|
|
||||
|
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 24 Beginning of Holy Week: Unlike most of the narrative material in the four canonical gospels, the deeds and words of Jesus during the final week of His earthly life were very much "fixed" in the memory of the early Christians with respect to time. This is why the events of Holy Week are narrated in a uniquely uniform way by the four evangelists. Moreover, unlike other periods in the ministry of Jesus, the very days of this week are explicitly remarked in sequence. This feature is perhaps most obvious in the earliest of the evangelists, Mark. After telling what happened on Palm Sunday, Mark observes the transitions to Monday (11:12), Tuesday (11:20), Wednesday (14:1), Thursday (14:12), Friday (15:1), Saturday and Sunday (16:1). This precise chronological sequence lies at the deepest level of Christian memory. Monday, March 25 The Cleansing of the Temple: Following the ancient exegetical pattern beloved of Christians, we may perceive "four senses" in which to understand the Lord’s purging of His temple. First, there is the literal sense of the text, the historical deed by which Jesus fulfilled the biblical prophecies (especially Zechariah and Malachi) that foretold His arrival at the temple to cleanse it for proper worship. Second, interpreting the temple as a "type" and the Lord’s action as an "allegory," we understand the Lord’s deed as directed to the ongoing cleansing of the Church, to keep her free from heresy and moral corruption, so that she may be truly the Bride without spot or blemish. This is the allegorical sense of the text, its pertinence to doctrinal theology. Third, inasmuch as we ourselves are His temples, this action of Christ is to be understood in a moral and ascetical sense, indicating our constant need to be purified in heart and mind, because only holiness and purity of heart will permit us to see God (cf. Matthew 5:8; Hebrews 12:14). This is the tropological sense of the text, its pertinence to moral theology. Fourth, because the temple at Jerusalem prefigured the final, eschatological dwelling of God with man, this deed of the Lord foreshadows the last judgment, which will expel the wicked from the divine presence forever. This is the anagogical sense of the text, its pertinence to final glory. Tuesday, March 26 The Lord’s Busiest Day: With the possible exception of the day on which Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount, we have more of His teaching from this day than on any other in His entire earthly life. Having purged the temple on Monday, the Lord now returns there to teach and to confront His enemies. The material relevant to these things, preserved among the four canonical gospels, includes seven stories of controversy, the Lord’s comments on the unselfish widow, and His lengthy discourse about the Last Days. All of this teaching lifts the dramatic events of this week to the fullness of their redemptive meaning, marking all of history to the end of time. Spy Wednesday, March 27 The Lord Betrayed: Up to this day the enemies of Jesus are found within certain groups within Judaism: the Herodians, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees. Starting with the parable of the sower, a clear line has been drawn between those "inside" and those "outside" the circle surrounding Jesus (cf. Mark 4:11). Today, however, this line is breached. In the person of Judas Iscariot there is introduced the tragic confusion of friendship and enmity; the intimate becomes the inimical. Judas is the betrayer through whom the sinful and violent world enters the sanctuary unto its desecration; the purged temple is polluted. The betrayal of Judas thus matches the Babylonians’ defilement of the temple and the Holy City in 586 B.C., which is the theme of the Book of Lamentations that we are reading this week. This theme of breakdown and chaos stands in tension with the theme of purity and distinction symbolized in the Lord’s purging of His temple. Maundy Thursday, March 28 The Last Supper: The mystery of the Lord’s Supper is inseparable from Good Friday. First, the two are joined by simple chronology; since the biblical day begins in the evening, Thursday night is already Friday. This is noted in the earliest account of the Lord’s Supper, most probably reflecting a very early liturgical formulation, which says that it took place "on the night in which He was betrayed" (1 Corinthians 11:23). Beyond the remembered chronology, however, the Lord’s Supper and His Passion are joined theologically, because "as often as you eat this Bread and drink this Cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until He comes" (11:26). At the same time, while it is possible to read this sentence with the emphasis on the word "death," it may be argued that the accent should better and more properly fall on the expression "of the Lord." It is the death, that is, of the risen Christ, glorified as Lord by His resurrection (Acts 2:36). The body of Christ that we receive in the Lord’s Supper is not the corpse of Good Friday, but His transfigured, Spirit-bearing flesh, transformed in glory and given for the life of the world. For this reason the early Christians immediately adopted the discipline of celebrating the Lord’s Supper each week, not on Thursday evening, but on the morning of Sunday, the day of the Resurrection. Even as we receive Holy Communion on this Maundy Thursday, it is still an Easter event. Good Friday, March 29 The Slain Lamb of God: The theological principle of "substitutionary sacrifice" was introduced in the Bible in the story of Isaac in Genesis 22, where the Lord designates a ram that Abraham is to immolate in place of his son. This principle of substitution was applied on the night of Passover, when the paschal lamb was sacrificed as the substitutionary victim on behalf of Israel’s first-born sons, and the principle was further institutionalized in Israel’s entire sacrificial system, which provided various sin offerings and other forms of substitutionary immolation. All of these things, however, were prefigurations and prophecies of the one true sacrifice offered on the Cross, where the true Paschal Lamb was slain for the sake of each of us, and the libation of His blood, sprinkled upon us for the forgiveness of our sins, sealed the door posts and lintels of our souls. Like the death of Egypt’s first-born sons, that tenth plague introduced by the great darkness of the ninth, the true Passover of God’s Son comes at the end of three hours of darkness that began at noon. Holy Saturday, March 30 Psalm 16 (15): We may be sure that Psalm 16 was among the psalms interpreted to the Church by the risen Christ on the walk to Emmaus, for this was the first psalm that she exegeted in her very first sermon when she came rushing with power from the upper room on Pentecost (Acts 2:22-28). Even though it was King David saying these things, the voice speaking more deeply in Psalm 15, according to Saint Peter, is the voice of Christ (Acts 2:29-32). And as David prayed Psalm 16 in persona Christi, looking forward to the one who was to come, so do Christians, when they pray this psalm, identify themselves in hope with the risen Christ, for we too will rise with Him: "And God both raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by His power" (1 Corinthians 6:14); "He who raised up the Lord Jesus will also raise us up with Jesus" (2 Corinthians 4:14); "He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies" (Romans 8:11).
For the Daily Reflections archives, please return to the current page. Copyright © 2002 by the Fellowship of St. James. All rights reserved. |
||||
|
|
||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
