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Luke 9:51–62 ESV – Bible Gateway

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This begins a major section in Luke that is the beginning of the final journey to Jerusalem. He has set his face on this journey. A verse from the third servant song of Isaiah provides key background: “I have set my face like flint, / knowing that I shall not be put to shame” (Isa 50:7). Also in Ezek 21:7 “Son of man, turn your face toward Jerusalem: preach against its sanctuary, prophesy against the land of Israel.”

Brant Pitre writes:

Luke always has his eyes ultimately on the end of his gospel, which is going to be Jesus ascending into heaven. It’s not just the cross; it’s not even just the resurrection. It’s him being taken up into heaven. That’s the culmination of Jesus’ exodus that he’s going to accomplish in Jerusalem.[1]

Jesus sends messengers ahead of him to make preparations before entering a Samaritan village. It is entirely plausible that the Samaritans would be very interested in Jesus and the stories about him that had already traveled to them. The fact that his ultimate destination is Jerusalem is a barrier for them since Mt. Gerizim was established as basically a rival altar that they used instead. Historically there was already conflict between the Samaritans and Israelites over this. This conflict was on the rise. The historian Josephus wrote about Jewish pilgrims being murdered by Samaritans as they passed through and that there was a supposed plot to place human bones in the Jerusalem Temple to defile it during Passover. Likely there was also increased violence against the Samaritans themselves.

John and James react against their refusal to see them in a way once again earning the sobriquet “Sons of Thunder.” A lot is going on here as they reference calling down fire from heaven to consume the Samaritans. We can see this as a reference to Genesis 19, where God rains down fire from heaven upon the Sodom and Gomorrah, and Eli’jah calls down fire from heaven to consume the sacrifice. John the Baptist has been killed, and possibly these brothers see themselves picking up John’s role in the spirit and power of Eli’jah.[2]

This question they put forth to Jesus, it seems, they expect a reply for their zeal. They have seemed to forget many messages from Jesus they had heard on their journey involving loving your neighbor. They have let their prejudice override this. It only states that Jesus rebukes them for this and that they move on to another village instead. Some early manuscripts expand Luke 9:55 to include, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of, for the Son of man came not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.’”[1] Whether or not this was in the original text, it gets to the heart of why they were rebuked. The Samaritans wanted Jesus on their terms, and James and John also wanted Jesus to react on their terms.

The Gospel continues to relate two encounters with men who either wanted to follow Jesus and one where Jesus called them to follow him. They are examples of the commitment to follow Jesus unreservedly. An interesting aspect is that this also relates to Genesis 19, where Lot’s wife looks back, despite being warned not to. This also relates to the example of Eli’jah and Eli’sha with a difference. In the case of Eli’jah, he grants Eli’sha’s request to say goodbye to his parents and dispose of his property rather quickly. Jesus’ does not give the same type of request to the young man he calls to follow him. His demand supersedes even the love of parents mandated in the Old Testament. Jesus is implicitly revealing his divine identity in doing this. When God indeed calls us to do something, it supersedes all earthly attachments as it is not only meant for our good but for others. There is also a question regarding the man’s request to bury his father because it might be that his father has not yet even passed. Jesus knows us intimately and only calls us towards the good. It is straightforward for us to devise delaying tactics for his call. Delays that in everyday situations are our duty.

Discernment is involved, but once we are intellectually convinced he is calling us for something—we must respond.

Peter Kreeft comments on this passage:

God always has a good reason for asking us every single thing he asks of us. And there is no reason for us to think that we will always recognize what that good reason is. Why should we think we will? Do we think we are as wise as God is? If our God never asked us to do or endure things that we did not understand, it would not be the true God at all because that mind would be equal to our own mind.[3]

If you think Jesus is calling you to maintain a status quo with no changes required, it is not Jesus. If you hear Jesus calling you to a radical change in your life that is not comfortable or reassuring, he is leading you to eternal life.

Regarding Jesus’ comment that he has nowhere to rest, the Catechism says:

544 The kingdom belongs to the poor and lowly, which means those who have accepted it with humble hearts. Jesus is sent to “preach good news to the poor”; he declares them blessed, for “theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” To them—the “little ones”—the Father is pleased to reveal what remains hidden from the wise and the learned. Jesus shares the life of the poor, from the cradle to the cross; he experiences hunger, thirst, and privation. Jesus identifies himself with the poor of every kind and makes active love toward them the condition for entering his kingdom.

Sources

• Catholic Productions, Commentaries by Brant Pitre
• The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture, Rev. Pablo T. Gadenz
• Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings Year C
• The Word of the Lord: Reflections on the Sunday Mass Readings for Year C – John Bergsma
• Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd Edition
• Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

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1. Catholic Productions, Brant Pitre  ↩
2. Navarre, Saint Luke’s Gospel (2005)  ↩
3. Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings Year C  ↩

John 20:19–23 ESV – Bible Gateway

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For Pentecost, like the Ascension, the Gospel reading, in a sense, is trumped by the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles; which goes into more details. In this case, our Gospel reading takes place on the night of the Ressurection when Jesus first meets with the majority of the Apostles in the upper room. For the Ascension, Jesus leaves the Apostles who are in a state of joy and are fully preparing themselves for the promise of the Holy Spirit spending time day and night in prayer.

This reading shows the Apostles in the midst of uncertainty and fear. They know something is going on and they have reports of Jesus’ return, but also knew their own precarious position regarding the authorities.

The Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture for this Gospel points out:

As he did in regard to Mary Magdalene, John provides insight into the spiritual disposition of Jesus’ disciples as they are gathered in Jerusalem. Mary came to Jesus’ tomb “while it was still dark” (20:1). The disciples are similarly gathered in the evening darkness, †signifying the absence of Christ the light and their own hopelessness. [1]

Peter Kreeft notes:

The disciples were cowering in fear behind locked doors because they thought, quite naturally, that those who had succeeded in killing Jesus would now come after them too. But Christ came through their locked doors, and he also comes through ours. For it’s not just keys but fear that locks our doors, especially the fear that God does not wholly love us and understand us and our weaknesses; that we cannot trust him completely. And pride, and the refusal to admit that we are in the wrong. But faith and love cast out fear. Even weak faith and love let him in. Open the door to him one inch, and he will come in a mile. [2]

Jesus appears amidst them and tells them “Peace be with you.” I think it is difficult to really envision this scene and the apostle’s reaction. The doors are locked to prevent intrusion and Jesus appears directly among them. They would be so very aware that the doors are locked. They truly were in need of that peace that Jesus was giving them in this circumstance. Plus what would they make of the fact that right after this Jesus shows them his hands and side, a demonstration of the wounds that still appear in his glorified body.

Returning to the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture:

The presence of the wounds of crucifixion on the risen Jesus’ body is significant. They indicate that the body resurrected to glory is the same one that died on the cross (see Luke 24:39). Resurrection is not the return of a human being to ordinary mortal life but total transformation into a glorified mode of existence. As St. Paul wrote, the natural body is transfigured by the Holy Spirit into a glorified, “spiritual body” (1 Cor 15:44). The wounds on Jesus’ resurrected body reveal that he is forever fixed in the act of love in which he died. The love and sacrifice that he offered on the cross are forever present before the Father as “expiation for our sins, and … for those of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). Jesus’ wounds also signify that the victory of the resurrection comes only through the cross. Similarly, the Lamb in the book of Revelation bears the wound of his slaughter by which he accomplished the work of redemption (Rev 5:6, 9). In this way, St. Thomas Aquinas, drawing on the Venerable Bede, can speak of the wounds on Jesus’ resurrected body as “trophies” of his victory.[3]

Jesus shows them his wounds to show them that he can heal their wounds. That he would be healing and preparing them so that they in turn can heal and prepare others. Jesus makes this explicit when he repeats a blessing of peace on them and then tells them that he is passing on a mission to them given by his father. When Jesus breathes on them and institutes the sacrament of reconciliation, he is equipping them in the good news, the Evangelium, for the forgiveness of sins. The very healing we all need the most. The shalom Jesus gives them, they, in turn, will give and pass on to others who will find true peace in this sacrament. There is and will always be woundedness in the body of Christ, but there will also always be access to a remedy.

CCC 1462 Forgiveness of sins brings reconciliation with God, but also with the Church. Since ancient times the bishop, visible head of a particular Church, has thus rightfully been considered to be the one who principally has the power and ministry of reconciliation: he is the moderator of the penitential discipline. Priests, his collaborators, exercise it to the extent that they have received the commission either from their bishop (or religious superior) or the Pope, according to the law of the Church

In his book titled “The Life of Christ”, Venerable Fulton J. Sheen wrote:

“Then Our Lord breathed on them as He conferred some power of the Holy Spirit. When love is deep, it is always speechless or wordless; God’s love is so deep that it can be expressed humanly by a sigh or a breath. Now that the Apostles had learned to lisp the alphabet of Redemption, He breathed on them as a sign and an earnest of what was to come. It was but a cloud that would precede the plenteous rain; better still, it was the breath of the Spirit’s influence and a foretelling of the rushing wind of Pentecost. As He had breathed into Adam the breath of natural life, so now He breathed into His Apostles, the foundation of His Church, the breath of spiritual life. As man became the image of God in virtue of the soul that was breathed into him, so now they became the image of Christ as the power of the Spirit was breathed into them. The Greek word used to express His breathing on them is employed nowhere else in the New Testament; but it is the very word which the Greek translators of the Hebrew used to describe God’s breathing a living soul into Adam. Thus there was a new creation as the first fruit of the Redemption.…

“Three times the Holy Spirit is mentioned with some external sign; as a dove at Christ’s baptism betokening His innocence and Divine Sonship; as fiery tongues on the day of Pentecost as a sign of the Spirit’s power to convert the world; and as the breath of the Risen Christ with all of its regenerative power.”[4]

The mission that the Holy Spirit empowers is not for the Apostles and their descendants alone. We are also sent forth into the world to empower the spread of the good news.

St. Cyril of Alexandria wrote:

All of us who have received one and the same Spirit, that is, the Holy Spirit, are in a sense blended together with one another and with God. For if Christ, together with the Father’s and his own Spirit, comes to dwell in each of us, though we are many, still the Spirit is one and undivided. He binds together the spirits of each and every one of us, … and makes all appear as one in him. For just as the power of Christ’s sacred flesh unites those in whom it dwells into one body, I think that in the same way the one and undivided Spirit of God, who dwells in all, leads all into spiritual unity.[5]

Sources

• Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings Year C
• The Gospel of John (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture)
• Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd Edition
• Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

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1. Francis Martin, William M. Wright IV, The Gospel of John (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture)  ↩
2. Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings Year C  ↩
3. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica 3, q. 54, a. 4.  ↩
4. Fulton Sheen, Life of Christ (New York: Image Books/Doubleday, 1990), 420.  ↩
5. St. Cyril of Alexandria, In Jo. ev., 11, 11: PG 74, 561.  ↩

Luke 6:39–45 ESV – Bible Gateway

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One of the themes of Jesus’s post-Resurrection appearances is an emphasis on the need that the Christ would suffer. On the first day of his resurrection, talking to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, he says in Luke 24:26

“Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?”

That same night tells a gathering of the Apostles in Luke 24:45:

Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, ⁴⁶ and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, ⁴⁷ and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

The very purpose of his suffering was for the forgiveness of sins, and it was this that was to be proclaimed to all nations.

The Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture comments:

In the next part of the scene, Jesus instructs his disciples about the fulfillment of Scripture and then announces their future mission. First, he reiterates how it was necessary that everything written about him in the Old Testament come to pass (18:31; 22:37). The two verbs used—must and fulfilled—have been repeated throughout the Gospel and here emphasize one last time that all the events of Jesus’ life have unfolded in accord with God’s plan, especially as revealed in Scripture. As he did with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus (24:32), he thus opened their minds to understand the scriptures. Whereas there he referred to two parts of the Old Testament (“Moses and all the prophets,” 24:27), here he indicates three parts: the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms. In particular, he highlights that the Scriptures foretold that the Messiah (24:26) would both suffer and rise from the dead on the third day (Hosea 6:2).

Second, he explains that repentance, for the forgiveness [aphesis] of sins, will be preached [kēryssō] in his name. This is the mission now announced to the apostles and the other disciples. Indeed, in Acts, repentance and forgiveness of sins through the name of Jesus will become the core message of the apostles’ preaching (“kerygma”). The beginning of the apostles’ mission in Jerusalem will thus recall the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry in Nazareth, when he read from Isaiah and announced a jubilee, explaining that he was sent to proclaim liberty (Luke 4:18; kēryssō and aphesis). Now this jubilee is being extended in time and space: from Jerusalem the liberty that is forgiveness will be preached to all the nations(Acts 1:8). The apostles and disciples will be the witnesses of all these things about Jesus: his words and deeds (Acts 1:1)—his life, death, and resurrection.[1]

Jesus then says he is sending the promise of the Father to them and that they are to wait in the city until they are clothed with power from on high. He then leads them out of Jerusalem. “The Greek verb exagō (lead or bring out), which occurs only here in Luke’s Gospel, is the verb typically used in the †Septuagint—and even by Luke himself in Acts—to describe the exodus from Egypt under Moses.”[1]

In this last chapter of Luke, we can lose a sense of time as events move quickly from the events of that first Easter Sunday to the Ascension. Only through Luke’s “The Acts of the Apostles” that we get more time cues, such as the Ascension falling on the 40th day.
John Bergsma makes an interesting observation regarding verse 49:

“Behold I am sending the promise of my Father upon you,” is in the Greek present tense. Translated quite literally, the verse reads, “Look, I send the promise of my Father upon you.” This is often thought to be a reference to the sending of the Spirit at Pentecost, but again, the verb is present, not future. Plausibly, these words of the Lord were uttered while he “breathed on them, and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (John 20:22, RSV2CE). In my view, Luke 24:44–49 is an independent account of the same meeting in the Upper Room with the Apostles and bestowal of the Spirit recorded in John 20:19–23.[2]

Jesus takes them as far as Bethany. This village on the Mount of Olives was earlier mentioned only when Jesus was drawing near to Jerusalem (Luke 19:29). It was then and there that he was acclaimed “king”. His triumphal entry then is now completed by his “triumphal exit.” At his transfiguration, Jesus had discussed with Moses and Elijah his own “exodus” from Jerusalem. As a prophet like Moses, Jesus now completes his exodus from Jerusalem to heaven. Moreover, as a prophet like Elijah (Jesus is taken up to heaven, and his followers will then receive his Spirit[1]

Before leaving, Jesus blesses them, lifting his hands. Early Church Fathers referenced the Gospel of Luke as the gospel of Jesus’ priesthood. This was a gesture explicitly used by the high priests starting with Aaron.

Brant Pitre says:

Luke here is deliberately emphasizing Jesus’ identity as priest. So he’s not just a prophet, he’s not just the king of Israel, Jesus is also the Messianic priest, the Messianic high priest. You can actually see this if you look at Luke’s gospel as a whole, because if you recall, how did Luke’s gospel begin? It began with the priest, Zechariah, going into the Temple to offer the incense and then coming out of the temple, and what were the people waiting for him to do? They were waiting for him to give them his priestly blessing. But he can’t do it because he’s mute after doubting Gabriel’s message to him about the birth of John the Baptist. So by contrast, then the gospel ends with Jesus (the true high priest), not mute at all, but blessing the Apostles and then telling them to go out and bear witness to the good news of his Passion, Death and Resurrection. So it’s kind of like an inclusio (scholars call it this way), beginning and ending with a similar theme to reveal Jesus’ identity as high priest.[3]

in Paragraph 662 of the Catechism:

“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.”The lifting up of Jesus on the cross signifies and announces his lifting up by his Ascension into heaven and indeed begins it. Jesus Christ, the one priest of the new and eternal Covenant, “entered, not into a sanctuary made by human hands … but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.” There Christ permanently exercises his priesthood, for he “always lives to make intercession” for “those who draw near to God through him.”As “high priest of the good things to come,” he is the center and the principal actor of the liturgy that honors the Father in heaven.

I was thinking further of these time cues, and most are relatively straightforward significations, such as the 40 days Jesus spent with them to purify and lead them. The Holy Spirit comes on Pentecost, 50 days after the Passover and the beginning of the harvest season, bringing the first fruits to the Temple in thanksgiving to God.

During this period that Jesus was with them, they were remarkably strengthened. Jesus’s departure this time would not force them into bewilderment. They returned to Jerusalem with great joy and continually praised God in the Temple. During the Agony in the Garden the Apostles were not even able to stay awake and pray with Jesus. This time they would not only go to the Temple and praise God, but to meet together in the upper room each night, preparing themselves for Jesus’s promises.

I also started thinking about the significance of the nine days they stayed in the upper room until the day of Pentecost, which is sometimes called the birthday of the Church. What I thought of in this connection is a symbol of nine days mirroring the nine months of human gestation. The Church was born into the world fueled by prayer. Prayer fueled first by God and through grace helps us catch fire in prayer for the Church. You cannot receive tongues of fire without preparation and being docile to the movements of the Holy Spirit.

One last note in regards to Jesus ascending into Heaven. St Thomas Aquinas explains that it was inappropriate for Christ to remain on earth after the Resurrection, whereas it was appropriate that he should ascend into heaven, because, although his risen body was already a glorified one, it now receives an increase in glory due to the dignity of the place to which it ascends (cf. Summa theologiae, 3, 57, 1).

Sources

• The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture, Rev. Pablo T. Gadenz
• Navarre, Saint Luke’s Gospel (2005)
• Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings Year C
• Catholic Productions, Commentaries by Brant Pitre
• The Word of the Lord: Reflections on the Sunday Mass Readings for Year C – John Bergsma
• Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd Edition
• Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

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1. The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture, Rev. Pablo T. Gadenz  ↩
2. The Word of the Lord: Reflections on the Sunday Mass Readings for Year C, John Bergsma  ↩
3. Catholic Productions, Brant Pitre  ↩