Lectionary #472...Sat. Oct 16, 2010 also Lectionary 462 and 463
Lectionary 472
Luke is the Evangelist of prayer yet Paul is the person of the New
Testament who actually prays and does not simply narrate a theme about
prayer or how Jesus prayed. We are immediately put into a prayer of Paul
whenever we read his introductory chapter right after the address to
someone or to a specific Church, then he gives the greeting and that is
followed by the prayer part that is called the "thanksgiving". So after
his greeting we have a direct prayer from Paul which is an inspired prayer
and can help us in our own way of praying. He becomes a mentor for our
prayer in this thanksgiving.
In Ephesians he is praying for the unity of the churches that are the body
of Christ; Christ is the head. The universalism of Ephesians is apparent;
there is also a cosmic universalism in this writing that includes all of
creation, but prayer is the theme we are focusing on today in this
meditation. When we pray with Paul we are never separated from the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He leads us to address them and to be mindful
of their presence in us. Trinitarian prayer is profound and personal; it
is dynamic and transcendent while also being immanent within us and our
relationship to the persons of the Trinity.
Christ is for Paul, the "Pleroma:, that is the fullness of God's redeeming
love that fills all the universe and the world and makes us believers to be
creative agents of Jesus' redemptive love. What an honor and an
entrustment! Thanksgiving, praise, and intercession are part of today's
prayer from Paul. He makes us mindful of the Trinity if we carefully
reflect upon the second part of the prayer today.
The Psalm chosen for the readings is helpful for it enters into the
universalism and cosmic dimension of Paul's manner of writing and praying.
God's presence is seen in the beauty of creation and in the cosmic powers
of the heavens. And God gives us his Son Jesus who is easily imaged in our
prayer through the Gospel passage we hear each day. The liturgical
response is a reflection upon verse 7 of the Psalm 8: "You gave your Son
authority over all creation."
In our Gospel passage, the Holy Spirit is central to the message. We are
not to fear about what we should say when we are confronted about our
faith. Here we would do well to also read again the best passages on the
role of the Spirit in Paul, chapter eight of his epistle to the Romans. It
needs no commentary. We only have to read it, pray it, and believe it.
Thus today we can pray with Paul through praying his prayer in Ephesians
1:15-23. We can pray with and through the Holy Spirit. Paul has a good
prayer for all of us, "May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of
Glory, grant you a Spirit of wisdom and insight to know him clearly." Amen.
Scripture for October 5, Lectionary # 462
Galatians 1:13-24. Psalm 139:13-14, 14-15. Luke 10:38-42.
Today's reading from Galatians gives us a first hand, an original, and a
direct personal account of the making of an apostle. Paul is open to the
spectacular calling and vocation God gives to him just as Isaiah and
Jeremiah were. As an apostle he will be sent and will touch more peoples
lives in the first century than all of the apostles put together. He
cooperates with the Spirit in prayer and solitude and thus quietly prepares
his being sent to the Gentiles. Only after some years does he meet the
pillars of the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem, namely, Peter, James, and
John. The he departs for Syria and iis probably in Antioch where the term
Christian is used for the first time.
In his letter to the Galatians he is also speaking to us who read it or
listen to someone reading it at the liturgy of the Word. We are amazed how
open, clear, and direct this apostle is when he addresses each congregation
or church.
Then Psalm 139, the most personal of the psalms is our response. How
appropriate for our reading about Paul and his own personal call as an
apostle. Though Paul never saw Jesus and live with as did the other
apostles, he is one with the Risen Christ and can do all things in and
through him. We have not lived or seen Jesus either but like Paul our
faith gives us the experience of Jesus when we pray, when we receive the
sacraments, when we love our brothers and sisters and when we even pray and
love those who hate us. Thus we too become agents of God's love through
Christ; we are called apostles too in today's world.
In the Gospel we have the story of Martha and Mary who had the joy of
entertaining Jesus and relaxing with him. He uses the home scene as another
occasion to teach them and us what it means to follow him and his Good
News. Both women were his dear friends who really made him feel loved and
comfortable. He laughed with them and teased them with his teaching on
doing and being which they represent. Both are necessare but maybe being is
the better part of friendship than doing friendship. Surely, the call and
vocation of the two women friends of Jesus are quite different from that of
Paul, but their hospitality and friendship help us to love as they did,
that is, as friends who share and experience Jesus' love. Amen.
October 6, Lectionary 463.
Scripture: Galatians 2:1-2.7-14. Psalm 117:2. Luke 11:1-4:
Blessed be Luke! He is the historian among the four evangelists, the most
gifted in the language and has attempted to give us a full account of all
that he has learned from others about what Jesus said and did. He even is
correcting the writings of others who have attemtped to do this. As a
theologian and pastoral theologian at that, he is also a man of prayer. He
gives us a shorterned form of the Our Father or Lord's Prayer in the
selection for today. He and Matthew received the handing down of this
prayers through an oral and then written source of Sayings of Jesus. These
two evangelists seemed to have borrowed from the same source and then
shaped it according to the needs of their contemporary readers and
believers. If Mark is for beginnners in the faith, Matthew helps them to
grow in knowledge of the faith, Luke sends them out to share and bring the
Good News to others especially the Gentiles and the poor. Skilled scribes
were involved in the whole preceding process of handing down and writing
down what they had heard about the Good News and about Jesus.
Thus the Lord's Prayer in Luke is adapted to the listeners of his audience
of believers. His theology is seen even in the way in which he gives us
the sayings and doings of Jesus. We are fortunate in having three early
forms of this prayer of the Lord--Matthew more Jewish and liturgical,
Didache very close to Matthew's and something handed down in the early
teaching of the Apostles, and finally Luke's version which is the object of
our meditation and prayer for today.
Luke gives us the simple introduction by saying, "Father" without any
additions to that endearing way of speaking of God. Fr. Robert Karras in
the New Jerome Biblical Commentary tells us the prayer is directed to those
believers who need encouragement to pray in a hostile environment. "To
have its own distinctive form of prayer was the mark of a religious
community. This ancient way of recognizing a religious community is also
true today, e.g., the consecration to Mary of Marianists; the "We adore
you" of Franciscans. Jesus' bquest of the Our Father to his disciples will
not only teach them how to pray, but especially how to live and act as his
followers." (NJBC, p.702).
Luke has only five petitions in his Lord's Prayer; Matthew has seven. They
may be summarized and prayed over with these simple words: May your name
be sanctified; your kingdom; bread; sins; and temptation.
Matthew has these same simple words but with more description around them.
Luke helps us ponder them over with his brief manner of praying this sacred
prayer. The final word "temptation" refers more to leaving the Christian
community or becoming an apostate instead of remaining as an apostle.
Luke also is said to have a variant reading in the Our Father: "May thy
Holy Spirit come upon us and cleanse us." St. Gregory of Nyssa in one of
his homilies declares that instead of the petition about the coming of the
kingdom Luke has "May thy Holy Spirit come upon us..." " Apparently,
therefore, the variant reading is a liturgical adaptation of the original
form of the Lord's Prayer, used perhaps when celebrating the rite of
baptism or the laying on of hands. The cleansing descent of the Holy Spirit
is so definitely a Christian, ecclesiastical concept that one cannot
understand why, if it were original in the prayers, it should have been
supplanted by the overwhelming majority of witnesses by a concept
originally much more Jewish in its piety."
( Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the New Testament, p.156). Amen.
posted by Fr. Bert SM at 1:29 PM
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