Friday
25th Week of Ordinary Time
(I) 1st Reading: Haggai 2:1-9
The temple’s glory in the future
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In the second year of Darius the king, [1] in the seventh month, on the twenty-first
day of the month, the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet, [2] “Speak
now to Zerubbabel the son of She-alti-el, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the
son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and to all the remnant of the people, and say,
[3] ‘Who is left among you that saw this house in its former glory? How do you
see it now? Is it not in your sight as nothing? [4] Yet not take courage, O Zerub-
babel, says the Lord; take courage, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest;
take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord; work, for I am with you,
says the Lord of hosts, [5] according to the promise that I made you when you
came out of Egypt. My Spirit abides among you; fear not. [6] For thus says the
Lord of hosts: Once again, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth
and the sea and the dry land; [7] and I will shake all nations, so that the treasures
of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with splendour, says the Lord
of hosts. [9] The latter splendour of this house shall be greater than the former,
says the Lord of hosts; and in this place I will give prosperity, says the Lord of
hosts.’”
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Commentary:
2:1-9. The dating given in v. 1 (which corresponds to 17 October 520) indicates
that this is a different prophetical discourse. Scarcely a month has passed since
the date in 1:15, and one gets the impression that the people have been working
extremely hard, but the results are somewhat disappointing – at lest for the older
people, who knew how splendid the temple of Solomon was (v. 3). This fits in
with what the book of Ezra has to say: “Many of the priests and Levites and
heads of fathers’ houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud
voice when they say the foundation of the house being laid” (Ezra 3:12). But they
should not have been surprised; it was one thing to build a temple in a period of
splendour like Solomon’s, when money was no object; it was quite another to do
so in a country still in a state of desolation. Hence the encouraging tone of
Haggai’s oracle: the Lord renews the promises he made at the time of the
exodus (vv. 4-5), when he turned a crowd of slaves into a nation; moreover, he
promises that the new temple will be richer than the first: Solomon’s temple had
its glory (v. 3), but the new temple will be filled with splendour (v. 7); it will be
more splendid than the first (v. 9); and it will be a source of prosperity (v. 9) and
all the nations will flock there (v. 7; cf. Is 60:7-11). The language of these verses
is similar to that of apocalyptic passages in other prophets (cf. e.g. Is 2:2, Amos
5:8, Zeph 1:4). The tone of what Haggai says here allows these verses to be
interpreted as a prophecy about Christ and the Church: “The coming of the Lord
into this world was like the building of a great temple, glorious beyond imagining;
this temple is more perfect and beautiful than that of old, as the worship of Christ
according to his Gospel is more perfect than the worship of God according to the
law, as the reality is more beautiful than its image […]. The glory of the new tem-
ple, the Church, is much greater than the glory of the old. Those who give of
themselves and work devoutly to build the new temple will receive Christ himself,
as their reward from the Saviour and as a gift from heaven; he is our peace, the
peace of all mankind, the one through whom we can go to the Father in the one
Spirit. He himself said: and in this place I will give prosperity, says the Lord of
hosts” (St Cyril of Alexandria, Commentarius in Aggaeum, 14).
This messianic tone is even more clear in v. 7. In the words, “the treasures of all
nations shall come in”, the word translated as “treasures” has a wide range of
meaning: the Hebrew root to which the noun belongs means to desire, wish,
delight in, in Hebrew usage, the noun means “that which is desired”, riches,
treasures. The phrase was translated by the Latin Vulgate/Douai as “the Desired
of all nations shall come” (a 1956 Douai edition gives it in capital letters), implying
a direct reference to the Messiah; this led to the phrase entering the Advent
liturgy, and to “the Desired” becoming a name for Christ in catechesis: “Open
your heart to faith, beloved Virgin, your lips to give consent, your chaste body to
the Master. Look, the one who all desire to possess is standing at your gates” (St
Bernard, Homiliae super Missus est, 4, 8).
(II) 1st Reading: Ecclesiastes 3:1-11
For everything there is a season
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[1] For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter
under heaven:
[2] a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
[3] a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
[4] a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
[5] a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
[6] a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
[7] a time to rend, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
[8] a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.
[9] What gain has the worker from his toil?
Man cannot see far
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[10] have seen the business that God has given to the sons of men to be busy
with. He has made everything beautiful in its time; also he has put eternity into
man’s mind, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning
to the end.
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Commentary:
3:1-15. After arriving at the previous conclusion, the sacred writer picks up the
thread of his discourse to say something along the same lines as 1:3-7, but this
time focussing not on the created world but on “seasonal” changes in human life.
These, too, are fixed in advance and man can do nothing to alter them (vv. 1-9).
However, even though he may not be able to make sense of them, man has to
accept that it is God who makes “everything beautiful in its time” (vv. 10-11), and
therefore man should enjoy life as a gift from God (vv. 12-13), conscious that God
controls what happens now and in the future (vv. 14-15; cf. 1:9).
3:1-9. In this passage the teacher of Israel uses some ideas from the Greek phi-
losophers. He lists fourteen pairs of “times” in the ordinary life of man. In Hebrew
culture, numbers had symbolic values, multiples of seven denoting completeness;
so this list is meant to include all the stages and tasks of life. By putting birth
and death first he is giving them pride of place: all the other pairs fit in between
birth and death. The Stoic philosophers claimed that the human mind can know
the season fixed for each activity, and that a virtuous man knows and respects
the appropriate time for each thing. As the Preacher sees it, man can know them,
but he cannot change them, because it is God who has established those times
and he has charged man with the task of discovering them. Moreover, the “sea-
sons of life, the times at which events in man’s life happen, are pre- sented here
as transcending man’s understanding, while, at the same time, they lie at the
core of his existence. Believing, as we do, that the coming of Christ marks the
fullness of time, we see time to be the backdrop against which the salvation his-
tory unfolds: “In Christianity, time has a fundamental importance, says John Paul
II. “Within the dimension of time the world was created; within it the history of
salvation unfolds, finding its culmination in the ‘fullness of time’ of the Incarnation,
and its goal in the glorious return of the Son of God at the end of time.
In Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, time becomes a dimension of God, who
is himself eternal. With the coming of Christ there begin ‘the last days’ (cf. Heb
1:2), the ‘last hour’ (cf. 1 Jn 2:18), and the time of the Church, which will last un-
til the Parousia. From this relationship of God with time there arises the duty to
sanctify time. This is done, for example, when individual times, days or weeks,
are dedicated to God, as once happened in the religion of the Old Covenant, and
as happens still, though in a new way, in Christianity. In the liturgy of the Easter
Vigil the celebrant, as he blesses the candle which symbolizes the Risen Christ,
proclaims: ‘Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end. Alpha and
Omega, all time belongs to him, and all the ages, to him be glory and power
through every age for ever.’ He says these words as he inscribes on the candle
the numerals of the current year. The meaning of this rite is clear: it emphasizes
the fact that Christ is the Lord of time; he is its beginning and its end; every year,
every day and every moment are embraced by his Incarnation and Resurrection,
and thus become part of the ‘fullness of time’” (Tertio millenio adveniente, 10).
Thus, every time, every moment, is not purely transitory; it is an eternal dimen-
sion. So, “what is important is to make good use of time, that time which is al-
ways slipping from our grasp and which to a Christian is more precious than gold,
because it represents a foretaste of the glory that will he granted us hereafter”
(St. J. Escriva, Friends of God, 212).
3:10-15. Earlier, the sacred writer spoke about his personal reflections (“I said
to myself”: 1:16; 2:1, 15); now he is going to speak about what he sees, what
his own experience has been (“I have seen”: v. 10; cf. 3:16; 4:1; etc.). He sees
man’s activity as the “business” entrusted to him by God. Although man does
not grasp the full import of his actions, he can still take some pleasure from
them and benefit from them.
Gospel Reading: Luke 9:18-22
Peter's Confession of Faith
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[18] Now it happened that as He (Jesus) was praying alone the disciples were
with Him; and He asked them, "Who do the people say that I am?" [19] And
they answered, "John the Baptist; but others say, Elijah; and others, that one
of the old prophets has risen." [20] And He said to them, "But who do you say
that I am?" And Peter answered, "The Christ of God."
First Prophecy of the Passion
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[21] But He charged and commanded them to tell this to no one, [22] saying,
"The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and
chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised."
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Commentary:
20. "Christ" means "anointed" and is a name indicating honor and office. In the
Old Law "priests" were anointed (Exodus 29:7 and 40:13), as were "kings" (1
Samuel 9:16), because God laid down that they should receiving anointing in
view of their position; there was also a custom to anoint "prophets" (1 Samuel
16:13) because they were interpreters and intermediaries of God. "When Jesus
Christ our Savior came into the world, He assumed the position and obligations
of the three offices of priest, king and prophet and was therefore called Christ"
("St. Pius V Catechism", I, 3, 7).
22. Jesus prophesied His passion and death in order to help His disciples believe
in him. It also showed that He was freely accepting these sufferings He would un-
dergo. "Christ did not seek to be glorified: He chose to come without glory in or-
der to undergo suffering; and you, who have been born without glory, do you wish
to be glorified? The route you must take is the one Christ took. This means re-
cognizing Him and it means imitating Him both in His ignominy and in His good
repute; thus you will glory in the Cross, which was His path to glory. That was
what Paul did, and therefore he glorified in saying, 'Far be it from me to glory ex-
cept in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ' (Galatians 6:14)" (St. Ambrose, "Ex-
positio Evangelii Sec. Lucam, in loc.").
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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].