Mary and Joseph

"Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been looking for you anxiously." (Luke 2:48)

So often, when we consider the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, we think of a loving family centered on the existence of the precious Christ child, a family that faced difficulties, to be sure, but persevered in trust and service to each other. Such a portrait is good and right.

But what of the marriage of Joseph and Mary? Imagine the events as they develop (Luke 2:41-52). The Passover is finished, and Joseph, Mary, and Jesus are to return to Nazareth. At least while they are leaving Jerusalem, they must be travelling in a very large company--hundreds, perhaps?--since the parents could not see their son, but were not at first concerned. At some point, however, the thought must have crossed Joseph or Mary's mind: where is Jesus? Very soon, as any parent can attest, the question gave way to quickly rising anxiety, as Joseph and Mary began to ask, to fall behind in the group, to pass the urgent request on, if anyone had seen Jesus...

By nightfall, Joseph and Mary were alone, back in Jerusalem, the great and holy city of David where they had been so many Passovers before. They found lodging, ate perhaps only a little, and shared a deep pain of loss together. Truly, a man and woman married to each other: an experience of sorrow, of talking, of attempting to comfort. Mary Ever-Virgin was still Mary, a woman; Joseph, guardian of this family, was even more so Joseph, husband of Mary--surely he held her close to comfort her, to love her, to comfort his own heart aching at the disappearance of their son, still just a child at twelve. Perhaps in their talking they reminded each other that Jesus the child of twelve was now Jesus the young man of twelve; he had a good head on his shoulders, and Joseph and Mary knew his independent spirit, but also his practicality--after all, he was a carpenter's apprentice, he knew how to handle himself with people, such as those for whom Joseph worked...

The second day was bleak and bitter. The terrible weariness that comes with grief was making itself felt. The couple racked their brains, trying to think of clues. Where had they seen Jesus last, before they left the city? Who had he been with? What were his favorite places to eat? What streets to saunter through? Joseph and Mary pursued all these questions, but their quest was futile. Nothing, no clue, no one had seen the boy since the Passover. As evening fell, they asked each other: what do we do? What can we do? Is he truly lost? Is there anything we can do? Should we simply... go back to Nazareth? That seems to be all that is left to do...

The third day. Perhaps Mary and Joseph have made their hopeless decision. There is no more asking to be done, no more possibilities to pursue. Truly, they bear together a heavy grief, a sharing of a chalice of bitterness. As they prepare to leave--three days is a long time--one of them suggests: let us go, before we leave, to the temple (Luke 2:46).

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." (Matthew 5:4) Brokenhearted, Joseph and Mary return to the temple, which doubtless they had visited a few days before in joy and confident trust. Now, life is weariness, grief constricts the heart, fewer words are shared, but closeness remains, for now they are all they have, each other, Mary and Joseph. The temple of the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, the Presence of Glory, the Deliverer of His People, the One who spoke from the bush, who held back the waters of the sea, who spoke in cloud and thunder on Sinai...

And they heard a boy's voice. Their hands, held tight so often for three days now, part in a rush of chaotic emotion that only a parent's heart can experience, they run, they see...

"And when they saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, 'Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been looking for your anxiously.'" (Luke 2:48)

A small company of only three now travels back to Nazareth. The exhaustion of joy and relief is tempered by an awkward silence: after all, they had not understood Jesus' answer (Luke 2:50), and the young man seemed impenitent for the sorrow he had caused them. At this moment, Mary and Joseph certainly understood each other much better than they understood their child, their son. And, as all parents of twelve-year olds must do, they had to accept what they did not understand. Between themselves, they mused on possibilities, motives, reasons, but in the end, they knew that their child was growing now, that the separation was beginning, that the self-identity of adulthood had entered into Jesus' life. At the same time, after the sorrow and anger--perhaps even by the time they reached Nazareth a few days later--they were quietly proud of their son. Where had they found him, after all? Safe, sound, upright, and good, as he had always been, in the temple of the Living God... his "Father's house." (Luke 2:49) 

And so, through their "loss and gain," Joseph and Mary experienced the true dynamic of any marriage: an unexpected sorrow, a test, a strain, a moment of risk, to grow apart or grow together. Their relationship reached a new level of intimacy, the intimacy of shared grief, of generosity to the other even in the moment of one's own fear, truly as husband and wife. This was not lost on Jesus--the child who had learned so much from Joseph, about carpentry, and about fatherhood, had now seen the selflessness of Joseph and Mary, the giving of one's own strength to the other--even surely to the point of death they would have been willing to do this.

No, this was not lost on Jesus. Surely not in Gethsemane, place of fear; surely not on Calvary, place of the skull; surely, not in the tomb, place of three days...

At the feet of the apostles ... (Acts 4:32-37)

The modern Christian may have an ambivalent reaction to this passage. On the one hand, we are attracted by the idyllic image of the first generation of Jesus' followers being "of one heart and soul," sharing their possessions with each generously in a communitarian fashion (Acts 4:32). Through true Christian love, none were in want (v. 34). Indeed, this kind of Christianity (untainted by the waining of fervor yet to come), read in this way, seems to promise a real solution to the world's problems: no conflict, no hunger, no inequity. "Christianity has never been tried," or, it was once, at the very beginning, but then the cynical march of time showed it to be but a fleeting spark... "If only," we are tempted to lament, comfortable in the inevitable self-indictment that rests on the premise that we have failed to be like the first Christians because, after all, real Christianity is a beautiful but impractical dream. Even St. Francis of Assisi could not guarantee for his order that the original simplicity of Lady Poverty call would be preserved in wholeness and simplicity. And if he couldn't succeed, well then...

Then comes a passage that makes us quietly uneasy: landowners, property holders, the well-to-do, sell some of what they own, and bring "the money and [lay] it at the apostles' feet" (vv. 34-37). This is indeed noble and generous, we admit, and follows of course on the beautiful harmony described in the first part of the passage, and that is well and good, but let us focus rather on the "one heart and soul" of those who "had everything in common" (v. 32). After all, money causes problems, and we don't like to hear money talked about in church, and here are the apostles taking money. And didn't Judas have something to do with money? Not to mention the preachers who ask for it, the pastors who ask for it, the missions who ask for it, the church who asks for it?

If we read this passage from such admittedly understandable perspectives, we miss what may be the key to the "third way" of reading. Notice where the money was brought and set down: our passage not once, but twice (vv. 35 and 37) tells us that it was "at the feet of the apostles." But what do we know of those feet? If the image of money laid down at the feet of religious leaders makes us uncomfortable, what image of their feet made the apostles' uncomfortable? What--or who--had not many months before knelt at their feet, feet covered in dust and grime, feet calloused and toughened by the boat's deck, the rope of the nets, the weariness of the wandering road? None other than the one who had poured water, and with His own hands washed those feet, that night when He had so much else to think about, so much terrified anticipation of what was to happen the next day. None other than the one who had dried those feet, and declared the act a supreme example of what it means to love, and what we must do if we claim to love.

These are the feet, then, feet bathed by Jesus, that receive the gifts of Christians. What is our property, our land, that we may sell? Could it be our claim to self? Our primal craving to control our circumstances, our likes and dislikes, our relationships with others, our fears, our health and sickness? But imagine: if we surrender these, "sell" these (for selling is after all parting with something)--all, a few, or just one--what are the "proceeds," the "price," the "money" we receive? Simply, a free (or at least freer) heart. A heart that relinquishes its narrow demands on self and others. A heart that is still limited, since it is a human heart, but that can now begin to grow as a vessel into which the waters of the Holy Spirit flow. A heart that drinks the new wine of God's kingdom, a wine that fills the heart with the Precious Blood that courses through the Heart of the universe's king. This then, is the price, the profit, the joy that we are able to bring to the apostle's feet, feet bathed once and forever that our souls may ever cry with Peter, "Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!" (Jn 13:9)

"Never man spake ..."

"The officers answered, Never man spake like this man." (Jn 7:46, KJV)

In today's gospel, Jesus is a source of dissension, confusion, and conflict. The need to answer the question "Who do men say that I am?" (Mk 8:27, RSV) has become pressing, and the uncertainty and anxiety expressed by the people and their leaders are palpable--indeed, a crisis is at hand.

In all the richness and turbulence of this episode, however, one passage is striking in its simplicity. When the temple officers, having been sent by their superiors to bring Jesus in (Jn 7:32), return empty-handed, they are roundly scolded by the priests and Pharisees for failing to fulfill their assignment: "Why have ye not brought him?," (Jn 7:45, KJV), is the angry question. Their answer is simple and guileless, so overwhelmed they had clearly been by Jesus' presence and word: "Never man spake like this man."

The guards' reply is profound in its simplicity. Yet, at the risk of complication, a comparison of variant Greek readings of this sentence suggests an even more dramatic wording. Most standard versions of the Greek (Textus receptus, Nestle-Aland, and variants), those that underlie almost all vernacular translations from the Authorised Version to the present, offer a reading like the following: "οὐδέποτε ἐλάλησεν οὕτως ἄνθρωπος, ὡς οὗτος λαλεῖ ὁ ἄνθρωπος," literally "never spoke thus man/human, as this speaks the man/human." In the many English renderings available, the wording is clear: no single human person ever uttered words like this man Jesus utters--hence the guards' utter failure to apprehend the Lord, their complete surrender to the power of His presence. This is surely stuff enough on which to meditate.

However, a variant reading (old Westcott-Hort), has the following shortened sentence: "οὐδέποτε ἐλάλησεν οὕτως ἄνθρωπος," "never spoke thus man/human (anthropos)." Without contradicting the more common reading, this variant emphasizes a dramatic Christological and anthropological truth inherent in the officers' simple words: never before has human nature spoken the Word, the eternally begotten Son of the Father, which humanity can speak now only because the Word has taken up human nature in Himself. So the sense is not that just Jesus' words touch the heart in a way that no words ever have--although there is certainly nothing wrong in finding this truth in the phrase in question. But I would suggest that a much greater horizon is present as well, brought out in the shorter variant introduced here: for the first time in human history, the Word Himself speaks with his own human voice, the dramatic utterance of the Second Person of the Trinity in space and time. Thus, it is the power of the Logos that overwhelms--but does not destroy!--the hearts of the humble officers sent to carry out an arrest. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the soldier following orders is so often in the gospels the one to recognize the Lord: the temple officers here, the Roman centurion at the cross ("Truly this man was the Son of God" [Mk 15:30]), the guards placed at the tomb ...

The innkeeper

"And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, 'Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.'" (Lk 10:35)

So often, we hear Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan as a challenge to us to be generous in attitude towards others. Our neighbor is "the next person I meet who is in need," we are told, and since everyone is in need in some way, we are called to be loving and attentive towards all we meet. Furthermore, the courageous kindness of the despised Samaritan warns us against self-righteous pride, and against fear of human respect--what others will think of us--when our conscience calls us to do something awkward or uncomfortable for another.

There is of course nothing wrong with the reading sketched out above, and in it is much to commend it. However, we gain an interesting new perspective if we place ourselves in the role neither of the Samaritan nor of those who neglected the victim, but rather in that of the innkeeper. The Samaritan's saving intervention was a step both heroic and necessary, but now the beaten man's full recovery depends on the willing attentiveness of the man to whom the Samaritan entrusts his charge. Though paid a sum by the Samaritan, the innkeeper may well not have received enough to cover all the costs of caring for the convalescent--and besides, he is an innkeeper, not a nurse! There is indeed a danger that he will not cooperate with the Samaritan's plan, and a man's life hangs in the balance. Yet the Samaritan entrusts, and trusts. A perilous gamble, some might say ...

Perilous, indeed. For we are the innkeepers who, in spite of pledges of happiness, foretastes of glory from God Himself, are tempted to grumble: "Am I my brother's keeper?" (Gen 4:9) The divine Samaritan, cast out by the world, has poured the balm of His blood onto the open sores and wounds of sin-burdened hearts. And then he commits the unthinkable: he commends the nurturing of these hearts, just beginning to heal, to frails followers, disciples of his who are far from perfect, innkeepers who know but poorly how to cultivate gently a reviving soul of a fellow wayfarer. A dramatic testimony of how much Jesus has enlisted us to bear his saving cross with him, by shouldering the care of those whom he has touched to heal!

Perhaps we will seldom or never in life have occasion to play the Good Samaritan himself, faced with a desperate cry for help from souls bruised by the cruelty and neglect of others. But we are always called to be the innkeeper, for we are daily met, whether we are aware of them or not, by souls "on the mend," or perhaps hanging in the balance. God always, at every moment, caresses the wounded with his healing touch, no matter how often they--we--push his hand away. May we pray for the grace and discernment to be innkeepers with humble and ready hearts, able to see always Lazarus at the gate, to stoop to him, to embrace him with the arms of the Divine Samaritan, we who are the very arms and hands of God on earth.

Nonviolence or "law of the gift"? (Matthew 5:38-42)

"Turn the other cheek" is one of those phrases that come to mean something quite different from what they were intended to say in their original context. Once this happens, a clear reading of the original context can become difficult to achieve as well. In this gospel (Mt 5:38-42), we conventionally understand and react to Jesus' words in one of two ways, at least in part because of our familiar reactions to the expression "turn the other cheek." First, we might pay lip service to a kind of passive non-violence, a meek self-resignation that supposedly mimics what Jesus would do. This is a reading that has given a bad name to the Christian faith, incidentally, as testified by the likes of Friedrich Nietzsche's vehement critique of a pusillanimous Christianity, a religion for weaklings and failures. Alternatively, we are tempted to explain away this passage as a case of Jesus' well-known use of hyperbole: "of course he does not really mean that we should give our cloak to someone who sues us ... he is only trying to teach us the right attitude. After all, there are times when we really have to defend ourselves ..."

Although the non-violent reading can be redeemed from its weakness in the light of Gandhi's active non-violence guided by satyagraha, and although there are certainly occasions when natural law not only permits but requires that we defend ourselves, both directions of interpretation might be missing the central point of the passage. Let us read it carefully. Jesus first introduces the "one who is evil" (Mt 5:39), who first strikes us, then we offer the other cheek; who first sues us for our coat, then we are to give him our cloak; who first compels us to walk a mile, then we willingly go a second. Curiously, we are to give our enemy what he actually might not want even if he could have it! We grant him not only what is compelled, what he sees as justice for his cause (n.b. that Jesus began this passage with a reference to the lex talionis, the equal balancing of "eye for eye" and "tooth for tooth" [Mt 5:38]), but also something that we give freely, that he did not request (and might even reject as unwanted or uncomfortable!): the other cheek, the unsought cloak, the extra mile.

Seen in the light of Pope John Paul II's idea of "law of the gift" (i.e., that our ultimate fulfillment as persons comes from the gift of ourselves to others, just as the person of the Trinity give themselves to each other), we can begin to understand "turning the other cheek" in a new way. The "other" compels me to something. Neither passive nor active non-violence is a complete response, however. Jesus challenges me to make a free gift of myself, after having given under compulsion, for only in freedom can love be expressed, and only love can establish the personal, personalist relationship with the "one who is evil." God has chosen to use this relationship, in turn, to communicate his love even for the malicious sinner, the unjust persecutor.

It is telling that this passage ends with Jesus' command to "give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse him who would borrow from you" (Mt 5:42). We would not instinctively classify the beggar as "evil," yet the context of the passage suggests that Jesus identifies the one who begs or borrows as an extension of the selfish enemy. So, then, the "one who is evil" is a person in need, who by his striking us, taking us to court, compelling us to walk the mile, is actually begging, begging so often without knowing, longing for the love than only God can give--a love that God has chosen to impart through us when we make that gift of self to others, no matter how undeserving they may seem. We are frail instruments, but are nevertheless God's hands and arms in the world of men.

Honesty with Jesus (Mark 11:27-33)

So often, when we read of Jesus' encounters with "scribes and elders," we are quick to assume on their part a conscious hypocrisy, a deliberate ploy to trip Jesus up, to catch him in his words and expose him as a fraud. Then, we read Jesus' response as a piercing, almost Solomonic repartee which exposes the bad faith of his questioners. Several examples from the gospels come to mind: the attempt to trick Jesus about the lawfulness of taxation (Lk 20:20-26), the disingenuous query "But who is my neighbor?" (Lk 10:25-37), and the episode at hand (Mk 11:27-33) in which "the chief priests and the scribes and the elders" demand to know "by what authority" Jesus performs miracles and teaches the people.

In this last example, it is tempting to identify the questioners' motives as a mix of intended deceit and excessive legalism. Their obsession with authority betrays the true type of their religion: a cold, empty system of laws that constrict the freedom proper to the life of the spirit. Threatened by Jesus, they aim to silence him by a question that will force him either to make an outrageous claim about his own identity or to retreat in humiliation.

So runs a usual reading, and probably much in it is correct. But what if we take the side of the scribes and elders for a moment? What if we give them the benefit of the doubt that, in the beginning at least, they meant their question seriously? For honest believers of any faith, "authority" is not a dirty word, but rather an idea that must be taken in earnest. It is a question of nothing less than the source of truth itself, and hence of the reliability of the truth one strives to accept. Jesus' words were compelling, and certainly had much of the ring of truth about them. Even (or especially!) the scribes and elders sensed this. Hence, their question was not unreasonable. Indeed, one could argue that it was necessary, that they would have been irresponsible not to ask it.

Seen in this light, Jesus' counterquestion about the source of John the Baptist's ministry was not so much a tactic to expose the questioners' legalistic religious or intent to deceive (or both), as rather a test of their courage. Their deliberations reveal that they believed that John's baptism was from men, not God. Had they truthfully admitted this to Jesus, in brave honesty, an authentic conversation might have ensued, as for example in Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well (Jn 4:4-42). But fear of human respect (what would the people say if the authorities declared John's baptism to be not of God?) led them to a cowardly "We do not know."

We can converse with Jesus only if we are honest with ourselves and with him, and if we are willing to be so--and this is the most difficult part--even in the sight of others. This is all the more difficult when we are "at odds" with Jesus (and who of us is not?), as were the woman at the well and the scribes and elders in the gospel at hand. Ultimately, honesty flows from trust, and leads to a joyous humility that transcends worry about what others will think. Herein lies the crucial difference between the reactions of the Samaritan woman on the one hand and the authorities questioning John's baptism on the other. The woman trusted Jesus with the shameful details of her broken past and present, so much so that she ran back to tell her neighbors excitedly about Jesus, simultaneously but without embarrassment reminding them of her sinful personal history: he "told me all that I ever did" (Jn 4:29). And this holy humiliation in turn opened her eyes to tne possibility of Jesus' messiahship: "Can this be the Christ?". The scribes and elders, on the other hand, feared too much to acknowledge to Jesus their honest, even if mistaken, appraisal of John the Baptist. Consequently, their only committal is to professed, pretended ignorance: "We do not know" (Mk 11:33).

As Jesus warns elsewhere, lukewarmness--in this case, the refusal to commit oneself to an honest answer, for fear of the consequences--is far worse than being on the wrong side as hot or cold (Rev 3:16). Honesty with Jesus may at first find our hearts not in unison with his. However, it is an indispensable prerequisite for an authentic dialogue, a conversation that may and should continue until our last breath, and lead us to everlasting communion with this great lover of souls.

Ecclesiastes and the human condition

Christian responses to the book of Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth or the "Preacher") usually fall into two categories. The modern response tends to identify the text as thoroughly non-Christian, pessimistic, and included in the canon of scripture only by virtue of being considered one of the ancient "wisdom" texts. (Similar statements are often made in the case of the Song of Songs, pegged as an erotic poem and thoroughly secular in its intended meaning.) A more ancient response is offered by the patristic tradition of the early church: to see the enjoyment of life's good things as an allegory for the soul's delight in spiritual matters, so that the bread and wine of Ecclesiastes 9:7, for example, prefigure the Christian's bliss in partaking of the Eucharist. (Likewise, one traditional patristic response to the Song of Songs has been to interpret it as an allegory of the passionate love between God the Lover and the soul as the Beloved.)

I think we can read Ecclesiastes in another way as well, however. Its wisdom lies not in giving sage advice, or in simply being another collection of quaint ancient Near Eastern sayings, but rather in its painfully accurate description of the human condition. As revelation, scripture reveals, and in this case, reveals facets of human nature that ring all too true for any person having lived on this earth for more than a few years: the ultimate futility of work, pleasure, ambition, endeavor, all of which will be annihilated by death (Eccles 6:1-6); the lack of any certainty of ultimate justice (3:16-22); the nagging, bitter conviction that, inevitably, "things fall apart" according to inexorable cosmic laws that seem intentionally designed to frustrate any human efforts to establish a lasting dignity for oneself (12:1-8). In short, Ecclesiastes describes, often with haunting beauty, the brokenness that every human being without exception must experience. In this, the words of "the Preacher" point to the Incarnation: Jesus himself would labor under the burdens of this nature, would experience to the full its sorrows and frustrations, would face--in Gethsemane and on the cross--the almost certain conviction that "all is vanity," emptiness, loss, pointlessness. Yes, the cross is victory, but at the price of Jesus' experience of an emptiness so complete that he could express it only by that piercing cry of horror that must echo until the end of time: Eli, eli lama sabachthani?