Qua bài Tin Mừng
hôm nay, Chúa Giêsu nhắc nhở mọi người chúng ta rằng khi chúng ta xây nhà trên
cát, nó cũng giống như việc xây dựng niềm tin của chúng ta vào sự lãnh đạo sai
lầm và những lời tuyên bố giả dối. Đây là loại đức tin sẽ không kéo dài. Thay
vào đó, để xây một ngôi nhà được vững chắc, bền lâu, chúng ta phải xây trên một
nền tảng bằng đá chắc, có nghĩa là "nên xây dựng cuộc sống của mình vào
Thiên Chúa," vì Thiên Chúa ví chính Mình như là "Đá Tảng". Ở
đây, Chúa Giêsu nhắc lại những mối quan hệ trong giao ước giữa Thiên Chúa với
dân Israel tại Sinai. Bất chấp tất cả những gì đã xảy ra trong lịch sử của
Israel. Thiên Chúa vẫn luôn luôn trung thành với giao ước.
Chúng ta nên tránh xa những nhà lãnh
đạo sai quấy, những người tìm cách dẫn đưa chúng ta đến gần với họ hơn là đến gần
với Thiên Chúa. Ơn gọi của chúng ta cũng như các môn đệ, là sống để làm theo ý
muốn của Thiên Chúa và không ngừng xây dựng mối liên hệ giữa chúng ta và Thiên
Chúa theo tinh thần của giao ước mới giữa Thiên Chúa và chúng ta. Đó là một cuộc
sống biết dựa vào sự quan hệ với Thiên Chúa bằng niềm tin không thể sụp đổ, Với
niềm tin vững mạnh vào Thiên Chúa chúng ta sẽ chẳng còn sợ gì, cho dù là sức mạnh
của bảo tố cỡ nào đi nữa, thì nó cũng không thể lay chuyển được chúng ta.
Reflection:
In his sermon, Jesus tells the
people that when we build our house on sand, it is like building our faith on
false leadership and false claims. This type of faith will not last. Instead,
to build our house on a rock, means to “to build one’s life on God,” since God
is Himself is “the Rock”. Here, Jesus recalls the covenant relationship
established by God with the people of Israel at Sinai. Regardless of all that
had happened in the history of Israel, God has always remained faithful to the
covenant.
We
should avoid false leadership or claims that seek to lead us closer, not to
God, but to the leader himself or herself. Our call as disciples is to do God’s
will and to constantly build on the covenant relationship between God and us. A
life build on this covenant relationship with God cannot fall, no matter how
strong the forces against it.
Lord, help me
build my trust in You alone.
When Jesus finished these
words, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one
having authority, and not as their scribes. Matthew 7:28–29
These lines conclude the Sermon
on the Mount found in Matthew’s Gospel chapters 5–7. In that lengthy sermon,
Jesus touches on many topics and presents us with a summary of all we need to
know in our lives of faith. In these concluding lines of His sermon, the words
“astonished” and “authority” should stand out. Why were the crowds astonished
at Jesus’ teaching? Because His teaching was new and relied upon a new
authority that the people hadn’t experienced before.
The authority with which the
scribes taught was based upon their knowledge of the traditions handed down to
them from earlier teachers. The scribes studied long and hard and then
presented what they had learned. This was the form of religious teaching that
the people were used to receiving.
Jesus, however, arrived on the
scene and astonished the crowds, because He spoke with a new authority that
they had not seen before. Jesus’ authority came forth from His very Person. It
was not based upon what He had studied and learned from those who preceded Him.
Instead, when He spoke, it was He Himself Who was not only the mouthpiece of
the New Law of grace, He was also the Author of the Law and its source.
Try to ponder the idea of
authority. For example, a child knows that a parent has authority over them.
They may not like it at times, but they understand that they do not set the
rules of the house but must abide by the rules set by their parents. Or consider
the authority of civil leaders. Law enforcement officers, for example, have an
authority entrusted to them by their office. They are not only well versed in
the rule of law, they can also enforce it and everyone knows it.
Similarly, Jesus did not just
know about the new and glorious truths He taught. He did not simply learn them
from the Father in Heaven and then pass them on verbally. Instead, when He
taught, He did so as the One Who knew the New Law of grace, the One from Whom
it originated, and the one and only Person sent to enact and enforce this New
Law.
Reflect, today, upon the New
Law of grace and mercy taught by our Lord, especially as it is contained in the
lengthy Sermon on the Mount. Reading those words is much more than something we
study and learn. The words themselves are alive; they are the Word of God.
Reading them makes present to us the same authority that the crowds experienced
in Jesus’ time. Everything Jesus taught was and is new, deep, profound,
transforming and alive. And when He teaches it, He also establishes His divine
authority to enforce it upon the world. This is good news, because His New Law
is not an imposition; it is the one and only source of freedom and new life.
Reflect upon this New Law of our Lord and pray that you will more fully come
under its authority.
My glorious Lawgiver, You
taught as One with authority. Today, as Your holy Word is read and proclaimed,
You continue to exercise Your new and glorious authority of love and mercy.
Please help me to listen to You and to always submit myself to Your authority
so that I am governed by Your New Law of grace. Jesus, I trust in You.
Thursday of the Twelfth Week in
Ordinary Time 2025
Opening Prayer: Lord
God, I want my house and my life to be built wisely on solid rock and not
foolishly on shifting sand. I promise to listen to the life-giving words of
your Son and act on them. May I accomplish your heavenly will in all that I do.
Encountering the Word of God
1. Tempted by Sarai: In
the First Reading, we hear of Sarai’s solution to the problem of not having any
children. Just as Eve tempted her husband, Adam, and gave him the fruit of the
tree of knowledge of good and evil, Sarai tempted her husband, Abram, to father
a child with her Egyptian maidservant, Hagar. This was not God’s plan. God was
testing his servants, and they failed to be patient. Sarai and Abram wanted to
hasten the fulfillment of God’s promise instead of continuing to trust in the
Lord. Just as Eve listened to the serpent who falsely promised a share in God’s
life through sin, so also Sarai listened to the temptation to bring about God’s
promise through sin. “Just as Eve gave the forbidden fruit to Adam, so likewise
Sarai gives the forbidden fruit of Hagar to Abram” (Gray and Cavins, Walking
with God, 43-44). When we sin, we lie to ourselves.
2. Abram’s Sin: Just as
Adam did not object to the sinful fruit offered by Eve, Abram did not object to
Sarai’s proposal. “And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai” (Genesis 16:2).
“That verse has an ominous ring. Did he think to seek the voice of God in this
matter? Perhaps he just mused, God helps those who help themselves. Humanly
speaking, Sarai was way beyond the age of fertility. So why not try out
her suggestion, Abram may have rationalized. After all, God’s promise of
‘seed’ didn’t specify a female individual by name” (Hahn, A Father who
Keeps His Promises, 101). The fallout of their sin “is tension
in the home (16:4), retaliation (16:6), and the birth of a wild and contentious
son (16:12)” (Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, 78). God will respond to
Abram’s sin by inviting him fourteen years later to “walk before me, and be
blameless” (Genesis 17:1). God promises that Abraham would have a son by Sarai.
And as a sign of this covenant promise, God commands circumcision. And this
sign has a penitential dimension, considering Abraham tried to bring about
God’s plan by having sexual relations with his wife’s maidservant.
3. The Conclusion to the Sermon on the Mount: In the
Gospel, Jesus, the son of David, concludes his Sermon on the Mount with two
teachings: the first is the need to do the will of the Father in order to enter
the Kingdom of Heaven; the second is to listen to Jesus’ words and act on them.
The two teachings go hand in hand: Jesus is the one who reveals to us the will
of the Father. Every time we read the Gospel in prayer, we are listening to
Jesus’ words. By keeping his commands, we remain in his love (John 15:10).
God’s word enables us to find the path that leads to harmony with God’s loving
will. In Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict taught that we can
discern God’s will and recognize it in our conscience, but that we also need
Jesus to draw us up to himself and into himself, so that in communion with him
we can learn God’s will (see Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Vol. 1,
148-150).
Conversing with Christ: Lord Jesus,
Lord Jesus, you have built your house on rock. It will never fail or be
destroyed. Teach me how to build my house properly. May I truly be in this
world a Temple of your Spirit, a spiritual house of prayer, sacrifice, and
merciful love.
Thursday of the
Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time 2024
Opening
Prayer: Lord God, I want my house and my life to
be built wisely on solid rock and not foolishly on shifting sand. I promise to
listen to the life-giving words of your Son and act on them. May I accomplish
your heavenly will in all that I do.
Encountering
the Word of God
1.
The Last Kings of Judah: To understand the First Reading, it is good to
recall that the reforms of King Hezekiah (715-686 B.C.) and King Josiah
(640-609 B.C.) failed to stem the tide of divine judgment against the Kingdom
of Judah. The sins of King Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah, were abominable:
Manasseh “not only rebelled against God’s covenant but perfected evil in Judah
and Jerusalem as never before. He even sacrificed his own children on the fiery
altar of the pagan god Molech and ordered the death of thousands of Jewish
children on altars outside of Jerusalem” (Hahn, A Father Who Keeps His
Promises, 223). These sins sealed the fate of Jerusalem and not even the
reform of King Josiah was enough to correct the evil. “Despite Josiah’s
desperate efforts to renew the covenant, Pharaoh Necho defeated and killed him
in battle at Megiddo. Three months later [Necho] deposed Josiah’s son,
Jehoahaz, and installed Jehoiakim as a puppet king. Jehoiakim’s ‘reign’ was
therefore already bondage” (Levering, Ezra & Nehemiah, 40).
Josiah’s son, Jehoiakim, reigned in Judah for eleven years, but “did evil in
the sight of the Lord, according to all that his fathers had done” (2 Kings
23:37). In 605 B.C. the Babylonians marched into Palestine and made Judah a
vassal state after defeating the Egyptians at the Battle of Carchemish (Ignatius
Catholic Study Bible: The First and Second Book of the Kings, 108).
2.
The Fall of Jerusalem: Two decades after the reforms of King Josiah,
Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians in the spring of 597 B.C. and a major
deportation of Judean exiles to Babylon occurred. The King of Babylon,
Nebuchadnezzar, carried away the royal family along with skilled workers and
soldiers from Jerusalem. In place of Jehoiakim, Nebuchadnezzar appointed
Mattaniah, Jehoiakim’s uncle, as king and changed his name to Zedekiah. In
response to Zedekiah’s rebellion against Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar returned a
decade later, in 586 B.C., to lay siege to Jerusalem and carry the Judeans away
into captivity. The Book of Chronicles says this about Zedekiah’s reign: “He
did what was evil in the sight of the Lord his God. He did not humble himself
before Jeremiah the prophet, who spoke from the mouth of the Lord. He also
rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear by God; he
stiffened his neck and hardened his heart against turning to the Lord, the God
of Israel. All the leading priests and the people likewise were unfaithful,
following all the abominations of the nations; and they polluted the house of
the Lord which he had hallowed in Jerusalem” (2 Chronicles 36:12-14). Psalm 78
is taken from Book Three of the Psalter. The Psalm “contrasts the promises of
the Davidic kingdom and Zion with the reality of Israel in exile. If Israel is
God's ‘inheritance’ why have the nations been allowed to overcome them? If God
has loved Zion so much and has made it His sanctuary, why has God allowed his
Temple to be defiled and destroyed? Like many of the Davidic psalms, it ends
with a promise to offer todah [thanksgiving] once the
restoration has occurred (v. 13)” (Barber, Singing in the Reign,
110).
3.
The Conclusion to the Sermon on the Mount: In
the Gospel, Jesus, the son of David, concludes his Sermon on the Mount with two
teachings: the first is the need to do the will of the Father in order to enter
the Kingdom of Heaven; the second is to listen to Jesus’ words and act on them.
The two teachings go hand in hand: Jesus is the one who reveals to us the will
of the Father. Every time we read the Gospel in prayer we are listening to
Jesus’ words. By keeping his commands, we remain in his love (John 15:10).
God’s word enables us to find the path that leads to harmony with God’s loving
will. In Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict taught that we can
discern God’s will and recognize it in our conscience, but that we also need
Jesus to draw us up to himself and into himself, so that in communion with him
we can learn God’s will (see Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Vol. 1,
148-150).
Conversing
with Christ: Lord Jesus, you have built your house on
rock. It will never fail or be destroyed. Teach me how to build my house
properly. May I truly be in this world a Temple of your Spirit, a spiritual
house of prayer, sacrifice, and merciful love.
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