6th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Cycle C
1st Reading: Jeremiah 17:5-8
God Rewards People as They Deserve (Continuation)
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[5] Thus says the LORD: "Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh
his arm, whose heart turns away from the LORD. [6] He is like a shrub in the de-
sert, and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of
the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.
[7] "Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. [8]
He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and
does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious
in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit."
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Commentary:
17:1-13. This passage includes a number of short oracles in the style of wisdom
writing, graphically expressing themes that were constant in Jeremiah's preaching.
Judah's sin of idolatry was quite obvious: anyone travelling the country could see
people frequenting the places where Canaanite gods were worshipped; they were
everywhere one went (vv. 1-3a). That is why the Lord will abandon the Israelites,
who will be uprooted from their land and enslaved (vv. 3b-4).
Using words similar to those of Psalm 1, the prophet describes the misfortune
that will befall those who trust in themselves, as against the prosperity of those
who trust in God (vv. 5-8). St Thomas Aquinas' commentary on Psalm 1 fits in
nicely with the simile here of the tree planted beside water (v. 8): "We are asked
to consider three things in the image of the tree--its being well-rooted, its fruitful-
ness, and the sustaining of its life. To be well-rooted, the tree must be well-
watered, otherwise it will dry up and wither away; thus, we are told that the tree
is planted beside running waters, which symbolize the currents of grace. 'He who
believes in me...out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water' (Jn 7:38). The one
whose roots draw on the living waters will bear much fruit in all the good works
that he does, and fruitfulness is the second aspect of the image that we are asked
to contemplate. 'But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness', etc. (Gal 5:22). The tree does not wither away: it is sus-
tained in life. Some trees lose their leaves, but others never lose their leaves; and
thus it is with righteous men [...]; they will not be forgotten by God even in their
tiniest and least significant actions. 'The righteous will flourish like a green leaf'
(Prov 11:28)" ("Postilla super Psalmos", 1, 3).
God cannot be deceived; he sees right into a person's heart, and he will judge
each on his merits (vv. 9-11). The hope of Israel is the Lord (vv. 12-13), the fount
of water (cf. 2:13; Ps 42:2; Jn 4:10) without which none can live (cf. v. 8). To
show that those who forsake God will be judged and condemned, Jeremiah uses
an image (they "shall be written in the earth": v. 13) that is reminiscent of Jesus'
gesture when he "judges" the men who accuse the woman caught in adultery (Jn
8:6). The wind will blow their names away: they will have no place in the book of
life.
2nd Reading: 1 Corinthians 15:12, 16-20
The Basis of our Faith
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[12] Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say
that there is no resurrection of the dead?
[16] For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. [17] If Christ
has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. [18] Then
those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. [19] If for this life only we
have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied.
The Cause of our Resurrection
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[20] But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who
have fallen asleep.
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Commentary:
12-19. St Paul very forcefully states that the resurrection of Christ is an essential
truth of the Christian faith; without it that faith is vain. For, by rising from the dead
Christ completes the work of Redemption. Dying on the cross meant victory over
sins; but it was necessary also that he should rise from the dead and thereby
conquer death, the outcome of sin (cf. Rom 5:12). "It was necessary that Christ
should rise again in order to manifest the justice of God; for it was most appro-
priate that he who through obedience to God was degraded, and loaded with ig-
nominy, should by him be exalted. [...] He rose also to confirm our faith, which
is necessary for justification; for the resurrection of Christ from the dead by his
own power affords an irrefutable proof that he was the Son of God. Again the
resurrection nourishes and sustains our hope. As Christ rose again, we rest on
an assured hope that we too shall rise again; the members must necessarily
arrive at the condition of their head. [...] Finally, the resurrection of our Lord, it
should also be taught, was necessary to complete the mystery of our salvation
and redemption. By his death Christ liberated us from sin, by his resurrection
he restored to us the most important of those privileges which we had forfeited
by sin" ("St Pius V Catechism", I, 6, 12).
In these verses St Paul is really giving indirect arguments in support of Christ's
resurrection, by pointing out what an absurd situation we would be in if Jesus
Christ had not risen: our faith would be in vain (vv. 14,17,18), as would our hope
(v.19); the Apostles would be false witnesses and their preaching valueless (vv
14-15); and we would still be in our sins (v. 17). Christians, in other words,
would be "of all men most to be pitied" (v. 19).
Gospel Reading: Luke 6:17, 20-26
The Sermon on the Plain
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[17] And [Jesus] came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great
crowd of His disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jeru-
salem and the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon, who came to hear Him and to be
healed of their diseases.
The Beatitudes and the Curses
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[20] And He lifted up His eyes on His disciples, and said: "Blessed are you poor,
for yours is the Kingdom of God. [21] Blessed are you that hunger now, for you
shall be satisfied. Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh. [22] Bles-
sed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you and revile you, and
cast out your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! [23] Rejoice in that
day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in Heaven; for so their fa-
thers did to the prophets. [24] But woe to you that are rich, for you have received
your consolation. [25] Woe to you that are full now, for you shall hunger. Woe to
you that laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. [26] Woe to you, when all
men speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets."
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Commentary:
20-49. These thirty verses of St. Luke correspond to some extent to the Sermon
on the Mount, an extensive account of which St. Matthew gives us in Chapters 5
to 7 in his Gospel. It is very likely that in the course of His public ministry in dif-
ferent regions and towns of Israel Jesus preached the same things, using diffe-
rent words on different occasions. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit each
evangelist would have chosen to report those things which he considered most
useful for the instruction of his immediate readers--Christians of Jewish origin in
the case of Matthew, Gentile converts in the case of Luke. There is no reason
why one evangelist should not have selected certain items and another different
ones, depending on his readership, or why one should not have laid special
stress on some subjects and shortened or omitted accounts of others.
In this present discourse, we might distinguish three parts--the Beatitudes and
the curses (6:20-26); love of one's enemies (6:27-38); and teaching on upright-
ness of heart (6:39-49).
Some Christians may find it difficult to grasp the need of practising the moral tea-
ching of the Gospel so radically, in particular Christ's teaching in the Sermon on
the Mount. Jesus is very demanding in what He says, but He is saying it to every-
one, and not just to His Apostles or to those disciples who followed Him closely.
We are told expressly that "when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were
astonished at His teaching" (Matthew 7:28). It is quite clear that the Master calls
everyone to holiness, making no distinction of state-in-life, race or personal cir-
cumstances. This teaching on the universal call to holiness was a central point
of the teaching of St. Escriva. The Second Vatican Council expressed the same
teaching with the full weight of its authority: everyone is called to Christian holi-
ness; consider, for example, just one reference it makes, in "Lumen Gentium",
11: "Strengthened by so many and such great means of salvation, all the faithful,
whatever their condition or state -- though each in his or her own way--are called
by the Lord to that perfection of sanctity by which the Father Himself is perfect."
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus is not proposing an unattainable ideal, useful
though that might be to make us feel humble in the light of our inability to reach
it. No. Christian teaching in this regard is quite clear: what Christ commands,
He commands in order to have us do what He says. Along with His command-
ment comes grace to enable us to fulfill it. Therefore, every Christian is capable
of practising the moral teaching of Christ and of attaining the full height of his
calling --holiness--not by his own efforts alone but by means of the grace which
Christ has won for us, and with the abiding help of the means of sanctification
which He left to His Church. "If anyone plead human weakness to excuse Him-
self for not loving God, it should be explained that He who demands our love
pours into our hearts by the Holy Spirit the fervor of His love, and this good Spirit
our Heavenly Father gives to those that ask Him. With reason, therefore, did St.
Augustine pray: 'Give Me what Thou command, and command what You please.'
As, then, God is ever ready to help us, especially since the death of Christ our
Lord, by which the prince of this world was cast out, there is no reason why any-
one should be disheartened by the difficulty of the undertaking. To him who loves,
nothing is difficult" ("St. Pius V Catechism", III, 1, 7).
20-26. The eight Beatitudes which St. Matthew gives (5:3-12) are summed up in
four by St. Luke, but with four opposite curses. We can say, with St. Ambrose,
that Matthew's eight are included in Luke's four (cf. "Expositio Evangelii Sec. Lu-
cam, in loc."). In St. Luke they are in some cases stated in a more incisive, more
direct form than in the First Gospel, where they are given with more explanation:
for example, the first beatitude says simply "Blessed are you poor", whereas in
Matthew we read, "Blessed are the poor in spirit", which contains a brief expla-
nation of the virtue of poverty.
20. "The ordinary Christian has to reconcile two aspects of this life that can at
first seem contradictory. There is on the one hand "true poverty", which is ob-
vious and tangible and made up of definite things. This poverty should be an ex-
pression of faith in God and a sign that the heart is not satisfied with created
things and aspires to the Creator; that it wants to be filled with love of God so
as to be able to give this same love to everyone. On the other hand, an ordinary
Christian is and wants to be "one more among his fellow men", sharing their way
of life, their joys and happiness; working with them, loving the world and all the
good things that exist in it; using all created things to solve the problems of hu-
man life and to establish a spiritual and material environment which will foster
personal and social development [...].
"To my way of thinking the best examples of poverty are those mothers and fa-
thers of large and poor families who spend their lives for their children and who
with their effort and constancy--often without complaining of their needs--bring up
their family, creating a cheerful home in which everyone learns to love, to serve
and to work" (St. J. Escriva, "Conversations", 110f).
24-26. Our Lord here condemns four things: avarice and attachment to the things
of the world; excessive care of the body, gluttony; empty-headed joy and general
self-indulgence; flattery, and disordered desire for human glory--four very common
vices which a Christian needs to be on guard against.
24. In the same kind of way as in verse 20, which refers to the poor in the sense
of those who love poverty, seeking to please God better, so in this verse the "rich"
are to be understood as those who strive to accumulate possessions heedless of
whether or not they are doing so lawfully, and who seek their happiness in those
possessions, as if they were their ultimate goal. But people who inherit wealth or
acquire it through honest work can be really poor provided they are detached from
these things and are led by that detachment to use them to help others, as God
inspires them. We can find in Sacred Scriptures a number of people to whom the
beatitude of the poor can be applied although they possessed considerable
wealth--Abraham, Isaac, Moses, David, Job, for example.
As early as St. Augustine's time there were people who failed to understand po-
verty and riches properly: they reasoned as follows: The Kingdom of Heaven be-
longs to the poor, the Lazaruses of this world, the hungry; all the rich are bad,
like this rich man here. This sort of thinking led St. Augustine to explain the deep
meaning of wealth and poverty according to the spirit of the Gospel: "Listen, poor
man, to my comments on your words. When you refer to yourself as Lazarus,
that holy man covered with wounds, I am afraid your pride makes you describe
yourself incorrectly. Do not despise rich men who are merciful, who are humble:
or, to put it briefly, do not despise poor rich men. Oh, poor man, be poor yourself;
poor, that is, humble [...].
Listen to me, then. Be truly poor, be devout, be humble; if you glory in your rag-
ged and ulcerous poverty, if you glory in likening yourself to that beggar lying
outside the rich man's house, then you are only noticing his poverty, and nothing
else. What should I notice you ask? Read the Scriptures and you will understand
what I mean. Lazarus was poor, but he to whose bosom he was brought was rich.
'It came to pass, it is written, that the poor man died and he was brought by the
angels to Abraham's bosom.' To where? To Abraham's bosom, or let us say, to
that mysterious place where Abraham was resting. Read [...] and remember that
Abraham was a very wealthy man when he was on earth: he had abundance of
money, a large family, flocks, land; yet that rich man was poor, because he was
humble. 'Abraham believed God and he was reckoned righteous.' [...] He was
faithful, he did good, received the commandment to offer his son in sacrifice, and
he did not refuse to offer what he had received to Him from whom he had received
it. He was approved in God's sight and set before us as an example of faith"
("Sermon", 14).
To sum up: poverty does not consist in something purely external, in having or
not having material goods, but in something that goes far deeper, affecting a per-
son's heart and soul; it consists in having a humble attitude to God, in being de-
vout, in having total faith. If a Christian has these virtues and also has an abun-
dance of material possessions, he should be detached from his wealth and act
charitably towards others and thus be pleasing to God. On the other hand, if
someone is not well-off he is not justified in God's sight on that account, if he
fails to strive to acquire those virtues in which true poverty consists.
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Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries". Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States. We encourage readers to purchase
The Navarre Bible for personal study. See Scepter Publishers for details.
[참고: 이 파일은 저서명 "가톨릭 교회의 말씀 전례에 따른 성경공부 해설서"(엮은이: 소순태, 출판사: 가톨릭출판사)의 각주의 연장으로 마련되었습니다].