Catholic lectionary for 5 September 2015

King James Version (en)

King James Version (en)

Colossians, Chapter 1, verses 21-23

²¹ encourageth them to receive Jesus Christ, and commendeth his own ministry

²¹And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled

²²In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight:

²³If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I Paul am made a minister;

Read more:Colossians, Chapter 1

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1

1:21 And you that were alienated, and enemies - Actual alienation of affection makes habitual enmity. In your mind - Both your understanding and your affections. By wicked works - Which continually feed and increase inward alienation from, and enmity to, God. He hath now reconciled - From the moment ye believed.

1:22 By the body of his flesh - So distinguished from his body, the church. The body here denotes his entire manhood.Through death - Whereby he purchased the reconciliation which we receive by faith. To present you - The very end of that reconciliation. Holy - Toward God. Spotless - In yourselves.Unreprovable - As to your neighbour.

1:23 If ye continue in the faith - Otherwise, ye will lose all the blessings which ye have already begun to enjoy.And be not removed from the hope of the gospel - The glorious hope of perfect love. Which is preached - Is already begun to be preached to every creature under heaven.

Luke, Chapter 6, verses 1-5

¹ Christ reproveth the Pharisees' blindness about the observation of the Sabbath, by Scripture, reason and miracle

¹And it came to pass on the second sabbath after the first, that he went through the corn fields; and his disciples plucked the ears of corn, and did eat, rubbing them in their hands.

²And certain of the Pharisees said unto them, Why do ye that which is not lawful to do on the sabbath days?

³And Jesus answering them said, Have ye not read so much as this, what David did, when himself was an hungred, and they which were with him;

⁴How he went into the house of God, and did take and eat the shewbread, and gave also to them that were with him; which it is not lawful to eat but for the priests alone?

⁵And he said unto them, That the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.

Read more:Luke, Chapter 6

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6

6:1 The first Sabbath - So the Jews reckoned their Sabbaths, from the passover to pentecost; the first, second, third, and so on, till the seventh Sabbath (after the second day.) This immediately preceded pentecost, which was the fiftieth day after the second day of unleavened bread. Mat 12:1; Mar 2:23.

6:2 Why do ye - St. Matthew and Mark represent the Pharisees as proposing the question to our Lord himself. It was afterward, probably, they proposed it to his disciples.

6:4 Sa1 21:6.

NOTES

In their conversations with Jesus, the Pharisees often challenge Him over how He treats various prescriptions and traditions. The Sabbath occupies a central place in these disputes...

Today's reading offers us two episodes connected with the Sabbath and with the way Jesus understands the Sabbath. One of them describes a situation well understood by every...

Today's reading offers us two episodes connected with the Sabbath and with the way Jesus understands the Sabbath. One of them (vv. 1-5) describes a situation well understood by every Orthodox Jew. In gospel times, as now, the Sabbath day was subject to many prohibitions regulating what Judaism regards as work forbidden on the Sabbath day by the fourth commandment. The systems of such ritual prohibitions in different rabbinic schools could differ somewhat from one another, but in essence all of them had already largely lost their spiritual meaning, while retaining a strictly religious function. The purpose of the Sabbath commandment was to draw a person away from his everyday occupations so that at least one day out of seven he would devote himself entirely to God, forgetting his own affairs. Meanwhile, the system of ritual prohibitions that took shape after the Babylonian exile was based not on this spiritual and practical task, but on more-or-less formal theological criteria that defined one action or another as work. All such actions, of course, were forbidden on the Sabbath day, and rubbing grain, even by hand and in a very small amount (v. 1), was formally equated with grinding grain and was included among the forbidden actions.

Jesus answers by referring to events from the history of ancient Israel (vv. 3-4), alluding to a rabbinic rule well known to the Pharisees, which allowed Sabbath prohibitions to be broken if this was necessary to save the life of a person or a domestic animal. More than that: He reminds His interlocutors that in ancient times even the norms of ritual purity were violated to save life, because to give sacred bread to someone who was not a priest meant to defile that bread.

Of course, if Jesus' disciples were starving to death and had no other food, they would have been allowed to rub as much grain as they needed in order not to die of hunger; in that case, rubbing the grain would not have been a violation of the Sabbath. But for that to be so, the threat of starvation had to be unavoidable for them. Jesus, however, looks at the Sabbath differently. He says that in the Kingdom the Sabbath is not a system of ritual restrictions, but the fullness of communion with God, inseparable from the One who brought the Kingdom into the world (v. 5).

The second episode (vv. 6-11) describes Jesus' healing of the man with a withered hand. And here we see the same difference in understanding the Sabbath. For Jesus, healing is not work, but the manifestation of the Kingdom, which is most fitting to appear precisely on the Sabbath, the day dedicated to God; therefore He heals on the Sabbath especially often, reminding those present of the true meaning of this day (vv. 8-10). But for religious formalists there is no Kingdom, only a violation of prohibitions, which they carefully track (v. 7). And they hate anyone who violates those prohibitions (v. 11). Thus devotion to religious prohibitions hides the Kingdom from a person. And it leads to the cross the One who brought this Kingdom into the world.

According to the evangelist's testimony, the people around Jesus, and first of all the Pharisees, more than once reproached Him for a disrespectful attitude toward the Sabbath, expressed...

According to the evangelist's testimony, the people around Jesus, and first of all the Pharisees, more than once reproached Him for a disrespectful attitude toward the Sabbath, expressed in particular by His doing on the Sabbath day something that violated the prohibitions connected with Sabbath rest. Some commentators even interpret these actions of the Savior as a deliberate violation of the Sabbath, which in their opinion He "abolished."

Meanwhile, Jesus Himself said that He came not to destroy the Torah, but to bring it to fullness. And this fully applies to the Sabbath: after all, keeping the Sabbath is the prescription of the fourth commandment of the Decalogue. The only question is what in this case should be considered the meaning, and what the form.

The original meaning of the commandment about the Sabbath was connected first of all with the need for deepened communion with God, which one could learn only by dedicating special time to such communion, every seventh day according to the Torah's prescription. The prohibition against doing ordinary things on the Sabbath day was connected first of all with the need to step out of that cycle of everyday affairs that usually seizes a person completely. It is no accident that Jewish tradition forbids on the Sabbath not only work, but also speaking about work, and even thinking about it.

However, already in the post-exilic period the commandment about the Sabbath became overgrown with numerous rules and prescriptions, connected mainly with ritual prohibitions that were in many ways external and formal. For many, the Sabbath day was turning from a day dedicated to communion with God into a rather harsh and gloomy religious obligation: one had to think no longer about God, but about not violating some prohibition, while also making sure that those around him did not violate anything either. Jesus returns to the Sabbath its original meaning as a time of communion with God.

If a person is hungry, he must be fed; if he is sick, he must be healed, and there is nothing here that hinders communion with God, nor can there be. In fact, this is not about everyday work, busyness, and hustle that seize a person completely, but about a completely concrete situation in which a person in need of help finds himself. From the point of view of religious rules the Sabbath has been violated, but in essence it has not, because helping one's neighbor does not separate a person from God.

But there was something else as well: testimony to the Kingdom. After all, Jesus does not merely treat; He heals. The one healed recovers not because of someone's work, but because the Kingdom has entered the world and touched the one being healed. And it is precisely in the Kingdom that the Sabbath receives its fullness. In fact, where else could communion with God be fuller? And that is the only meaning of the Sabbath. Then it is no longer important what a person does or what he is occupied with. No act, provided it is done in the Kingdom, will violate the Sabbath.

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