THIRTY FIRST SUNDAY OF THE YEAR - A

THIRTY FIRST SUNDAY OF THE YEAR – A:
(Mal 1:14-2:1-2,8-10; 1Thess 2:7-9,13; Math 23:1-12)

Theme: We are called to live with coherence and integrity our life and our testimony

Reflection:

- Last Sunday we have reflected upon the commitment and dedicated life we should have by loving God and loving neighbor, the two principle commandments which are built one on the other and one exposes and completes the other: God’s love to be built upon the love of the neighbor because if we are not able to love our neighbor whom we can see, we cannot love God whom we cannot see (1 Jn 4:20); and on the way, neighbor’s love to be for the exposition and completion of God’s love because God made himself ‘an ordinary man taking human flesh’ to be our neighbor and to give a meaning for the love of the neighbor;
- Today we are called, as we have already themed, to have a coherent and integral life: that is, we need to demonstrate the balance between what we say and what we do, between our words and our actions, between our prayers and our practice, between our life of faith and our life of testimony; without this coherence and integrity we are not full and we are perfect; we only show the one side of the coin of our life leaving the other side in the dark or hidden; we only testify one part of life keeping aside the other part in the in cold box; in one word and as the gospels put it, we become liars and hypocrites;
- Jesus calls us to be attentive to an attitude of this kin (the first verses of today’s gospel); to be attentive means ‘to see and to observe and to act accordingly’; Jesus calls his disciples just to see and observe and not to act as the scribes and Pharisees and the reason for this is ‘the hypocrisy’ they demonstrate in their life with their ‘authoritative word’ and with their failure to ‘practice what they preach’ – the exact words of Jesus help us to understand this – “for they do not practice what they teach” (v.3). Hence Jesus calls us to be, unlike them, a people who can transform their words into actions, their prayers into works, and their celebrations into the occasions of love.

First Reading:

- Prophet Malachi and Prophecy to the Priests:
o Prophet Malachi is one of the twelve small prophets and is not known or not so familiar like others; Malachi means most probably ‘an announce of the Lord’; though each and every prophet is called to be the mouth of the Lord and the predicator of the word of God, Malachi by his name becomes himself ‘an announce of the Lord’.
o Though he is less notable than other prophets, his voice is firm and without hesitations: he directs his message with lot of vehemence to those who have occupied the post of guidance and responsibility and they are the priests and the Levites of his time; because he denounces them and warns them in the name of the Lord who has made him a prophet because these people who have to be ‘the guide to the people’ and the ‘responsible in their task’, have become hypocrites and thus have reduced the true adoration to a mere and exterior ritualism and have made their community responsibility into the play for fulfilling their private interests;
o We can see the gravity of their failure in the two ‘grave sins’:
 Forgetting the truth of being the priests of God they have walked away from the His presence and neglected the authenticity of their call: “you have turned aside from the way” (v.8);
 Less worse they have blocked the people from their offering of cult to God and they have led the people also astray with their wrong teachings: “you have caused many to stumble by your instruction” (v.8);
 The totality of their sins consisted in their failure to give ‘glory to the name of the Lord’: they are called to be the true priests of the Lord by their faithful offering of the sacrifices to God and by their authentic teaching of God’s word to the people; instead they have not as demanded from them for their being priests and that’s what made God to pronounce the judgment and a word of condemnation if they are do not do the required: “If you will not listen, if you will not lay it to heart to give glory to my name, says the Lord of hosts, then I will send the curse on you and I will curse your blessings” (v.2).
- Time of curse also for the priests:
o ‘And Now’ (2:2): there is time also for the condemnation of priests; though there the chosen ones and consecrated ones, just because of their being anointed, they would not escape the judgment of the Lord unless they keep themselves faithful to their call and ministry until the end;
o There is time for everyone to be judged and given the retribution according to their attitude and response to the call and to their proper vocation; no one can escape God’s eye and God’s voice; everyone falls into his word and action at the appointed time;
o “And Now” is the appointed time for the priests who were leading the people in the wrong path with their false teachings and who were utilizing the ‘simple and common people’ like poor and widows for their own selfish motives; now is the time for them to face the judgment which they have bought with their own ‘wrong words’ and ‘false actions’;
o Until now God has extended his word and his law to the common people through the mouth of the prophets and through the cult of the priests, now it is time for the priests to be tested for their attitude to the same word and the same law and that’s why God speaks through Malachi exclusively to the priests: “And now, O priests, this command is for you” (v. 2:1);
- Everyone has an ‘appointed time’ for his answer
o This only shows as already indicated that each member of the ‘community of God’, be it its priests or be it its simple member, has to answer, one day, in front of God for his words and actions;
o If there is no coherence and integrity between ‘what he says and what he does’, then he has to be responsible and to be ready to face the consequence that God would give as a recompense.


Second Reading:

- Paul and his mission: to be tender and motherly in the work
o Paul brings about an image which is very dear to the Bible (example: Ps 130/131) and very dear to Jesus himself (John 16:21) and that is of the mother (v.7); though we see the word ‘nurse’ in the English translation of RSV (like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children, v.7), the translation that is little more closer to the original Greek translation uses the word ‘mother’ (as a mother nourishes and has the care of her proper creatures); more than a nurse it is mother who shows tenderness to her children; and Paul says that the Apostle or the minister of the Lord has to be ‘so’ in his mission of transmitting the word;
o He expresses his desire of offering the total self for the people who have become dear to him; it is, in other words, giving his life for his people as in the parable of Good Shepherd of Jesus; his beautiful words help us understand better: “So deeply we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us” (v.8);
o Sharing the Gospel and Sharing the very self have become closely linked and connected; the Gospel of Christ has become the ‘person himself’; Paul still goes further saying that the Apostle has to be a mother who not only communicates to her children all her valuable gifts she possesses, that is, the Gospel, but also and above all her life itself.
- Communication of the Gospel and Communication of the Person
o Once again it is clear that Gospel message of Christ has to become the very person; once the minister accepts the call of Jesus and comes forward to fulfill his vocation of preaching, he has to make the message his own and thus proclaim not just a word but a life itself;
o For Paul, who has already said that ‘it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me’ (Gal 2:20), it is the life that is preached and it is the person, which is both the word and action, that is communicated;
o The preaching of the Gospel becomes authentic and perfect only when the word is proclaimed not by the tongue/mouth but by the heart/life. Jesus himself is a model for this: He is no longer a Word but a Word became Man (in incarnation) and a Word became an Act of salvation (in paschal mystery). Thus he has become the Gospel proclamation and proclaimed.
o The Gospel transformed into the Living Person; the word is not preached but witnessed; the word not heard but seen; this means, thus, being coherent and integral in the life and in the witness.

Gospel:

- The general context of the passage: Jesus admonishes the Scribes and Pharisees:
o The chapter 23 of Mathew comes immediately after the chapter (22) full of meaning: that starts with the parable of the Wedding Banquet (vv.1-14) in which we reflect that the Lord has prepared a banquet for all and he has sent invitation to all to participate but the invitees, not accepting the call and going away with their own business and with their personal motives; and the invitation is sent again, this time, not to those who were called before, but to all that are on the roads and once they are brought to the wedding hall they have to have a ‘wedding garment’ (faith) to enter and participate in the banquet; if the faith is not manifested then there is no place for banqueting; then we have question of the paying taxes (vv. 15-22) in which Jesus reminds us that we have the commitment to offer to God his proper glory and we have also the responsibility for the growth of the earthly society because as Christians we are to witness the kingdom of God on earth by working for it and that is the summary of it: “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and to God the things that are God’s”; and finally the chapter concludes with the ‘Great commandment’ (vv. 34-40) of love of God and the love of the neighbor in the one and the same love;
o The chapter is also immediately followed by the Eschatological discourse of Jesus with the chapter 24 in which Jesus speaks of the destruction of the temple that would take place soon, the signs that would appear at the end of the age and the watchfulness that the man has to have to attend them and to be alert to accept them;
o Between these two chapters falls the present chapter of 23: it a chapter dedicated by Mathew to speak of the Scribes and Pharisees and to admonish them for their un-exemplary life they live;
o Like in the first reading also Mathew presents a controversial attitude of Jesus towards the religious authorities of his time who without being true to their call and vocation have gone away from the path of God and making the common people also burdened with imposition of the unnecessary laws which they have made for their own selfish purposes;
o Jesus after revealing the mystery of the kingdom of God to the people in the kind words and loving action and thus in the form of parables and in the form of miracles, NOW, just before his passion and death, he raises his tone and his volume in a manner little more harsh than normal and admonished them against the Pharisees and scribes just because they have not done justice to their call.
- The exegetical explanation: Jesus drawing the attention of his followers towards the attitude of the Scribes and Pharisees:
o Vv. 1-3: Moses and the authority of Jesus time: the Scribes and the Pharisees are the blessed ones because they are sitting on the chair of Moses, the law giver; they are the fortunate people because they are given the authority of transmitting the law of God to the people; it is blessed call and it is a holy vocation they are endowed with: they are the authentic interpreters of the law; and so it is always inside of Judaism; It is because of this reason that Jesus asks his disciples and followers to listen to them carefully and observe them thoroughly just because they are authentic teachers of the law and at the same time Jesus warns them to be away from their actions – because they do not practice what they preach and they have become ‘hypocrites’, the word Jesus uses very often in the following verses.
o Vv. 4-10: they have become more superficial and they have become more apparent in their behavior and in their attitude and in the particular way, in their propagation of the law: they have started seeking their self-glory and they started acting for their vain-glory and Jesus gives them the reasons why and how they have turned out to be:
 They started imposing the new interpretations of the authentic law on the people – as a heavy yoke on their shoulders to carry – so that in their failure to follow them they demand some goods from them for their own stomachs: this could be also called, in our language, playing with the hunger of the poor. In this way they have neglected to transmit the true law given by Moses;
 On the other hand, Jesus, the giver of the New Law of Love, provides them the yoke that is light and easy to carry (Math 11:28ff); that is of humility and meekness; this is the central problem which existed always between the Judaism and Christianity and between the Law and the Gospel;
 Another reason why they are acting this way is to be admired and to be exalted by others; Jesus criticizes a defect that is almost inevitable in those who desire to be the model and example for the community; the defect here is seeking for the self-glory than committing oneself for the community;
 Another reason for their such behavior is that they wanted to be ‘Rabbi-Father-Master’ (7-10): they are in this way throwing away God from his throne and they want to occupy it themselves; they are in this way acting contrary to the will of God who is the Only Rabbi, the Only Father and the Only Master;
o Vv. 11-12: Christian has to be contrary to the world’s thoughts: Jesus does not stop his discourse of warning his disciples and his followers to be watchful on the attitude of their leaders who act falsely, but he also exhorts them not to chose their paths: “But you are not to be” (v.8). In elevating them still more in their choice of following Him, Jesus tells to take him as their example: “The great among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled and all who humble themselves will be exalted” (vv. 11-12); before telling them to be a servant and to be humble, He made himself a servant and humble (Phil 2:6-10); this is the difference between Jesus, the True Master and the Scribes, the false teacher because Jesus says and does and does what he says and the false teachers only say what they intend but do not practice what they say;
- The meaning of the passage for us today as we hear it: Be for Jesus and Be through Jesus;
o We are elevated in our life to imbibe the attitude of Jesus, who is meek and humble, who is servant and obedient and who is last of all and least of all; we are to learn the same kind of mentality;
o In order to learn this: the first thing we have to do is to be attentive to the false teaching and inauthentic actions of our times: specially to the attractive but unreasonable instructions of some religions on one hand and in internal sense, to the non coherent attitude of leaders – be it priests and any other minister – who say something and act differently;
o Though today’s Gospel is little harsh we need not take it in the letter sense but with the spirit with which Jesus has warned the people not to fall into the same kind of attitude and thus become hypocrites who lose the kingdom God and finally perish in their own pits;

Conclusion:

- More than the law, Gospel is important; More than Moses, Jesus important; more than the words, actions are important; more than the prayers, practicing is important; more than preaching, testimony is important: as Pope Paul VI says ‘we need witnesses, not the teachers’.
- It does not mean that we have throw away into dustbin or we have to neglect the law, the words, the prayers, the preaching and finally Moses and the prophets; they are the foundation and they serve as the basis for the authentic living; if the first ones are not there, the second ones have no completion; therefore we need to take into consideration both of them and giving little more importance to the living part of it.
- Are we really True Christians or are we hypocrites? This question should be authentically answered today as we listen to the word and receive the nourishment of the Eucharist; this is the question which we should keep on asking in every instance of witnessing our faith and our life; only then the exhortation of Jesus for us today, as it was for his disciples and followers, has meaning and its destiny in us and for us;
- Finally, we have to keep in mind always that we speak not by words but by actions, we preach not by lips but by heart and we testify not by talk but by love because we are called to live with coherence and integrity our Christian life.