The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today invite us to contemplate our experiences of trust in God and the gifts we receive from that trust.
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| Power, love, and self-control |
The reading from the Second Letter to Timothy expresses thanksgiving for the mission and encouragement to continue.
* [1:12] He is able to guard…until that day: the intervening words can also be translated “what I have entrusted to him” (i.e., the fruit of his ministry) as well as “what has been entrusted to me” (i.e., the faith). The same difficult term occurs in 2 Tm 1:14, where it is modified by the adjective “rich” and used without a possessive.1
Psalm 123 is a supplication for Mercy from God.
* [Psalm 123] A lament that begins as a prayer of an individual (Ps 123:1), who expresses by a touching comparison exemplary confidence in God (Ps 123:2). The Psalm ends in prayer that God relieve the people’s humiliation at the hands of the arrogant (Ps 123:3–4).2
In the Gospel of Mark, the Sadducees question Jesus about the Resurrection.
* [12:13–34] In the ensuing conflicts (cf. also Mk 2:1–3:6) Jesus vanquishes his adversaries by his responses to their questions and reduces them to silence (Mk 12:34). See note on Mt 22:23–33.3
Ronald Fussell comments it is important to know that the Sadducees, who were the high-ranking priests of the day, did not ascribe to the idea of resurrection or the afterlife. They are essentially trying to position Jesus to either deny the law of Moses or deny the afterlife.
When I read passages such as this, I find it helpful to put myself in the position of others present in the Gospel reading – the Sadducees in this case. But the most notable take-away for me from today’s reading is the mental gymnastics in which we tend to engage to avoid the truth of the Gospel. The truth is easy to read but difficult to commit to. So, as we reflect on today’s readings, let us focus our lived faith on accepting these truths, so that we too may achieve the eternal reward that is revealed to us in scripture and in Jesus’ words today4
Don Schwager quotes “No marriage in the resurrection,” by Augustine of Hippo, 354-430 A.D.
"What did the Lord say to the Sadducees? He said, 'You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures or the power of God. For in the resurrection they marry neither husbands nor wives; for neither do they start dying again, but they will be equal to the angels of God' (Mark 12:24-25; Matthew 22:29-30). The power of God is great. Why do they not marry husbands or wives? They will not start dying again. When one generation departs, another is required to succeed it. There will not be such liability to decay in that place. The Lord passed through the usual stages of growth, from infancy to adult manhood, because he was bearing the substance of flesh that still was mortal. After he had risen again at the age at which he was buried, are we to imagine that he is growing old in heaven? He says, 'They will be equal to the angels of God.' He eliminated the assumption of the Jews and refuted the objection of the Sadducees, because the Jews did indeed believe the dead would rise again, but they had crude, fleshly ideas about the state of humanity after resurrection. He said, 'They will be equal to the angels of God.' ... It has already been stated that we are to rise again. We have heard from the Lord that we rise again to the life of the angels. In his own resurrection, he has shown us in what specific form we are to rise again." (excerpt from SERMON 362.18–19.30)5
The Word Among Us Meditation on 2 Timothy 1:1-3, 6-12 recalls power, love, and self-control. These are gifts from the Spirit. This is our heritage. We step out in faith and try them out!
And because it comes from God, this power can make us brave and unashamed: brave enough to offer to pray with a friend who is hurting. Brave enough to share our faith with a family member who is struggling. Brave enough to turn away from gossip and to change the tone of a negative conversation. The Spirit also helps us to love. He helps us to lift up each child of God, not just the ones we find attractive, but also the ones who try our patience or who rub us the wrong way... the self-control that comes from the Holy Spirit enables us to rise above our fears and to harness our inner drives. It helps us turn aside from harmful thoughts and overcome old habits that threaten to trip us up.6
Friar Jude Winkler notes the “pastoral letters” show a development of hierarchy that occurred after the death of Paul. When we join our suffering to Jesus today, we make His suffering present and, in Paul’s words, make up what was lacking in Jesus' suffering. Friar Jude reminds us that Jesus showed the Pentatuch, normative text for the Sadducees, shows a God of the living.
The Franciscan media post on Saint Charles Lwanga and Companions, Saints of the Day for June 3, reflects that we are all teachers and witnesses to Christian living by the examples of our own lives. We are all called upon to spread the word of God, whether by word or deed. By remaining courageous and unshakable in our faith during times of great moral and physical temptation, we live as Christ lived.
On the night of Mukaso’s martyrdom for encouraging the African youths to resist Mwanga, Charles requested and received baptism. Imprisoned with his friends, Charles’s courage and belief in God inspired them to remain chaste and faithful.
For his own unwillingness to submit to the immoral acts and his efforts to safeguard the faith of his friends, Charles was burned to death at Namugongo on June 3, 1886, by Mwanga’s order.
When Pope Paul VI canonized these 22 martyrs on October 18, 1964, he also made reference to the Anglican pages martyred for the same reason.7
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, notes that as Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) observed, one of the most segregated hours in the United States still occurs on Sunday mornings when we attend church services. [1] Yet as early as the 1940s, African-American writer and mystic Howard Thurman (1899–1981) was seeking to build a worshipping community across racial differences. In 1944, along with his white co-pastor Alfred Fisk (1905–1959), Thurman co-founded the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples, the country’s first interracial, interfaith congregation. Reverend Thurman describes how the collective experience of God became the center of the community’s life, unifying people from many different backgrounds and cultural expressions.
Fellowship Church was a unique idea, fresh, untried. There were no precedents and no traditions to aid in structuring the present or gauging the future. Yet [my wife] Sue and I knew that all our accumulated experiences of the past had given us two crucial gifts for this undertaking: a profound conviction that meaningful and creative experiences between peoples can be more compelling than all the ideas, concepts, faiths, fears, ideologies, and prejudices that divide them; and absolute faith that if such experiences can be multiplied and sustained over a time interval of sufficient duration any barrier that separates one person from another can be undermined and eliminated. We were sure that the ground of such meaningful experiences could be provided by the widest possible associations around common interest and common concerns.8
Power, love, and self-control are gifts from the Spirit that we are called to use to build trust that in our relationship with Jesus, we will draw people together in a loving community.
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