messiah

SUNDAY 15 SEPTEMBER 2024: THE TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME.

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Christ’s charge to Peter, Raphael 1516, Cartoon on Paper and Canvas, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK.

And [Jesus] asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter said to him in reply, “You are the Christ.”         Mark 8:29.

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Remember that the words Christ and Messiah mean the same thing, translated as “Anointed” in English. So when Peter announced that he believed Jesus was the Anointed One, he meant that Jesus was the long-promised savior sent from God. And in the minds of almost all Jews at that time, he would be the one who would lead them back to the glory days of King David, evict the Roman, pagan, unclean occupiers of the Promised Land and inaugurate a glorious new era. After all, with a short interlude of independence, the Jews had been a conquered people for about 500 years by the time of Jesus. They were aching for a deliverer to throw off the yoke of their pagan conquerers. All that is important to understand the dramatic discourse between Peter and Jesus in today’s gospel. After all, Jesus’ silence after Peter’s recognition signaled agreement with Peter. But when he declared that he, Jesus, would suffer and be killed at the hands of their priestly leaders, Peter rebuked him and was then labelled “Satan” by Jesus! So clearly there was a severe clash of expectations here, Jesus predicting disaster, and Peter the glory that everyone expected of the promised Messiah. Jesus stating clearly that he “must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed…” was absolutely NOT what his followers were expecting. And Peter stated that clearly, though apparently out of the hearing of everyone else. But Jesus called him “Satan” for so doing. There was a striking difference in expectations here, one which would almost destroy Jesus’ ministry.  But it is clearly what he envisioned for himself, and something he had to prepare his followers to anticipate.

What Jesus’ followers – and indeed almost the entire Jewish people to this day – did not accept can be seen in today’s opening reading from Isaiah, labelled the “Suffering Servant”. When Jesus examined the role of the Messiah during his sojourn in the desert following the revelation that he was the Messiah, and indeed the Son of God, at his baptism, he accepted that along with the powers of the godhead, seen in his power to cure suffering, the prophecies of Isaiah were integral to his vocation as Messiah. It was that revelation to his followers that caused such consternation. The Messiah was destined to suffer. Hardly anyone had linked the Suffering Servant prophecies of Isaiah to the long-promised Anointed One. To this day, our Jewish brothers and sisters reject that interpretation, and state instead that it is the nation of the Jewish people who must suffer (and indeed suffer they have). For them it is a communal prophecy, the personification of the Hebrew people, and not concerned with the One who is to come. Hence they still await the arrival of the Messiah. Yet from a Christian point of view, the parallels with Jesus’ suffering at the hands of the Roman guards and Isaiah’s words are  unbearably close. But one can understand Peter’s total abhorrence as Jesus’ words which conflicted so strongly with the Jewish people’s hope for delivery from the Roman yoke. And Jesus’ reaction was just as strong: “Get behind me Satan!” It meant that despite everything, Jesus’ followers had not a clue about his understanding of who the Anointed One was, and what was going to happen to him. To believe as Peter did, Jesus would have betrayed his vocation. It was the same temptation he had experienced in the desert with the Devil offering him the glories of the world for a simple bow to the Prince of Darkness, the opposite of God’s will.

Then what of us all today? What does all this have to do with living in the here and now? Well, we know that life has its major ups and downs. We know that death rears up in terrible fashion both in the newspapers and occasionally in our own life. We know pain is ever round the corner or perhaps even closer. There is darkness amid the light, sin and grace, failure and success. All of that means we either emerge all the stronger, sure of our strength as children of God. Or we are tempted to give up and, sometimes, despair, also known as the absence of God’s Holy Spirit, always there but dependent on us whether we open up or not. Jesus, as ever, must be our model. Given the horror of what he went through, with no sign of a loving God anywhere, he still believed and obeyed and, three days later, triumphed. That must be our model now and always. We are never alone.

Temptation of Christ, Duccio c. 1311, Maestà in the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, Siena, Italy.

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SUNDAY 28 JANUARY 2024: THE FOURTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME.

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The Conversation: The science of gossip, March 30, 2017.

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In their synagogue was a man with an unclean spirit; he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!”     Mark 1:23-24.

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Pope Francis certainly has a knack of saying things that go viral in seconds. In September 2013, for example, he let his opinion about gossip be known, even published in the papal newspaper Osservatore Romano. He pulled no punches; the opening line states, “Gossip is a weapon and it threatens the human community every day; it sows envy, jealousy and power struggles. It has even caused murder”. The picture above gives some small idea of what he is talking about. Some poor soul seems to be the butt of a rumor perhaps of a scandal going about, against which, of course, she is defenseless. But what is my point? In today’s gospel set in the synagogue in Capernaum, I think there is a clear potential of Jesus becoming what Pope Francis would deem the butt of malicious gossip in today’s gospel. The possessed man, mentioned in the quote above, is stating the truth. Indeed, Jesus IS the Holy One Of God, but… Releasing that news at the very beginning of Jesus’ mission would have been disastrous. Jesus immediately expelled the evil spirit, and with it the message which had the power to ruin his mission. Why? Well, the prevailing idea about the long-awaited Messiah in the Holy Land at that time was one of military might, he astride his mighty horse, able to expel by the sword the unclean, pagan, barbarian Roman occupiers for good, and restore the kingdom of David. That was hardly a description of the Lord! Once everyone came to the realization through gossip that he was not their idea of the Messiah, he would indeed have been the butt of whispers for evermore and his vocation ruined. Of course his ability to expel the evil spirit certainly showed he had extraordinary power, but in that solitary case, it tied in with his mission, the conquest of evil. Following his vocation in the way God wanted it would fulfill Moses’ prophesy in the first reading. Hence Jesus wished to obey God’s will for him, not through the crazed revelation of an evil devil who, though speaking the truth, intended to crush Jesus’ mission at the very beginning. So, in expelling that evil spirit Jesus was indeed beginning his mission in the right way, combating that which was not of God in the way that was of God. 

And so it must be for all of us. If we hear of a juicy piece of gossip concerning one of our neighbors or a co-worker in the office, what should we do? The temptation to pass it on is almost overwhelming, but in doing that, the contagion would spread. Even if the juicy “news” is true, what good would it do to spread it? Wouldn’t that make things worse for the person being targeted? What if we were in those shoes? And I would not be surprised if many of us have secret truths we would prefer to remain untouched, let alone the subject of gossip. Jesus knew that his version of the Messiah was completely at odds with the prevailing, and universally accepted, idea of the Messiah being the one who would rid the country of the ruling and hated Gentile Romans and reign as the new King David. It is easy to accept the first reading, the passage from Deuteronomy, in that light, and almost everyone did. No-one would see in the figure of the holy man from Nazareth the New David! So Jesus had to crush the evil spirit’s message immediately. Jesus wanted people to come to the truth in their own, unique, way, not in muffled whispers from one to another with laughter as the conclusion. That was the danger, and it was avoided.

So from this, Pope Francis’ condemnation of gossip makes a great deal of sense. Gossip had the potential strength to destroy even Jesus’ divine mission. It was saved right there in that synagogue in Capernaum, the ruins of which are still visible in Galilee to this day:

 

The Remains of the Synagogue at Capernaum in Galilee, Israel, September 2018.

It is thought Jesus walked on the older black stone floor beneath the later sculpted white stone.

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Reflections on next Sunday’s Mass Readings will be posted on Wednesday.

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