Readings in May/June 2008

Sixth Week of Easter

Thursday 1 May
St Joseph the Worker (Opt)
Acts 18.1-8, Psalm 97, John 16.16-20

For the Messiah to speak to the world, he had to be fed and clothed, protected and educated. He had himself to be the work of Joseph and Mary, as well as the work of God. They contributed to his making as all parents do to the making of their children. For Jesus to understand in his humanity what it was to go to his ultimate father, the source of fatherhood, it was necessary for him to know what it was to come from a father. An earthly father, who was the image of his heavenly father.
‘What opportunities you are missing’ people would have said, hating their meekness. The saints missed nothing. They were waiting for the greatest opportunity. Death was the call. Here, it is on earth that we are all idle in the market place, here it will one day be seen to have been emptiness and idleness compared with the fullness of life which is to be revealed hereafter.
Bede Jarrett OP.
No abiding city.

Friday 2 May
St Athanasius
Acts 18.9-18, Psalm 102, John 16.20-23

We pray, ‘Holy Mary pray for us now and at the hour of our death.’ We might well pray, ‘Holy Mary Mother of God, pray for us now and at the hour of our birth.’ Sin brought death into the world, and sin causes birth itself to be a thing of pain. Not just the pain of a woman in physical birth but the pain and sacrifice involved in all birth of new things, all living towards the future. Yet the pain of birth does not guarantee that there will be a child born into the world. Isaiah 26.18, ‘we were with child, we writhed, but we gave birth only to wind. We have won no victories on earth, and no one is born to inhabit the world.’ Christ did not take away the struggle of birth but pledged that there would be fruit for that pain. Eve still bears her children in pain, but now they are to be born for life and not for death.
It has sometimes been scornfully said, on the other hand, that the zeal of Christians, in the discussion of theological subjects, has increased with the mysteriousness of the doctrine in dispute. There is no reason why we should shrink from the avowal. Doubtless, a subject that is dear to us, does become more deeply fixed in our affections by its very peculiarities and incidental obscurities. We desire to revere what we already love; and we seek for the materials of reverence in such parts of it, as exceed our intelligence or imagination.
Cardinal Newman.
Arians of the Fourth Century.

Saturday 3 May
Ss Philip and James, apostles, feast
1 Corinthians 15.8, Psalm 18, John 14.6-14

A particularly good holiday is sufficient to be described as a life changing experience in recent times. For Philip and James, it was not just their life which was changed by the years spent with Jesus but life itself. They were born in one world and were to die in quite another. Everything had changed, and in proclaiming Jesus to the world, the Apostles were to proclaim to the world not just the nature of Jesus but the nature of the world itself. The Church understands the world, the world does not understand the Church. So there is always conflict in this world, which does not know the Father (John 17.25). Yet Jesus knows the Father, and through his Apostles and his Church, the world itself will be brought to know the Father. We celebrate some of the Apostles jointly, as here, as a sign that the Apostles proclaim to the world not just a theory of love, but a life of love, so that in their love for each other, all men will know that they are disciples (John 13.35).
The ‘Mystery of Jesus’ is not the more or less artificial creation of later generations. It is rooted in the attitude of the Nazarene, completely dedicated to his humble task, but convinced that he held an exceptional authority which came from God; engaged in many dialogues at the one time and not seeking to bring them into unity; too great to be entirely comprehended by any of his interlocutors, but partially grasped by many of them.
Etienne Trocmé.
Jesus of Nazareth.

Seventh Week of Easter

Monday 5 May

Acts 19.1-8, Psalm 67, John 16.29-33

There is no knowledge of anything important which is a once and for all knowledge. The analogy for knowledge in the Old Testament is the act of eating. The fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Taste and see that the Lord is good, as the psalmist says. We don’t eat once and are so satisfied by the taste, or so filled by the food, that we never eat again. In the same way, knowing, like eating is a series of repeated acts. The Apostles found out how trivial their knowledge of Jesus was through their betrayal of him. Yet their failure did not mean that they did not really know Jesus. It was more a case that it was only through their failure that they could begin to know Jesus in the grace and mercy which they had never understood. Although they would never fail quite so dramatically again, there would be failings in their life which would teach them to eat once again from the tree of wisdom. We might say, give us this day our daily knowledge.
I do not intend to imply that the fullness of the Word of God, who is Jesus Christ, does not illuminate the Old Testament;
I said that one cannot know Jesus Christ unless one knows historical Israel, and it is a Christian belief that one cannot know historical Israel fully unless one knows Jesus Christ. It is not a matter of two distinct realities illuminating each other but rather of a single reality known entirely. It is, as I have said, first and foremost a story.
John L McKenzie SJ.
The significance of the Old Testament for Christian faith
in Roman Catholicism.

Tuesday 6 May

Acts 20.17-27, Psalm 67, John 17.1-11

Love never leaves. Whether we depart life, or simply a place, we do not leave anything behind if we love it. It belongs to us, goes with us always, and we are with it always. This is because love by its nature, as an image of the Trinity, is an eternal presence, and farewells, departures are themselves a sign of this. For the rest of his life, St Paul would stand on the beach at Ephesus, be with the church in that place, and he would be with them in hope, because hope is the gateway to love. Hope is a virtue which is peculiarly concerned with absence and separation. Hope is the power to believe that whatever keeps us apart, we will overcome all obstacles and one day, and we will all be one.
But God is first made glorious here, when he is made known to humanity by being proclaimed, and preached through the faith of believers. Therefore he said,
I glorified you on earth, I finished the worked which you gave me to do. He does not say ordered, but given. Here is commended grace as evident. For what does human nature have, even in the Only-begotten, which it has not received.
St Augustine.
Tractatus 105 on John.

Wednesday 7 May

Acts 20.28-38, Psalm 67, John 17.11-19

Blessings are bound up with departures in the Bible. The Patriarchs bless their children as they come to die, Rebecca is blessed by her family as she departs to marry Isaac, (Gen. 24.60). Even the creation being blessed by God is a sort of departure as he rests. Blessings are in essence a desire for the other to be itself. God rests after creation, so that creation would follow its own nature. The world before the fall would have been a world in which we would have had some say in its being shaped. Sin has made this more difficult, but it is not sin which makes us responsible for this world. That was always going to be the case. In the same way, Paul is godlike, as he continues his journey to God, blessing the Church at Ephesus, entrusting it to its destiny, its struggles which are to come. A blessing is an act of trust, a gift of hope.
If she is afraid, if she has fear, she should place herself immediately in love. She feels repelled by the divine greatness, the frightening centrifugal force of the power of religion. The only safety is love, the charity which alone can put us into a place of friendship with God. You wish to run away from God, so run to God
(St Augustine). You are afraid of God, throw yourself at him through love.
Père Dehau quoted by Raissa Maritain. Journal de Raissa.

Thursday 8 May

Acts 22.30; 23.6-11, Psalm 15, John 17.20-26

Jesus prays that his disciples will have unity. Yet he prays for a special kind of unity, the unity of the Father and the Son. This unity is the perfect unity where the Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Father. It is not the unity where people disappear into each other, where one or both ceases to be themselves. It is the paradoxical unity where both lose themselves in each other, but at the same time find themselves in each other. Where they are perfectly themselves but perfectly given to each other. It is a sin against unity to be too close to each other, so close, in fact, that the two cannot see each other, which is why when one says to another, ‘let me look at you’ the first thing they do is stand apart.
Present and Eternity are not, like present and future, located side by side and separated; rather they are interwoven. That is the real difference between utopia and eschatology…….The Kingdom of God is much closer than the Tantalus-fruit of Utopia because it is not a chronological future, does not come chronologically later, but refers at all times to the wholly other, which for that very reason is able to embed itself within time, so as to simply take it up within itself and make of it pure presence.
Cardinal Ratzinger.
God is near us.

Friday 9 May

Acts 25.13-21, Psalm 102, John 21.15-19

When Peter proclaims his love for Jesus, it is based on his own self-knowledge. Jesus leads Peter to proclaim his love on the basis of Jesus’ knowledge of him. It was through him all things were made, so it was through him that Peter was made. The knowledge of the Christ which Jesus possesses is not some way of looking into the depths of Peter’s heart, but his knowledge of the life of Peter as a whole, all that Peter would be in its entirety. This is why Jesus reveals his knowledge of the death of Peter. It is not what Peter feels at any one time which would determine the love of Peter, but what his whole life would turn out to be.
The contrary of sin is not morality but faith. Hence the problem must be reversed in its entirety. Evil is not the first thing we understand but the last. It is the last article of the creed and not the first.
Paul Ricoeur.
The conflict of interpretations.

Saturday 10 May

Acts 28.16-20, 30-31, Psalm 10, John 21.20-25

There is a certain egoism in Christian life. Peter is not to be concerned with John, and John is not to be concerned with Peter. This egoism comes from the nature of responsibility. We can be responsible for aspects of other people’s lives, to do for them what it is not given to them to do. We can share burdens, we can co-operate with each other. In the end though, we are responsible for ourselves. If Peter is to be the rock on which the Church is to be built, he must first consider Peter.
Two lives, divinely preached and commended to her, are known by the Church. One is in faith, the other in vision, one in the time of the journey, the other in the eternity of rest, one is on the road, the other is in the homeland. One is signified by the Apostle Peter, the other by John.
St Augustine.
Tractatus 124 on John.