Exclusively published to the Touchstone website each week, these Daily Reflections are brief commentaries on the lectionary readings contained in the St. James Daily Devotional Guide. The reflections are penned by Patrick Henry Reardon, editor of the Daily Devotional Guide and a senior editor of Touchstone. Father Reardon provides here a very brief directional clue for one of the readings each day. Long-time readers of the Daily Devotional Guide will find these reflections an additional help to their reading of Holy Scripture which they can print and keep with their Guide.

The Daily Reflections will be updated weekly.

Sunday, March 17

Matthew 20:17-28: The Gospels of Matthew (20:20-23) and Mark (10:35-40) record the occasion on which the two sons of Zebedee, James and John, request of the Lord the privilege of sitting to his immediate right and left when he enters into his kingdom. Still worldly and without understanding, the two brothers are portrayed as resistant to the message of the Cross. In both Gospel accounts the Lord’s response to their request is to put back to the brothers a further query about their ability to "drink the cup whereof I am to drink," and Mark’s version contains yet another question about their being "baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized." Both images used by our Lord in this context, baptism and the cup, are found elsewhere in the New Testament as symbolic of the Lord’s Passion (Luke 12:50; Matthew 26:39-42). Obviously, in the context of the New Testament churches the baptism and the cup referred symbolically to two of the sacraments, and it was understood, moreover, that these two sacraments place their communicants into a special relationship with the Lord’s Passion (Romans 6:3f; Colossians 2:12; 1 Corinthians 11:26). The questions about baptism and the cup, then, were most instructive for the Christians attending divine worship where these Gospel texts were read and interpreted. Matthew’s version, moreover, presents Zebedee’s wife, the mother of the two brothers, approaching the Lord to make the request on their behalf. This woman, elsewhere known as Salome, Matthew calls simply "the mother of Zebedee’s sons." The detail is certainly significant, inasmuch as this designation, "mother of Zebedee’s sons," appears only twice in the entire New Testament, both times in Matthew: here in 20:20 and later, in 27:56, at the foot of the Cross. In the first of these instances Zebedee’s wife is portrayed as an enterprising and somewhat ambitious worldling who fails to grasp the message of the Cross, while in the later scene we find her standing vigil as her Lord dies, now a model of the converted and enlightened Christian who follows Jesus to the very end. This marvelous correspondence between the two scenes – a before and after – is proper to Matthew and points to a delicate nuance of his thought.

Monday, March 18

Matthew 20:29-34: Once again, Matthew combines two accounts of the healing of blind men from Mark (8:22-26; 10:46-52) into a single story. This arrangement effectively juxtaposes these two men with the two sons of Zebedee, who are symbolically healed of their spiritual blindness with respect to the mystery of the Cross. Thus healed, says the text, "they followed "him" (20:34). They become part of the congregation that will accompany Israel’s true King into Jerusalem to accomplish the mystery of Redemption. To "follow" Christ means to live by the pattern of the Cross, to pursue the implications of Baptism and the Holy Eucharist, the one a mystic identification with His death and resurrection, the other a proclaiming of His death "until He comes."

Tuesday, March 19

Romans 15:1-13: In this text, by way of exhorting Christians to patience, the Apostle quotes Psalm 69 (68):9 with reference to Christ our Lord in the context of His Passion. St. Paul could obviously presume a common Christian understanding of Psalm 69, even in a congregation that he had not yet visited. For example, in the context of Baptism as a mystic identification with the crucified Lord (cf. Mark 10:38; Luke12:50; Romans 6:3), the Church from the beginning prayed the opening words of this psalm: "Save me, O God, for the waters have come even unto my soul. . . . I have come to the depths of the sea, and the flood has submerged me." The same psalm prays, "Zeal for Your house has consumed me," a verse explicitly cited in the New Testament with respect to the Lord’s purging of the temple (John 2:17). In the context this consuming of the Lord was a reference to His coming Passion; He went on to say to those who were plotting to kill Him: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." In saying this, the evangelist noted, "He was speaking of the temple of His body." Still later in our psalm stands the line: "Let their dwelling be deserted, and let no one live in their tabernacles." Even prior to the Pentecostal outpouring the Church knew this verse as a reference to Judas Iscariot (cf. Acts 1:20), that dark and tragic figure who guided the enemies of Jesus and betrayed his Lord with a kiss. In this psalm we are given a vision into the very heart of Christ in the circumstances of His Passion: "Deliver me from those that hate me, and from the depths of the waters. Let not the flood of water submerge me, nor the depth swallow me down, nor the mouth of the pit close over me." This is the Christ who in dereliction sought in vain the human companionship of His closest friends during the vigil prior to His arrest: "What? Could you not watch one hour with Me?" (cf. Matthew 26:40). Psalm 69 speaks of this disappointment as well: "My heart waited for contempt and misery; I hoped for someone to share my sorrow, but there was no one; someone to console Me, but I found none." According to all four Gospels, the dying Christ was offered some sort of bitter beverage, oxsos, a sour wine or vinegar, as He hung on the cross. This is the very word used at the end of the following verse of Psalm 69: "And for my food they laid out gall, and for my drink they gave me vinegar."

Wednesday, March 20

Psalm 129 (128): This psalm, prayed today in the evening, speaks of the history of persecution and the Lord’s constant deliverance of His people in the face of it. It is described as a warfare – "they warred against me." The Greek verb here is epolemesan, a close inspection of which will remind one of the cognate word, "polemics." This polemics is what we are seeing in all this week’s readings from the Gospel, where the Lord is engaged in a sort of warfare with the enemies of truth. His polemics with them is the continuation of a warfare between darkness and light that goes back to the beginning. "From my youth," says the psalm, which would seem to include even the murder of righteous Abel (Genesis 4:8; Hebrews 11:4). Indeed, Christ our Lord apparently took "from my youth" to begin at that exact point, for He spoke of "all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah" (Matthew 23:35). And in this same context the Lord further prophesied that this persecution, this relentless polemic, will continue yet: "I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city" (23:34). This psalm ends with a threefold imprecation against the persecutors, which is perhaps one of the most ironic pieces of poetry in the whole Book of Psalms. It compares the sinful to the dried up grass on a mud roof, but instead of simple passing mention of this metaphor, our psalm pauses to let us meditate more deeply on its implications. Such dried-out grass, we reflect, never becomes part of the harvest. No reaper will gather it; it will never be bundled nor baled, and for that reason it will never be the occasion for the customary blessing mutually extended by the laborers at the time of harvest (cf. Ruth 2:4). This is a truly remarkable section of poetry, dwelling on various benedictions that are never to be. Such is the everlasting loss of the sinful that waged war on Israel from his youth. The imprecations are entirely negative; the hatred of holy Zion leads to the loss of a blessing that need not have been lost. The shallow roots wither; there is no harvest for it; the voice of blessing will never again be heard.

Thursday, March 21

Romans 15:22-33: In the light of what actually came to pass in St. Paul’s life during the months that immediately followed his writing these words, this is a text of great irony. Written during his leisured residence at Corinth during January to March of the year 57 (Acts 20:3), where he was residing at the home of his friend Gaius (Romans 16:23), Paul's mind was full of plans for the immediate future. He was preparing to return to Jerusalem to deliver the money he had collected among the various churches on behalf of that congregation. He had further ideas of going west to Spain and stopping at Rome on the way. The story in Acts 20-28 shows, however, that it would take Paul more than two years to reach Rome (nor is there any substantial evidence that he ever reached Spain). During most of that time he would languish in prison at Caesarea, the victim of a plot against him concocted by the enemies of the Gospel.

Friday, March 22

Psalm 22 (21): This psalm, prayed today at morning prayer, was uniformly understood by the early Christians to be the prayer of Jesus on the Cross. Jesus is described as praying the opening line of this psalm as He hangs on the cross: "My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?" However, not only did Jesus pray this psalm’s opening line on His gibbet of pain; other lines of it are also interpreted by the Church, even by the evangelists themselves, as prophetic references to details in the drama of Good Friday. Consider, for instance, this verse: "All who gazed at Me derided Me. With their lips they spoke and wagged their heads: ‘He hoped on the Lord. Let Him deliver him. Let Him save him, since He approves of him.’" One can hardly read this verse without recalling what is described in the Gospel of St. Matthew: "And those that passed by blasphemed Him, wagging their heads and saying: . . . ‘If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross.’ Likewise the chief priests also, mocking with the scribes and elders, said: . . . ‘He trusted in God; let Him deliver him now, if He will have him.’" The Gospels likewise tell of the soldiers dividing the garments of Jesus at the time of His crucifixion. St. John’s description of this event is worth considering at length, because he actually quotes this psalm verbatim as a fulfilled prophecy: "Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took His garments and made four parts, to each soldier a part, and also His tunic. Now the tunic was without seam, woven from the top in one piece. They said, therefore, among themselves, ‘Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be,’ that the Scripture might be fulfilled which said, ‘They divided My garments among them, and for My vesture they cast lots." Moreover, if Holy Church thinks of the Lord himself as praying this psalm on the cross, such an interpretation is amply justified by a later verse that says: "Like a potsherd has my strength been scorched, and my tongue cleaved to my palate." Hardly can the Church read this line without calling to mind the Lord who said from the cross (St. John tells us): "I thirst." And as she thinks of the nails supporting the Lord’s body on the tree of redemption, the Church recognizes the voice that speaks yet another line of our psalm: "They have pierced my hands and feet; they have numbered all my bones." Outside of the Gospels, the New Testament’s most vivid references to the Lord’s Passion are arguably those in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which speaks of the Lord’s sharing our flesh and blood so that "through death He might destroy him who had the power of death." Quoting Psalm 22 in this context of the Passion, this author tells us that Jesus "is not ashamed to call us brethren, saying: ‘I will declare Your name to my brethren; in the midst of the Church will I sing hymns to You.’"

Saturday, March 23

John 11:1-46: When Jesus describes Lazarus as having "fallen asleep," His metaphor was misunderstood by His hearers, indicating that the expression was not understood, at that time, in a figurative sense (cf. also Matthew 9:18,24). The miracle in today’s gospel reading best illustrates the reason why Christians adopted the expression "fallen asleep" as their description of what happens at the end of the Christian’s life (Acts 13:36; 1 Thessalonians 4:13; 1 Corinthians 7:39; 11:30; 15:6,18,20). The reason is made explicit here in John 11:25. No matter what the world thinks about death, those who live in Christ will never die in the regard of Christ; to Him they are only asleep. Waking them up is the matter of a moment. He has only to speak. A single touch of His hand will revive them, a mere command uttered at the door of the tomb. This is the assurance with which we begin Holy Week and the great drama which paid the price of our hope.

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