The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today stress our foundation in faith as expressed in the Letter to the Romans and experienced in our life.
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| Experience faith |
The reading from the Letter to the Romans is Paul’s greeting and statement of the mission to bring about the obedience of faith.
* [1:5] Paul recalls his apostolic office, implying that the Romans know something of his history. The obedience of faith: as Paul will show at length in chaps. 6–8 and 12–15, faith in God’s justifying action in Jesus Christ relates one to God’s gift of the new life that is made possible through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the activity of the holy Spirit (see especially Rom 8:1–11).1
Psalm 98 praises the Judge of the World.
* [Psalm 98] A hymn, similar to Ps 96, extolling God for Israel’s victory (Ps 98:1–3). All nations (Ps 98:4–6) and even inanimate nature (Ps 98:7–8) are summoned to welcome God’s coming to rule over the world (Ps 98:9).2
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus addresses the demand for a sign from the religious authorities.
* [11:29–32] The “sign of Jonah” in Luke is the preaching of the need for repentance by a prophet who comes from afar. Cf. Mt 12:38–42 (and see notes there) where the “sign of Jonah” is interpreted by Jesus as his death and resurrection.3
Amy Hoover suggests that we reflect today on Who are we being called to love? What are we being called to “die to” today? What is in the way of us realizing that Jesus is the “something greater here”?
Jesus shows us that we must be willing to die to experience new life. This can be seen literally in his death and resurrection, but also he calls us to die figuratively, to ourselves, to let go of the need for revenge or the hurt or the control or whatever it is that gets in the way of receiving the grace which God offers to us – new life, resurrection. This can be experienced simply as we transition from one stage of life to another. For instance, when our children leave home. We grief the loss of them daily in our lives but then discover the God is inviting us to a new activity or ministry.4
Peter Edmonds SJ, a member of the Jesuit community in Stamford Hill, comments that the Letter to the Romans is the most significant of Paul's letters theologically and historically. It has had an immense influence.
There never has been a time in history when Christians have not had much to learn from this letter. In the fourth century, the reading of two of its verses, Romans 13:13-14, is part of the story of the conversion of St Augustine of Hippo. In the Reformation period of the sixteenth century, especially because of its teachings on ‘justification by faith’, it was a major influence on Martin Luther. Karl Barth, an outstanding Protestant theologian of the early years of the twentieth century, wrote a major commentary on Romans. It has long been a favourite of Protestant Christians, but in the last years of the twentieth century, Catholic commentaries of outstanding quality also appeared. The importance of the letter for dialogue between the major religions is now also being rediscovered.5
Don Schwager quotes “The sign of Jonah,” by an anonymous early author from the Greek church.
"'What is the sign of Jonah? The stumbling block of the cross. So it is not the disputers of knowledge who will be saved but those who believe true teaching. For the cross of Christ is indeed a stumbling block to those who dispute knowledge but salvation to those who believe. Paul testifies to this: 'But we, for our part, preach the crucified Christ - to the Jews indeed a stumbling block and to the Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God' (1 Corinthians 1:23-24). Why do the Jews seek signs and the Greeks seek wisdom? God pointed to the sign of the stumbling block of the cross to both the Jews and the Greeks. Thus those who wish to find Christ not through faith but through wisdom will perish on the stumbling block of foolishness. Those who wish to know the Son of God not through faith but through a demonstration of signs will remain trapped in their disbelief, falling on the stumbling block of his death. It is no small wonder that the Jews, considering the death of Christ, thought he was merely a man, when even Christians - as they purport to be but really are not - because of his death are reluctant to declare the only begotten, the crucified, as incomparable majesty." (excerpt from INCOMPLETE WORK ON MATTHEW, HOMILY 30, the Greek fathers).6
The Word Among Us Meditation on Romans 1:1-7 comments that as we begin a nearly three-week series of readings from Paul’s letter to the Romans, we want to understand why Paul wrote it in the first place. One thing he is clearly doing in this letter is laying a strong foundation for his relationship with believers in Rome.
And so Paul lays the groundwork. He introduces himself: “a slave of Christ Jesus, called to be an Apostle and set apart for the Gospel of God” (Romans 1:1). He presents “the Gospel about [God’s] Son” (1:3) and outlines God’s plan of salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus. And since the church in Rome was comprised of both Jews and Gentile converts, he places a special focus on the relationship between Jews and Gentiles in salvation history. As a result, Paul’s letter to the Romans became an exercise in diplomacy that has also yielded some of our deepest Christian theology.7
Friar Jude Winkler describes some of the aspects of the Letter to the Romans as a masterful presentation of soteriology. In the Gospel, Jesus confronts those seeking an absolute sign. Friar Jude reminds us of the required act of trust that allows us to thrust ourselves into the void.
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, teaches that we cannot know God only by thinking thoughts. Unfortunately, for much of Christianity, faith largely became believing statements to be true or false (intellectual assent) instead of giving people concrete practices so they could themselves know how to open up (faith), hold on (hope), and allow an infilling from another source (love). Contemplation opens our heads, hearts, and bodies to God’s living presence. The concrete practices listed by Fr. Richard mirror the structure of the Letter of Paul to the Romans. Maria Guarino reflects on Brother Michael’s, a member of the Benedictine monastic community of Weston Priory in Vermont, message.
As in all aspects of the Benedictine life, there is a balance to be struck. . . . The brothers were open to mystery and the ineffable, but . . . the mysterious did not require suspension of the rational or the intellectual. For them, the rational mind and the spiritual heart coexist. Head and heart, rational and spiritual, need not stifle or silence one another. Both are necessary as the brothers position themselves toward an experience of God that is immediate yet distant, familiar yet ineffable, immanent yet transcendent, and as rational as it is unknowable.8
The celebration of Thanksgiving today resonates with the reflection from yesterday as we are prepared by the texts today to be open to faith, hope, and love as we begin the journey of Paul’s letter to the Romans.
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