Righteous connected

The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today explore the question of an opportune time for doing the will of God.

Doing what the crowd wants

The Book of Wisdom describes the reaction sometime experienced by those who do the Will of God from those are threatened or confused by the righteous person.

* [2:12–5:23] From 2:12 to 5:23 the author draws heavily on Is 52–62, setting forth his teaching in a series of characters or types taken from Isaiah and embellished with additional details from other texts. The description of the “righteous one” in 2:12–20 seems to undergird the New Testament passion narrative.

Jesus move to attend the The Feast of Tabernacles in the Gospel of John at a time that was not yet His “holy hour”.

* [7:6] Time: the Greek word means “opportune time,” here a synonym for Jesus’ “hour” (see note on Jn 2:4), his death and resurrection. In the wordplay, any time is suitable for Jesus’ brothers, because they are not dependent on God’s will.

John Shea, S.J. describes the “crab mentality” in the Scripture today with the phrase, "if I can't have it, neither can you" He notes how often we see this attitude operating in our society.

The Gospel provides an important antidote to the crab mentality. At first, Jesus did not want to travel to Jerusalem where the people wanted to bring him down and kill him. But Jesus goes anyway and faces those who are jealous of him because he “professes to have knowledge of God and styles himself a child of the Lord.” Although he escapes arrest here, we know that revilement, torture and death await him.

Don Schwager asks What can hold us back from doing the will of God?

Fear, especially the fear of death and the fear of losing the approval of others, can easily rob us of courage and the will to do what we know is right. Jesus met opposition and the threat of death with grace and determination to accomplish his Father's will. Jesus knew that his mission, his purpose in life, would entail sacrifice and suffering and culminate with death on the cross. But that would not be the end. His "hour" would crush defeat with victory over sin and Satan, condemnation with pardon and freedom, and death with glory and everlasting life.

Friar Jude Winkler provides background to one of last books written in the Hebrew Testament. It is a Deutero-canonical book that contains themes of how evil will plot against the good. In the Gospel text, the knowledge the people think they have about Jesus is not really the true knowledge.

In extending the idea of imperfect knowledge, Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, is inspired by Theologian Fr. Thomas Berry (1914-2009) and Joanna Macy to emphasize the essential need to shift from Anthropocentrism to Ecocentrism for the renewal of the earth.

Our inner spiritual world cannot be activated without experience of the outer world of wonder for the mind, beauty for the imagination, and intimacy for the emotions.

The Will of God is distant from “crab mentality” and acting on imperfect knowledge. Moving to put faith in action will attract the derision that has always been heaped on the righteous person.

References


(n.d.). Wisdom, chapter 2 - United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Retrieved March 16, 2018, from http://www.usccb.org/bible/wisdom/2

(n.d.). CHAPTER 7 The Feast of Tabernacles. 1 After this, Jesus moved .... Retrieved March 16, 2018, from http://www.usccb.org/bible/john/john7.htm

(n.d.). Creighton's Online Ministries - Creighton University. Retrieved March 16, 2018, from http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/online.html

(n.d.). Daily Scripture Readings and Meditations. Retrieved March 16, 2018, from http://dailyscripture.servantsoftheword.org/ 

(n.d.). Daily Meditations Archives - Center for Action and Contemplation. Retrieved March 16, 2018, from https://cac.org/category/daily-meditations/