse 2)--chairein pasa charan.

The theme of rejoicing in times of trial is a common one in the New Testament (Matthew 5:10-12; Acts 5:41; 1 Thessalonians 1:6). This active attitude toward the experience of trial, as distinct from a merely passive endurance, brings about a kind of perfection, an ergon teleion (verse 4), perfection being a quality of great interest to James (verse 17,25; 3:2).

Those who attain unto perfection “lack nothing” (en medeni leipomenoi--verse 4). What a man may “lack” (leipetai--verse 5) first of all, says James, is wisdom, a gift that he may obtain through prayer to the generous God. This sudden mention of prayer and wisdom may not seem at first to fit the context of patience, which James has already introduced. The author is inspired here, however, by the Wisdom Scriptures, where wisdom is attained by prayer (1 Kings 3:5-9; Wisdom 9:10-18) and the patient endurance of trials (Wisdom 9:6; Sirach 4:17).

James’ mention of prayer leads to a consideration of faith and constancy (verse 6), because the prayer of faith is contrasted with wavering and hesitation. The expression used for wavering and hesitation here is diakrinomai (verses 6,7), the middle voice of a verb meaning to make judgments. The use of this word suggests that the contrast of prayerful faith is some kind of inner debate, perhaps a bewilderment about the efficacy of prayer itself. The same contrast between the inconstancy and the prayer of faith, using the identical words, is also found in the sayings of Jesus (Matthew 21:21; Mark 11:23).

Such hesitancy and inner debate produces a “man of two souls”--aner dipsyhos (verse 8). This metaphor, which appears to be James’ own invention (the fragment in Philo seems not to be authentic), became common in early Christian literature. James’ adjective is found numerous times in Clement of Rome, Pseudo-Clement, Hermas, Origen, and later Christian writers, along with the corresponding noun dipsychia (“double-soul-ness”) and verb dipsychein (“to be double-soul-ed”). Such a person, animated sometimes by fervor toward God and at other times by friendship with the world, did not love God with his “whole” heart. He was certainly “unstable in all his ways.”

James next introduces the contrast of wealth and poverty (verses 9-11), which will become a notable theme in the entire epistle (1:27; 2:1-7,15-17; 4:10,13-16; 5:1-6). As we shall reflect in the next chapter, this sense of poverty and riches is not theoretical in James; it pertains, rather,to the concrete life of the Church, the one place on earth where the poor can expect to be treated with honor. Indeed, as James suggests here, it is also in the Church that the rich man will receive salutary instruction on the transitory nature of wealth, and in this instruction he too will be honored (verse 10).

October 12 - October 19

Friday, October 12

The Second Epistle of John: This and the next short book of the New Testament are one-page letters. Each would each fit on a piece of papyrus measuring about 9 by 5 inches, which was the average size of papyrus sheets in antiquity.

It is a common feature on letters, whenever written, that they normally contain the names of the writer and the recipient. This is as true our own correspondence today as it was of the epistles of St. Paul. In this present work, however, the author identifies neither himself nor his readers. We should say something about both of these points.

The writer self-identification here is simply “the old man” (ho presbyteros. Apparently the Apostles were sometimes referred to by the generic “elder,” or in Greek presbyteros. This would explain why the Apostle Peter calls himself by this term (1 Peter 5:1). In the case of the present epistle, however, something more seems to be intended. The author does not call himself an elder, but the elder, or perhaps even “the Elder,” indicating that this is what he was called; it was the normal way in which folks referred to him, knowing exactly who was meant.

Abundant anecdotal evidence testifies that there have been many Christian pastors, over the centuries, who have been similarly referenced, such as the Pastor. The present writer knows of a cathedral where the expression the Dean referred to a clergyman who had been dead for years. None of his less impressive successors, all of them deans, were ever so called!

Anyway, Papias of Hieraopolis, an early second century Christian writing in Asia Minor, refers to someone called ho presbyeros Ioannes, “John the Elder.” Although Eusebius of Caesarea, who records this witness, doubts that the reference is to St. John the Apostle (Ecclesiastical History 3.39.5-6), the present writer does not trust him on the point. Since the earliest collectors of the writings contained in the New Testament were guided by the canon of “apostolicity,” it is difficult to understand how they would have included the present epistle, unless they had been persuaded that John the Apostle wrote it.

Moreover, this small work has definite affinities with the First Epistle of John, the Johannine authorship of which Eusebius had no doubts (3.24.17). The present comments, therefore, presume that the author of this epistle is St. John the Apostle.

The "elect lady" that John addresses is evidently a local church, over which he has some supervision. This supervision he exercises from his own church, presumably Ephesus, which he calls the “elect sister” (verse 13). John writes to this other church, not only in his own name, but on behalf of “all those who have known the truth” (verse1). This is the truth of the Gospel that unites all Christians to one another.

In John’s greeting, the “grace, mercy, and peace” are wished to be “with us” (notwithstanding the Vulgate, the KJV, and other translations). These three nouns are common terms of greeting in the epistles of the New Testament, as benefits that all believers would wish for one another. Indeed, since the word “mercy” (eleos) is found only here in the Johannine writings, we may surmise that its appearance in this text comes from its being such a commonplace in Christian greetings (cf. Galatians 6:16; Jude 2; 1 Timothy 1:2; 2 Timothy 1:2; cf. Ignatius of Antioch, Philadelphians Prol.).

When John remarks that “some of your children” (ek ton teknon) are “walking in truth,” we are perhaps justified in suspecting that he intends a subtlety. It could be that he means, “not all of them are doing so (verse 4). John is writing to this church, after all, in order to warn them about deceivers (verse 7), urge them to circumspection (verse 8), and put them on their guard with respect to bad teaching (verse 10). John certainly sees some potential problem on the horizon of this congregation, and it is clear that this is why he is writing to them at all.

By way of exhortation the Elder sends his readers back to the basics of what they have received “from the beginning,” an expression that he uses twice here (verses 5-6). This exhortation to the commandments and love for one another reminds us of several in 1 John: “I plead with you . . . not as though I wrote a new commandment to you, but that which we have had from the beginning: that we love one another. This is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, that as you have heard from the beginning, you should walk in it.”

For all his subtleties and gentleness, John is also stern. False teachers are not to be greeted nor received into one’s home (verses 10-11). From this exhortation, it is clear that he is not directly blaming anyone in the congregation itself; it is outsiders that he has in mind, though it is difficult to explain why he wrote this epistle unless he had in mind some specific dangers to his readers.

These false teachers are easy to detect, because they have wrong answers for the questions, “What do you say of the Christ? Whose Son is He? Who do you say that I am?” That is to say, they deny that Jesus is God’s eternal Son become incarnate (verse 9). This thesis is the “doctrine” (i>didache—verses 9,10) that sustains the Christian life and communion. It is the foundation of everything else. Those who deny it, therefore, merit the name “antichrists” (a term that appears only here and in 1 John). We don’t “all worship the same God.” The only God we worship is the Father of Jesus Christ, His Son, who is our only access to the Father. There are no short cuts to God, bypassing Jesus. In particular, there are no ecumenical short cuts.

Saturday, October 13

Psalm 104: In the traditions of the Christian East, this psalm is always the first psalm of the evening office, Vespers. Though prayed in the lengthening shadows of evening, Vespers itself has always been thought of rather as an hour of light than of darkness, a perspective inspired both by the special quality of the gloaming and sunset and by the ritual lighting of the candles. This note of vesperal light is obvious in the traditional hymnody of both the East and the West. One thinks, for instance, of the ancient vesperal hymns Phos Hilaron (“O Gladsome Light”) in the East and Lucis Creator Optime (“Most Good Creator of the Light”) in the West. An early line of our psalm strengthens the same impression: “You are clothed in praise and majesty, adorning Yourself in a garment of light.”

Psalm 104 is likewise one of those psalms for which the New Testament provides at least a partial interpretive key. An early verse of it is quoted in Hebrews with respect to the angels: “Who makes His angels spirits, / And His ministers a flame of fire” (1:7). This line of the Psalter is interpreted just a few verses later: “Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who will inherit salvation?” (1:14).

Psalm 104 is not difficult. Indeed, the flow of its poetry has made it a favorite, and it is no surprise that the Church has long tended to pray it daily. The psalmist meditates on the various “days” of Creation, starting with the vast expanse of the heavens, then the ministry of the angels, then the earth and its myriad phenomena, the various plants and diverse animals, from sparrows and rabbits to deer and lions, and not excluding man, always with an emphasis on God’s generous provision for the needs of all: “Expectantly do all things look to You, to give them their food in due season. You give, and they gather in. When You open Your hand, all things are filled with goodness.”

Psalm 104 combines considerations of the natural order with those of human commerce, suggesting a “cooperation” between God’s work and man’s. This perspective is true with regard to both the land (“You make grass to grow for the cattle, and vegetation for the service of man—to make bread spring from the earth, and wine to gladden his heart, and oil to shine on his face, and bread to strengthen his heart”) and the sea (“Here is the sea, great and wide, holding creatures without number, living things both great and small. Here too go the ships to and fro, and the great sea serpent that frolics therein”). Man’s own labor is matched by that of other creatures in nature, such as the hunting of the lions and the nest-building of the birds.

Toward the end our psalm speaks of God’s Holy Spirit at work in the world: “You will send forth Your Spirit, and they shall be created, and You will renew the face of the earth.” Perhaps inspired by this psalm, the poet G. M. Hopkins saw the sun’s daily rising as a sign that “the Holy Ghost over the bent / World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”

Sunday, October 14

Luke 11:37-54: This section ends with a certain irony, remarking that Jesus’ enemies were “lying in wait for Him, to catch at something He might say.” As though Jesus had failed to say something offensive in all the preceding verses!

Most of the material in this chapter is parallel to Matthew 23, where Jesus’ seven “woes” condemning the scribes and Pharisees form the first third of His final discourse in that Gospel (chapters 23—25). Luke, by inserting certain “woes” (verses 42-52) into a narrative setting involving the scribes and Pharisees, also creates a sevenfold condemnation of these two overlapping groups.

Luke places all this material in the home of a Pharisee (verse 37), a detail at which modern sensitivities easily take offense. One contemporary commentator, for example, thinks it “still more unlikely” that Jesus would have been so rude and impolite to a host! (He does refrain from calling Luke a “cad,” though this would be the logical inference.)

The point of Jesus major objection in this section is the disposition of Israel’s religious leaders to identify the service of God with a purely formal adherence to the externals of religion, to the neglect of inner transformation and vibrant faith. We recognize here a preoccupation of the Bible’s prophets.

Hence the repeated contrast between the surface and the depth, the outside and the inside of the dish and cup (verses 39-40), the outside and the inside of the grave (verse 44). Adherence to the mere externals of religious observance, says our Lord, is entirely compatible with having the heart of a murderer. Indeed, those so zealous for mere conformity to external norms are actually embracing the easy part of religion, avoiding that change of heart that forms its essence. A person thus engaged will fall victim to self-satisfaction and the loss of the living memory of God..

Abel (Genesis 4:8) and Zechariah (2 Chronicles 24:22) are the first and last persons murdered in the Hebrew Bible (verse 51).

Monday, October 15

2 Chronicles 2: Solomon’s great building project begins.

As though the fact were an afterthought barely mentioned in just two Hebrew words, we are told that Solomon also planned “a house for his kingdom” (verse 1; 1:18 in the traditional Hebrew text). This latter construction, which served for governmental administration as well as Solomon’s residence, required elaborate planning and labor over a period of thirteen years (1 Kings 7:1-12). Once again, however, as in the case of David, the Chronicler is relatively uninterested in this political and worldly aspect of Solomon’s reign. In the eyes of this writer, the historical importance of Solomon had to do entirely with the Temple and what took place there.

Writing long after the worldly prestige and power of the Davidic monarchy had disappeared from the geopolitical scene, the Chronicler was not disposed to dwell on the worldly grandeur of Solomon’s reign. All of that was gone. What, then, asked the Chronicler, was Solomon’s real historical significance? What was the true, important legacy of his reign? It was the Temple, the institutional provision for the worship of God. In this effort lay the genuine greatness of Solomon. This was the authentic work of the wisdom with which the Lord endowed him (verse 12).

This significance is expressed in detail and at length in Solomon’s letter to Huram (Hiram in 1 Kings), which the Chronicler employs to elaborate the theology that the Temple will embody. This letter, along with Huram’s response, goes to the heart of the matter.

The Temple, first of all, will not “contain” God in the sense of being his adequate residence. Although the Lord’s “Name” will dwell there (verse 4; cf. 1 Chronicles 28:3; 29:16), the house itself is properly intended for man’s worship of Him (verses 4b-7, with no parallel in 1 Kings).

God Himself, after all, cannot be enclosed in space. Even the highest heaven, the place of that true tabernacle not made with hands, is unable to contain the One that made it (verse 6). Such was the new king’s conviction, and if he adopted any other attitude toward his work, Solomon’s very Temple would have become only a more subtle form of worldliness.

The reply of Huram (especially verses 11-12) should be read as the Gentiles’ proper response to Solomon’s plan. In the full context of biblical history and revelation, Huram and Huramabi (verse 13) foreshadow the Magi and all other generation of Gentiles that will come with their gifts to worship the God of David and Solomon. Huram here plays Cornelius to Solomon’s Peter.

Properly to understand this correspondence, then, we should read Solomon’s letter rather like we read those of the Apostle Paul—as a proclamation of the Gospel to the nations. Huram’s letter, in turn, is the faithful response to that proclamation.

Later on, in Luke’s narrative of the apostolic mission to the Gentiles, Stephen’s famous sermon on the significance of the Temple will serve as a sort of manifesto.

(Taken from P. H. Reardon, Chronicles of History and Worship, Conciliar Press 2006)

Tuesday, October 16

Galatians 2:11-21: A first thing to be noted about this text is its reference to “the faith of Jesus Christ.” In a strict adherence to the Greek text, verse 16 should read, “a man is not justified by the works of the Law but by the faith of Jesus Christ.” The KJV got it correctly.

This simple, clear statement has somehow proved too much for modern English translators. For instance, the NKJV, the RSV, the TEV, the JB, and the NIV read, “a man is not justified by the works of the Law but by faith in Jesus Christ.” The NEB and Philips are substantially the same: “faith in Jesus Christ.” The ESV is nearly identical, except for its politically correct alteration of God’s Word: “a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.” These inaccurate translations of this simple prepositions are really quite misleading.

The clear problem with these mistranslations is, of course, that they are unable to deal with the notion that we are justified by the faith of Christ. They reflect a loss of perspective traditional in the Christian Church and contained in the KJV. Namely, the faith of Jesus. These new translators are unable to look upon Jesus as a man of faith. They think of faith as something that Christians have, but somehow Jesus had no need for.

This is clearly not view of St. Paul, according to whom we are justified before God by the faith of Jesus Himself. What Paul affirms here is not that we are justified by our own faith. We are justified by Jesus’ faith. Jesus’ faith was the source of His redemptive obedience to the Father. Our faith comes from Jesus’ faith, and this is what renders us just. Thus, the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of Jesus as “the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him, endured the Cross, despising the shame . . . who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself.” (12:2,3). This is the faith that justifies us, the faith of Jesus in all His service to God and man, but especially His endurance of the Cross. This is what we see when we behold the wondrous Cross, where the young Prince of glory died. The crucifixion is the supreme symbol of the faith of Jesus.

A second feature of this text is its description of redemption in personal terms. In the NT most statements about redemption tend to lay emphasis on the universality of what God has done in Jesus; the terms tend to be plural and collective: “God so loved the world,” says John 3:16. Similarly Paul wrote that God “spared not His own Son but delivered Him up for us all” (Romans 8:32). Paul also so wrote, “There is one God, and there is one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tim 2:6). The words of Jesus over the covenant-cup also stress a universal perspective: “This is My blood of the new covenant which will be shed for you and for the many.” Earlier the Lord had said that “the Son of man came not to served but to serve and to give His life for the many” (Mark 10:45). Texts of this sort abound in early Christian literature, all insisting that the blood of Jesus was shed for all of mankind. That is to say, the New Testament teaches universal, not limited atonement.

More rarely does the NT speak of Jesus’ love for each person. For example, the parable of the Good Shepherd tells how He goes out in search of the one lost sheep. In the Gospel of John, the Good Shepherd says that He calls each of His sheep by name. When the Gospel of John speaks of the Holy Eucharist, the emphasis once again is on the singular: “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides and I in him.” This same accent is found in the Book of Revelation: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone opens, I will come unto him and eat with him.”

Such expressions of personal intimacy with the Lord are not as common in St. Paul, but today’s text from Galatians is an exception: “The life I live now in the flesh, I live in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” This text is evidence that Paul, like John, knew the love of Christ to be directed as him personally. He too is “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”

St. John Chrysostom comments on this passage: “Each person justly owes as great a debt of gratitude to Christ, as if [Jesus] had come had come for his sake alone, because He would not have grudged this His condescension though but for one, so that the measure of His love to each is as great as to the whole world.”

Chrysostom’s comment is remarkable. It says that Christ loves each of us as much as He loves all of us. Perhaps this is less surprising if we reflect that we ourselves tend to love our families in the same way. Within our families, we love each as much as we love all. This is how Christ loves each of us, and this is why He died, not only for all of us, but also for each of us. A third feature of this passage is its inclusion of our identification with Christ: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” The acceptance of the crucifixion on Jesus Christ into our hearts places there a new source of life and identity. I must die, in order for Christ to live in me. That is the hardest of messages—I must die. Not “I must be fulfilled.” Not “I must be satisfied.” Not “I must reach my full potential.” No, very simply “I must die.”

Christ’s own faith is the model, exemplar, and source of my own. These are hard words: “It is not longer I who live.” The self must go. In the pursuit of Christ, selfishness, self-centeredness, self-preoccupation, and self-absorption are the enemy. The destruction of these things in our hearts is what Paul calls a crucifixion: “I have been crucified with Christ.”

This crucifixion of the sinner has particular respect to the flesh and to the world. With respect to the flesh, Paul writes somewhat later in this same epistle, “those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” And again, with respect to the world, Paul writes in this epistle’s final chapter, “But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” To embrace the faith of Christ, to embrace the Cross of Christ, is to experience crucifixion in regard to the flesh and the world.

The flesh and the world comprise what St. Paul calls “the old man,” and he writes of it in the Epistle to the Romans: “We know that our old man was crucified with [Christ] in order that the body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin” (6:6).

We Christians have no hope but in Jesus Christ and what He has done for us. He is our one confidence in life and in death. We place all our faith in Jesus’ faith. We cling to His cross as our strength and solace. For His sake we put to death the ways of the flesh and of the world, in order to conform our live to the pattern of His cross. In doing all of this, we are justified. Jesus has replaced the Law. He is our only Law. We Christians, once and for all, have placed all our eggs in one basket. It is the Easter basket.

Wednesday, October 17

Luke 12:13-21: This brief parable, which introduces the straightforward didactic section on trust in God (verses 22-34), is proper to the Gospel of Luke. The parable is given in response to a request that Jesus intrude His influence in an inheritance dispute between two brothers (verse 13), and prior to presenting His parable the Lord disclaims authority to settle such a dispute.

This point, aside from its function of introducing the parable, already conveys an important lesson respecting the Gospel and the world. Jesus refuses to take sides or arbitrate in a domestic and financial dispute in which, presumably, an arguable case could be made for either side. This sort of thing is simply not what He does.

If this restraint was exercised by the Son of God and the font of justice, how much more should it apply to the Church and her ministries. This narrative offers no encouragement to those who imagine that the Church should intrude her influence in social, economic, civil, and political controversies on which plausible arguments can be made, whether in theory or in fact, for either side of a case. This is not the vocation of the Church. In the societal settings in which the life in Christ is lived, there are certainly circumstances where it is incumbent on the Church and her ministries to speak clearly and fearlessly and decisively. The Church’s interest in social and political controversies should be limited to those cases. With respect to the other myriad concerns of society and the political order, prudential concerns about which it is legitimate for godly men to disagree, the proper response of the Church should be, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?”

This point settled, Jesus attacks the root of the problem presented by His questioner: greed, or covetousness (verse 15). Once again, the Lord does not go into particulars. His is, rather, a word of “caution” (“keep on guard,” phylassesthe) and the stating of a principle (“a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions”). The purpose of the parable is to reinforce that caution and to illustrate that principle.

The message of the parable is self-evident, laying a sensitive finger on the shortness of life and the unreliable nature of all things temporal and material. This lesson the “fool” of a rich man learned after it was too late. At the end of his selfish life he had nothing to show for his efforts. He was “not rich with respect to God” (21).

There is an irony in the Lord’s referring to this man as a “fool,” because in the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament the fool is someone who fails to take care of his financial resources.

Thursday, October 18

Luke 12:22-34: The parable of the rich man’s barns is followed by a straight didactic exhortation that complements the message of that parable. Most of this material (verses 22-32) is shared with the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:25-34). “"Life is more than food, and the body more than clothing,” asserts our Lord (verse 23). No great insight nor advanced wisdom is required to grasp the truth contained in this assertion. It is a matter perfectly obvious to a second’s reflection. This is the reason why our Lord poses the truth in a rhetorical question. Any intelligent person knows that the body is more important than the clothing that adorns it. Everyone knows this, yet there are anxiety-driven men that destroy their health by overworking in order to obtain more wealth. This is folly.

The Lord’s exhortation against anxiety is based on two considerations, one of them an appeal to common sense, and the other a call to faith.

First, common sense indicates that mere anxiety about material things does not improve the material situation. There are limits to man’s ability to control the circumstances of his life, restrictions on how much he is able to do for himself. His anxiety is spawned by the constant remembrance of those limits and restrictions. Why, then, asks Jesus, be anxious about what is beyond our control? Such anxiety is irrational. A Man cannot lengthen his days by anxiety on the subject (verse 25), a truth illustrated by the foregoing parable of the rich man and his barns.

Second, the call to faith is founded on a consideration of what takes place in nature, where a heavenly Father cares for the animals and the plants. This, says our Lord, is a matter of empirical observation. This information, coupled with the consideration of man’s value, greater than the animals and the plants, yields the inference that God is to be trusted to take care of us. The only rational response to these considerations is faith.

The alternative to faith, therefore, is not simple unbelief, but a shaky life based on the constant, nagging companionship of anxiety, from which there is no other deliverance. Such anxiety eats away at every fleeting human joy.

In addition, it remains a perpetual cause of distraction, so that man is unable to give proper attention to the deeper purpose of life, which Jesus identifies here with God’s kingdom.

Such anxiety is unnecessary and absurd, because the God that provides man with the greater gift, the kingdom, will not deprive him of lesser things. It is this priority that man must adopt in his own mind, seeking what is higher and trusting in God to provide all else *verse 31).

This mention of God’s kingdom prompts Luke to append here another saying of Jesus abut the gift of the kingdom (verse 32). Their reception of this gift will inspire believers in turn to treat others generously (verse 33), thus becoming rich with respect to God (verse 34; cf. verse 21).

Friday, October 19

Galatians 4:1-11: Not least among the striking features of this text is the apostle’s use of exactly the same verb to speak of the sending forth of both the Son and the Holy Spirit. In each case he says, exsapesteilen ho Theos—“God sent forth his Son. . . . God sent forth the Spirit of his Son.” This is a summary of how we know God: We know him because he has revealed himself by his sending forth of his Son and Holy Spirit.

This text of Galatians speaks of the sending of the Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit as two realities subject to distinction. In thus distinguishing them, Holy Scripture justifies our investigating each of them in distinctive (though not separate nor separable) ways. Let us, then, speak of each distinctly.

We may begin where the Bible does, with God’s revelation through his Son. How should we describe this revelation? Two adjectives that come to mind are empirical and historical.

In investigating the empirical aspect of God’s sending forth of his Son, we can hardly do better than to start with the Johannine literature. This theme’s most graphic text is found at the beginning of the First Epistle of John:

"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life—the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us—that which we have seen and heard we declare to you. . . ." (1:1–3).

In this passage we are impressed by the sustained repetition of verbs expressing the sense experience of the Incarnation: heard, seen, looked upon, handled, manifested, seen, manifested, seen, heard. Later in the same epistle John proclaims, “And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world” (4:14).

This sensual dimension of the Incarnation is likewise characteristic of the Johannine Gospel. Thus, the Lord says to the Samaritan woman, “I who speak to you am he” (4:26). And to the man healed of his blindness, “You have both seen him, and it is he who is speaking with you” (9:37). And to the citizens of Jerusalem, “ He who sees me sees him who sent me” (12:45). And to the apostle, “Have I been with you so long, and you have not known me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father” (14:9). All these lines illustrate the principle stated early in the Gospel of John: “No man has seen God at any time. The only-begotten God (monogenes Theos), who is in the bosom of the Father, he has explained him (ekeinos exsegesato)” (1:18).

Thus, in his incarnate Person, the Son is the living exegesis of the Father. The Lord must tell his enemies, “You know neither me nor my Father. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also” (8:19). So much is this the case, that no man has access to the Father except through the Son. On the other hand, God does not have, nor has God ever had, any relationship to this world except through his Son. Even in Creation, “all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made” (1:3).

This Johannine accent on the empirical experience of the Father’s revelation in his Son justifies our speaking of the Incarnation as the divine entrance into the historical, categorical order. Theologically we may describe it as God’s unanswerable vindication of man’s empirical faculties that operate within the classical categories of where, when, quantity, quality, and so forth. Specifically, John’s emphasis on the visual, the auditory, and the tactile prompts us to speak of God’s fleshly intrusion into space.

When we speak of the historical, categorical order, however, we must regard more than the senses operating in space. We must also consider the memory operating within time. Those who saw the Son, heard him, and touched him did so, not only within the limiting confines of human space, but also in the living context of human time.

The Son did not reveal the Father to just anyone, after all. He made his revelation to the Jews, who had been especially prepared, during many centuries, for precisely that revelation. It was God’s historical, categorical revelation in his Son that brought that historical pedagogy of Israel to its defining fulfillment. According to the opening words of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the defining truth of that history is the truth revealed in the Son “in the last of these days”—ep’ eschatou ton hemeron touton—“God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, spoke in times past to our fathers through the prophets, has in the last of these days, spoken to us by a Son, whom he has appointed heir of everything.” God’s revelation in his Son is inseparable from time, the experience of before and after, of tense and becoming.

The Synoptic Gospels contain a dominical parable that stands in striking parallel to this opening verse of the Epistle to the Hebrews. I cite it in the Gospel of Mark, where the Lord describes God’s activity in Old Testament history as that of a man sending his servants to the keepers of his vineyard, so that they might hand over the fruit of the vineyard. “Last of all,” says the text, “He sent his beloved Son”—huion agapeton . . . apesteilen auton eschaton. This Son is recognized, even by the wicked vine-keepers, to be the “Heir”(12:6f), the same word used in the foregoing passage from Hebrews. In both of these texts, history is interpreted solely with respect to eschatology, and eschatology is defined by God’s revelation in his Son.

In summary, in the revelation in his Son, God transforms the knowability of the empirical, historical, categorical order, and all of God’s speaking in history is determined by, and to be interpreted with reference to, his revelation in the Son. From the very first time that he uttered a human word, God started to become incarnate. By speaking this word in history, God transforms the knowable structure and content of history.

These reflections bring us to God’s revelation to us in the Holy Spirit. For the purpose of this inquiry, it is neither possible nor necessary to examine this theme in all its amplitude, for Holy Scripture tells a good many things about the mission of the Holy Spirit. I propose, rather, to consider the mission under one aspect only. Namely—the Holy Spirit’s transformation of man’s knowledge, a theme developed in both the Pauline and Johannine sources of the New Testament.

We may begin with St. Paul, who addresses this matter in the Epistle to the Romans, in a passage strikingly similar to the Galatians text that we have already seen: “For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship, by whom we cry out ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit himself bears joint witness to our spirit that we are children of God” (8:15f). We observe in this text that the Holy Spirit bears witness, not only to who God is, but also to who we are—not only to God as Father, but also to us as his children. The Holy Spirit testifies, not only that something is so, but also that Someone is such-and-such in regard to us, and we in regard to him. It is the personal knowledge of the relationship between God and ourselves. We now know God, because we now stand in a different relationship to God as his children.

Likewise in the Corinthian literature, St. Paul speaks of the wisdom conferred by the Holy Spirit. Thus, of those things that the eye has not seen and the ear has not heard, he says, “God has revealed them to us through his Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. . . . Even so, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches . . .” (1 Cor. 2:9–13).

This instruction of the Holy Spirit is directed to the person and activity of God’s Son, Jesus Christ. It is the Holy Spirit that gives “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6), so that “we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same icon from glory to glory, as by the Lord of the Spirit (apo kyriou pneumatos)” (3:18). This is the meaning of Paul’s assertion that “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3). The Holy Spirit not only tells us to proclaim “Jesus is Lord,” he also grants us the vision to see the glory of that lordship. We proclaim only what we see.

October 5 - October 12

Friday, October 5

1 John 3:1-9: John takes up again the teaching of chapter two, elaborating it from a different perspective. For instance, John had earlier declared, “I write to you, so that you may not sin” (2:1), and now he explains, “Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God” (verse 9).

John knows that he is writing to children of God, and he knows, as well, that this is the reason why the world treats them with enmity (verse 1). The world, as we have seen (2:15-16), has nothing in common with the Father of these children so it is to be expected will hate the children also (John 14:22-24; 17:25).

Although believers are already the children of God, the full meaning of their filiation has not yet been revealed (verse 2). Even with respect to their present ontological state there is more to be revealed (cf. Romans 8:19), and this revelation will come when “we shall see Him as He is.” Because the believer is sustained by this hope, he strives continually to be holy and pure (verse 3).

Striving thus for holiness and purity, the believer flees from sin, which is rebellion, anomia (verse4). Since God’s Son came to take away sin (verse 5; John 1:29), the man who continues to commit sin (ho poion, present participle for sustained action) can have no communion with God (verses 4,8). Continuance in sin (ho hamartanon, again the present participle) means that the sinner does not really know God.

John does not mean, of course, that the Christian never sins. Indeed, if “we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1:8). Rather, John indicates the incompatibility between being a child of God and willfully continuing to sin. These two things are as incompatible as God and the world. Consequently, the man that willfully continues in sin is lying to himself about knowing God (cf. 2:4), and those that say otherwise are deceivers (verse 7). The deception of such a man is that of the Devil (verse 8), who holds the world in bondage. The man who has been reborn in God is not capable of continuing in sin; willful rebellion is incompatible with being a child of God.

The Christian life, in short, is not just a state of mind. It involves also righteousness of conduct (cf. 2:5,6,29), and to some degree that conduct (including thought) is open to observation. If we want to know if we are in God, says John, the best indicator is our moral conduct. Mere profession of the faith is an inadequate indicator or our rebirth (verse 9).

Saturday, October 6

1 John 3:10-15: John continues his practical approach to Christian salvation, especially addressing the believer’s duties toward his “brother.” These duties are summarized in the verb “love.”

Our brotherhood in Christ is contrasted with history’s first brotherhood, that of Cain and Abel (verse 12). In that ancient case Cain violated the most elementary duty of brotherhood by murdering Abel, and he murdered him, John gives us to believe, because he hated him. From this, John concludes that anyone who hates his brother is a murderer (verse 15). This is the reason why, from the beginning, Christians have been instructed to love one another (verse 11; cf. 2:7-8).

The negative example of Cain, a man lacking in both faith (Hebrews 11:4) and love (verse 12), was taken over in Christian moral instruction (Jude 11; First Clement 14), and John clearly expects his readers to be familiar with both the biblical text and the theme.

Augustine of Hippo pursued this motif in a particularly Johannine way by comparing the biblical story of Cain and Abel to the classical account of Romulus and Remus. The two murderers, Cain and Romulus, both fratricides, were also founders of cities. These two cities, Rome and Enoch (cf. Genesis 4:17), symbolize what St. John called “the world,” understood as humanity’s attempt to live its own life in defiance of God. John’s world corresponds to what Augustine calls “the city of man,” which he contrasts with the City of God (cf. The City of God 15:5-8).

Cain’s story, because it is a tale of hatred, exemplifies the world’s murderous attitude toward Christians (verses 13-15; John 15:18). In this respect John provides a further elaboration of the incompatibility between God and the world. To be a child of God is to be the beneficiary of an immense love, a love radically incompatible with hatred toward anyone. A person certainly cannot be a child of God and still hate other children of God. Nowhere does the spirit of the world more seriously endanger Christians than by tempting them to hate one another.

Sunday, October 7

1 John 3:16-24: God’s love for us was proved by the life that was laid down on the Cross on our behalf, giving us the supreme example of how we ourselves are to love one another (verse 16). Fidelity to that example requires, at the very least, that we share with our needy brothers and sisters the means to preserve their lives (verse 17). This is the practical test to determine whether or not we love one another (verse 18). Most of us are never called on to die for someone else, so in some sense this is not normally a realistic test. Taking care of one another’s needs, however, is something we can actually observe and measure.

John’s exhortation that we should “not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth” merits a closer grammatical inspection. In the combination “word and tongue” we recognize what grammarians call a hendiadys, which means that a single idea is expressed by two words. That is to say, in John’s expression there is no real difference between word and tongue; they are both metaphors for speech. John means simply, “Let not our love be just a lot of talk.”

This much is clear enough, but our parsing should be carried over to John’s second pair of words, “deed and truth.” It is important to see that this second combination is also a hendiadys. In context, both words, deed and truth, mean the same thing; for John there is no real distinction between them. True love for one another is not just a lot of talk. It is composed, rather, of what we do. This is how “we shall know that we are of the truth” (verse 19).

In the verses that follow, John seems to have in mind those Christians of sensitive conscience, whose hearts may be smitten by a strong sense of their sins. No matter how hard they struggle, they find that their hearts condemn them, and they become subject to misgivings regarding their spiritual state (verse 20),

John strengthens such Christians by directing their attention to two elementary facts. First, they are to consult their actual behavior, especially active charity toward others, as a more reliable indicator of their true spiritual state. Second, they are to recall that thee all-knowing Father reads their consciences more accurately than they do, and in His benevolent gaze they are to place their trust, putting their hearts at rest (pesomen ten kardian). In the context, John especially has in mind the efficacious prayer whereby “whatever we ask we receive from Him” (cf. also John 14:12-13; 16:23).

Such reflections on our spiritual state are not to be exercises of an isolated conscience. They are to take place under the eyes of God, “before Him” (emprosthen Avtou—verse 19), “in His sight” (enopion Avtou—verse 22). Proper Christian conscience is not simply the heart reflecting on itself; it is exercise, rather, in the conscious awareness of thee Father who sees in secret (Matthew 6:4,6,8,18).

God’s double commandment is both doctrinal and moral, orthodox faith in Christ and the love of one another (verse 23). These two things manifest that we are of the truth and that God’s Holy Spirit dwells within us (verse 24).

Monday, October 8

Luke 10:25-37: There are a million things to be said about this story of the Samaritan. Let us limit ourselves to three things.

First, there is the story of the Fall, concerning which we are told, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.” This man started in Jerusalem, we observe. He began his history in the garden place of God’s presence. But he did not stay there. He made a deliberate decision to go on a journey. No one told him to go. He made the decision on his own, as an assertion of his independence from God.

Though the man did not know it at first, this was more than just a journey. It was a Fall; it was a descent. He went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers. This is a story, then, of man’s Fall. “Man in honor, did not abide,” says the Psalmist; “He became like the beasts that perish” (Psalms 49 [50]:12).

These robbers did not kill him completely. They left him, says the Sacred Text, half dead. This fallen man did not suffer total depravity, as it were. There was still some hope for him, though he had no way of saving himself from his terrible predicament. By this man’s disobedience, sin entered the world, and by sin death. Indeed, death reigned already in his mortal flesh. How shall we describe this poor man’s plight except that he was "alien from the commonwealth of Israel and a stranger from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world”? (Ephesians 2:12). He had been left half dead, Holy Scripture says, and there was no help for him in this world.

Along came a priest and then a Levite, men representing the Mosaic Law, but they had to pass by the fallen wayfarer, because by the works of the Law is no man justified. The priest and the Levite were hastening, you see,  to the Temple, in order to offer repeatedly the same sacrifices that could never take away sins. Indeed, matters were made even worse, because “in those sacrifices there is a remembrance made of sins every year.  For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins.”

Second, a Samaritan, the Bible tells us, “as he journeyed, came to where the man was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.” In the fullness of time, that is to say, God sent His Son to be a good neighbor to him who fell among the thieves. This Son, being in the form of God, did not think equality with God a thing to be seized, but He emptied Himself and took the form of a servant. Indeed, this Son became an utter outcast—in short, a Samaritan, a person without respect or social standing. Although He was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor, that we through His poverty we might become rich.

What was the first thing this Samaritan did for the man that fell among the thieves? He saw him, says the Bible. He looked upon the man in his misery. When Nathaniel was still under the fig tree, our Samaritan saw him. A certain paralytic lay beside the pool of Bethesda with an infirmity thirty-eight years, and our Samaritan saw him lying there. Showing Himself to be a good neighbor, this Samaritan, passing by, saw the man who was blind from birth. Blessed is he that falls under the gaze of our Samaritan. Such a one may say, “Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also have been known.” 

What did the Samaritan do for the man that fell among thieves? He washed him in the waters of Baptism, cleansing his wounds, and into those wounds he poured His grace in the form of anointing oil, the holy Chrism, and the Eucharistic wine to prevent infection.

Our Samaritan did not leave beside the road this half-dead victim of the fall among thieves. On the contrary, “He set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn and took care of him.” And then he went away. He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father almighty. This Samaritan is also the great high priest that entered once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. But even as He went away, He said to the inn keeper, “Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I come again, I will repay you.” And this promise brings us to our third point.

Three, our Samaritan says to the inn keeper, “when I come again.” He does not say,if I come again, but when I come again. There is no “if” about the return of this Samaritan. This same Samaritan, which is taken up from us into heaven, shall so come in like manner as we have seen him go into heaven. We solemnly confess, then, that He will come again in glory to judge the living the dead, and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time, apart from sin unto salvation.

All of history is given significance by the two visits of the Samaritan. Only those who abide in the inn, waiting the return of the Samaritan, really know the meaning of history. The inn is the house of history, the Church where inn keeper cares for the Samaritan’s friends.

This parable does not describe that return of the Samaritan. It says simply “when I return.” The parable leaves that return in the future. The story ends in the inn itself. It goes no further. The parable terminates in the place where the Samaritan would have us stay—at the inn. It is imperative for our souls’ health that we remain within this inn, to which our Samaritan has sworn to return. In this inn, which has received the solemn promise of the Samaritan, let us pass all our days, as in eagerness we await His sworn return. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the veil; Whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.

Tuesday, October 9

1 John 4:12-21: 1 John 4:10-16: John continues to explore the connection between faith in Jesus Christ and love for one another. This is a very important consideration for our own times as well, because in the modern world it is taken as almost axiomatic that the two things are readily separable. That is to say, it is not obvious why human beings need faith in Jesus Christ in order to love one another. Many men profess a desire for universal love in the human race, but they see no reason why such love must have anything to do with the identity and claims of Jesus of Nazareth.

The Christian answer to this question is that modern secular men are not talking about the same thing. When they speak of loving one another, they mean something very different from what the word agape signifies to Christians. Agape is just as particular and singular, just as specific, as Jesus Himself. Christians profess that faith in Jesus is essential to such love, because the true God alone is the source of that love, and Jesus is mankind’s only access to God.

From the consideration that God first loved us before we could love Him, and inasmuch as He gave His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins, John concludes that we must (opheilomen) love one another. That is to say, love begets love. If God loves all of us, we must love one another. We must not exclude from our own love anyone who is included in God’s love (verses 10-11).

It is not a matter of simply modeling our love on God’s love. It is not as though God sets a standard that we, by using great moral effort, must emulate. God’s love in our lives is more than an ethical norm. Our love does not simply copy God’s love; it participates in God’s love.

This, says John, is how we come to know God—by loving as God loves, by becoming God-like in our love (verse 12). The unknown God, the unseen God, is truly known in the love with which we love one another. All other knowledge of God is illusory. To refuse to love is to cut oneself off from the knowledge of the true God.

If we are able to love in this way, says John, it is proof that the Holy Spirit abides in us. Love of this nature—agape—is beyond human. Its presence in any human heart is a demonstration of the Holy Spirit in that heart (verse 13).

And this, says John, is how we recognize God’s gift to us in His Son. Only in the Holy Spirit do “we see and testify” to the identity of Jesus Christ as God’s Son and the Savior of the world (verse 14). The Apostle Paul expressed this same truth when he testified that only in the Holy Spirit do we know that Jesus is Lord (1 Corinthians 12:3) and God is Father (Galatians 4:6; Romans 8:15).

Our mutual indwelling in God, which is the basis of our love for one another, comes from this Spirit-given recognition of the Son and His Father. This recognition, says John, is expressed in a confession, which he designates by the verb homologein, the New Testament’s normal expression for the Church’s creedal confession (verse 15)

Because God is love, those who love in this way abide in God and God in them (verse 16). The statement that God is love is one that is most appealing to modern men, for the simple reason that they misunderstand it. They take it to signify that God is a bland, pleasant, non-judgmental, and even chummy sort of being, chiefly concerned with affirming whatever it is that human beings want to do to amuse themselves.

Agape, however, refers to something very explicit and strictly defined. The statement that God is love refers to the gift of God’s Son to be our Redeemer and the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Hence, the confession of Jesus as God’s Son, sacrificed on the Cross, is the only context in which to understand the affirmation that “God is love.” Therefore, the establishment of a community of love in this world is inseparable from the Church’s Christological confession and answer to the questions, “Who do you say that I am? And “What do you think of the Christ? Whose Son is He?”

Two points are chiefly made in verses 17-21.

First, God’s love in us gives us confidence in the day of judgment. It is in this sense that perfect love casts out fear.

It is important to observe that the fear cast out by perfect love is fear of the day of judgment. Many commentators over the centuries have remarked that perfect does not cast out all fear, Perfect love does not cast out, for instance, the fear that is intrinsic to love itself, such as the fear of offending the One we love. In this sense, “The fear of the Lord is holy, enduring forever” (Psalms 19 [18]:9).

Perfect love does cast out, however, fear that the One we love will reject us. This is essentially the argument that Paul makes in Romans *:31-39.

This Johannine text should not disappoint those who find themselves fearful of the day of judgment. John does not say that fear of the day of judgment is incompatible with being a Christian. He says, rather, that perfect love casts out this fear. If one is still fearful of the day of judgment, this does not mean that he is not yet a Christian. It simply means that he has not yet attained to perfect love. There is no disgrace in that. God is not dishonored by such a fear. The presence of such fear means only that one is not yet perfected in love.

This will be disappointing news, to be sure, to those who believe that everything in the Christian life is to be instant. Still, it is true that perfection in love is not the work of a day. Contrary to modern popular belief in instant salvation (and instant everything!), growth in love is the work of years. In this respect, the love of God resembles marriage itself, in which it is normal to spend one’s entire adult life striving for mature love.

Second, hardly anything is more open to illusion or more easily imitated by an imposture than love for God. If we inquire of a person, “Do you love God?” he may consult his state of mind or even the state of his emotions and answer with a ready “yes.” Yet, it may be the case that such a person is lying, or more correctly, that he is deceiving himself. It may be the case that there is not a scintilla of love for God in this person’s heart.

John says that there is only one way to begin addressing this question, and it is by asking another question: “Do you love the brother whom you see?”

John does not concern himself with love for humanity, because there is a sense in which humanity is just as invisible as God. No, it is the brother whom we see that serves as the only reliable gauge of our love for God.

How much, then, do I love God? I love God as much as I love the least of those brothers whom I see, not one whit more. Have I seen anyone lately whom I do not love? That is how much I love God. Any other gauge is an illusion.

When we say, then, that perfect love casts out fear, most of us know that we are far from perfect love. Indeed, when we start to consider how little love we have for one another, we have every reason to be afraid. In the pursuit of the love of God, we must begin by applying ourselves very rigorously to loving the brother whom we see.

Wednesday, Ocober 10

1 John 5:1-13: As we have seen all through the epistle, John is interested in evidence and proof. Arguably more than any other New Testament author, John wants to know how we know certain things. He fears nothing more than self-deception and walking in the dark: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1:8). And again, “He who says, ‘I know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (2:4). Furthermore, “He who says he is in the light, and hates his brother, is still in darkness” (2:9). Moreover, “But he who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes” (2:11). In addition, “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar” (4:20).

If we are to avoid darkness, mendacity, and self-deception, then, just how do we know? Or, by what means do we know? John answers this question repeatedly: “Now by this we know [en touto ginoskomen] that we know Him, if we keep His commandments” (2:3). Again, “But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know [en touto ginoskomen] that we are in Him” (2:5). And again, “even now many antichrists have come, by which we know [hothen ginoskomen] that it is the last hour” (2:18). Furthermore, “by this we know [en touto gnosometha] that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him” (3:19). Moreover, “And by this we know [en touto ginoskomen] that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us” (3:24). Further yet, “By this you know [en touto ginoskete] the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God” (4:2). Indeed, “He who knows God hears us; he who is not of God does not hear us. By this we know [ek toutou ginoskomen] the spirit of truth and the spirit of error” (4:6). Furthermore, “By this we know [en touto ginoskomen] that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit” (4:13).

This preoccupation continues into the present text: “By this we know [en touto ginoskomen] that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments” (verse 2). True agape, says John, is impossible without the full Christian faith and life, including the observance of the commandments.

We say that we love one another, says John, but how do we really know that we do? This question would not even occur to a modern person, who would answer the question simply with reference to his impressions. To this kind of person, I love someone if I feel a certain way about that person. John knows nothing of reasoning like this, because John is not the sort of person who would take subjective feelings so seriously, much less base his whole life on them.

How can I be sure that I truly God’s children? John asks. Well, he answers with another question, Are we observing God’s commandments?

The modern man can hardly follow such a line of thought. What, after all, do the commandments of God have in common with loving someone? The modern person sees no relationship between them, certainly nothing that would permit us to prove the one by reference to the other. For John, however, no part of the Christian life can be separated from its other components. We can divorce agape from faith no more than we can put faith asunder from agape. Likewise, neither is the love of God’s children separable from the observation of the commandments.

This kind of argument makes no sense to those who imagine that the Christian life is some sort of cafeteria, in which I can decide what I will have and what I will not have. John’s presumption is that everything is coherent. Every component of the life in Christ presupposes and reaffirms every other part.

Thus, for John, the validating sign of agape is faithfulness to the commandments: “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments” (verse 3). This teaching is consonant with that in John’s Gospel: “If you love Me, keep My commandments” (John 14:15). And “He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me” (14:21).

These commandments of God are not difficult, John insists, because by faith in Christ we have overcome the world (verses 4-5).

We receive the testimony of men (verse 9) if it is supported by multiple witnesses, as the Torah requires (Deuteronomy 17:6; 19:15). How much more should we receive the testimony that God gives of His Son? The three “witnesses” in this case are the elements that flowed forth from the body of Jesus as He hung in sacrifice on the Cross: “the Spirit, the water, and the blood” (verse 8). This triadic list corresponds to John’s description of the death of Jesus.

First, there was the Spirit. In his description of the Lord's death, John's very suggestive wording is unique among the Four Evangelists: paredoken to pnevma (John 19:30). Generally, alas, that uniqueness is obscured in the standard English translations. They usually run something like this: "And bowing his head, he gave up his spirit" (NKJV).

Leaving aside the tender detail about the bowing of the Lord's head in death, nonetheless, such a translation is seriously inadequate. Paredoken to pnevma, wrote John. To translate this as "he gave up His spirit" deprives the sentence of more than half of its meaning. Taken literally (which is surely the proper way to take him), John affirms that Jesus "handed over the Spirit."

That is to say, the very breath, pnevma, with which the Lord expired on the Cross becomes for John the symbol and transmission of the Holy Spirit that the Lord confers on His Church gathered beneath. Support for this interpretation is found in the risen Lord's action and words to the apostles in the upper room in John 20:22, &qu