Year B

Jan 30 2025

Scripture Study for

The most significant prayer of Israel’s religion is found in Deuteronomy. It is a profession of faith in the one God to whom Israel owes exclusive and undivided commitment and worship. This is the God who drew the people out of Egyptian bondage, led them through the perils of the wilderness, and brought them into the land of promise. This is also the God within whom all the attributes of deity can be found. It is not a divided deity whose various characteristics are worshiped at various shrines. This profession of faith is found within a summons to obedience.

The tradition that surrounded the enigmatic Melchizedek has been reinterpreted in order to typify particular aspects of Jesus’ divine nature. First, his priesthood is permanent, enabling him to intercede without interruption, while the Levitical priests were all subject to death. Jesus’ holiness is the second characteristic that distinguishes his priesthood from the other. He did not have to atone for his own sins, as the Levitical priests did. Finally, his priesthood is not traced back to the religious institution founded on Aaron. Rather, Jesus is identified with Melchizedek, whose priesthood was grounded in eternity and established by a divine oath.

By the time of Jesus, there were 613 commandments surrounding the official biblical law. Although all laws were considered binding, some were regarded more important than others. When questioned about the “first” law, Jesus endorses the summons that constitutes the Shema, the most significant prayer of Israel’s faith. To the injunction to love God with all one’s heart, soul, and strength (Deuteronomy 6:4–5), he adds the injunction to “love your neighbor as yourself” (cf. Leviticus 19:18). He insists that the second is like the first. The scribe, who is schooled in the religious tradition, recognizes Jesus’ response as both accurate and profound. He calls him Teacher, a title that has special significance coming from one who was himself an official interpreter of the law.

Jan 30 2025

All in the Family

All Saints is the wonderful feast that reminds us how God rejoices in having a family of infinite variety, children who strive to trust in God, even in the midst of trials and difficulties, and who remain open to the working of the Holy Spirit in their lives so that Christ can be born again and again in our world.

The Beatitudes offer a profile of God’s children. They should be heard first as good news, as gospel, proclaiming where God is to be found: with the poor in spirit, the mourners, the gentle, those who hunger and thirst for God’s righteousness—that is, those concerned with living in right relationship with God, others, oneself, and all the earth. In Jesus’ day these were not the usual crowd who were declared blessed, esteemed, and honored.

Only after hearing the Beatitudes as gospel should we hear them as a summons to action so our lives mirror the divine face revealed in Jesus: the face of mercy, of cleanliness of heart (a heart open to God), of peacemaking and reconciling, and of willingly suffering rejection in order to help bring about a world of righteous relationships.

God continues to work in us by sending the Holy Spirit, the gift of the Father and the Son, into our hearts to push and prod us, sometimes gently, sometimes forcefully, into a new birth, again and again, until we gradually grow up to become the divine offspring we are destined to be, God’s holy ones, the saints.

Consider/Discuss

Who are some of the saints God has brought into your life within the last year? Ten years? Your lifetime?
How do the Beatitudes speak a word of gospel to you? How do they summon you to action?

Responding to the Word

Creator God, we thank you for the multitudes from every nation, race, people, and tongue who have heard your call to live in love, and to work for peace, reconciliation, and justice in our world. Draw us into deeper kinship with them so that we might one day join them in the kin-dom of heaven.

Jan 30 2025

Scripture Study for

John the seer relates two extraordinary apocalyptic visions that were granted to him. Although they differ, the second adds a dimension to the first. The events of the first vision seem to unfold on earth; those of the second take place in heaven. Both visions depict vast assemblies of the righteous. There is no suggestion that these people are martyrs. Instead they are those who have survived the distress of the end-times because they were purified through the blood of the sacrificial Lamb. This distinction certainly entitles them to participate in the celebration held at the end of time.

The love of which the author of First John speaks is generative, transforming. It makes believers children of God. Everything that happens in their lives is a consequence of their having been recreated as God’s children. They are a new reality; hence, they are not accepted by the world, the old reality. Certain similarities between Jesus and the believers are drawn. The world did not recognize the only begotten Son of God and it does not recognize these new children of God. The implications of this are clear. Believers should not be surprised if they encounter the very rejection—even persecution and death—that befell Jesus.

The teachings of Jesus are all in some way directed toward the establishment of the reign of God. The type of behavior he advocates is frequently the opposite of that espoused by society at large. This explains the challenges set before us in the Beatitudes. The first and the third Beatitudes claim that power is in the hands of the meek and the poor. The second and the fourth promise the alleviation of inner turmoil. The fifth, sixth, and seventh Beatitudes treat aspects of religious piety. The last Beatitude clearly warns that commitment to Jesus’ cause can bring persecution. It is clear that each Beatitude invites us to turn the standards of our world and our way of life upside down and inside out.

Jan 30 2025

Saving Faith

A saving faith is one that knows it needs a savior. Bartimaeus must have been told that Jesus was going by, so he begins to cry out, a true cry from the heart: “Jesus, son of David, have pity on me.” The crowd rebukes him at first. Why are they telling him to be silent? Do they want him to save face, preserve his dignity? Or does he embarrass them, annoy them?

Bartimaeus is not interested in saving face, his or theirs. He has a saving faith that keeps him shouting. Though blind, he sees what he has to do to get a response from Jesus. An unambiguous cry for mercy, along with a special name, “Jesus, son of David.” It carries his prayer right into Jesus’ heart. He stops and calls the blind man over. The crowd now encourages Bartimaeus: “Take courage. Get up, Jesus is calling you.” A saving faith trumps saving face.

Then, in a gesture that speaks Bartimaeus’ faith as much as his words, he throws aside his cloak. This cloak is his greatest possession; he sits on it, begging all day, and wraps himself in it to sleep at night. He now leaves it and his past behind, going to Jesus.

“What do you want me to do?” Jesus asks. “Master, I want to see,” he says, already acknowledging himself a disciple of the “Master.” Jesus speaks: “Go your way; your faith has saved you.” Then, Mark’s perfect ending: “Immediately he received his sight and followed him on the way.”

Consider/Discuss

What does your faith allow you to see?
What do you still need to see in order to “follow Jesus on the way”?

Responding to the Word

Lord Jesus, you heard the cry of a blind man and answered his plea, giving him a new life with you. In our blindness, we sometimes fail to remember how near you always are. Remove any obstacles that prevent us from calling out, trusting in your mercy and love.

Jan 30 2025

Scripture Study for

The procession of returnees seems to be retracing the very path taken when the people were exiled to the land in the north. They had left their cherished homeland in tears, but they would return amid shouts of joy. Jeremiah states that only a remnant will return, and this remnant will consist of the most vulnerable of the people. It will include those who are blind or lame, who are mothers or who are pregnant, all people who are utterly dependent upon God. It will be through them that the nation will be restored. Restoration is a work of God, not of human endeavor.

Patterned after the model of Aaron, the prospective high priest must be able to empathize with the frailty of the people, and he must have been called by God. Jesus did not trace his ancestry to a priestly family, and there was no need for him to make sin offerings for himself. Therefore, his right to function as high priest had to be explained. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews does this by referring to him as Christ, and then reinterpreting two very familiar biblical passages that have messianic significance. Since both kings and priests were anoint ed, the title Christ, or “anointed one,” carries both royal and priestly connotations. To call Jesus by this title is to make a claim about his messianic identity.

The faith of the blind man in the Gospel is both demonstrated by his actions and explicitly recognized by Jesus. When he hears that it is Jesus of Nazareth who is passing by him, he cries out to him using a title that has strong messianic connotations. Son of David identifies Jesus not only as a descendant of this royal figure, but also as the long-awaited one who was to fulfill both the religious and the political expectations of the people. The man who was blind already had eyes of faith and he acted on this faith, publicly proclaiming it.