Now that Matthew has finished the first of the five discourses of his Gospel, he turns his attention to healing stories. This next chapter of the Gospel is filled with all sorts of stories including a curing of leprosy, the healing of the son of a Roman centurion, the healing of Peter's mother-in-law, the expelling of several demons from unnamed people, and one exorcism of a demoniac in the...
The Gospel passage for our Eucharist today represents the final words of the first discourse of St. Matthew's Gospel, commonly known as the Sermon on the Mount. Throughout these three chapters, St. Matthew has been reinterpreting the Law or the Torah for his disciples. In so doing, Jesus has been accentuating the spirit rather than the letter of the Law. This is not to say that he abrogated...
The incident that we read of in the passage from the Book of Genesis today is called "cutting a covenant." Implied in the action of slicing the animals into two pieces and then walking between them is the assertion that the same thing should happen to the party who fails to keep his or her end of the bargain. While the notion is barbaric, to say the least, it does emphasize the serious...
The Gospel reading for today features a line that we have come to think of as "The Golden Rule." Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. (Matthew 7:12a) Though it isn't as catchy as "The Golden Rule," philosophers refer to this as the "Ethic of Reciprocity." In fact, the notion of reciprocity undergirds much of the Deuteronomic Corpus of the Bible and is expressed in the...
The readings for the Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist begin with one of the Servant Songs of Isaiah. There are four such songs or poems in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, each of them written about Israel's vocation, a call from God to be a model for the other nations and kingdoms of the world. The selection we use for this solemnity makes it very clear that Israel is the...