The following are a brief reflection on the day's readings offered during Eucharistic Adoration after Mass.
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A couple of years ago, during a Bible-study session, someone asked me why the Pharisees lacked faith, but the Apostles didn’t. At the time we were reading today’s Gospel passage from Mark, so I asked the group if they noticed anything different about Jesus before he healed the man with the withered hand.
Almost immediately someone said, “Jesus
is angry.”
Mark is the only Gospel writer who
mentions the anger of Jesus. Oh, John tells the story of Jesus driving the
buyers and sellers from the Temple, but he never explicitly says that Jesus was
angry. Only Mark does that.”
Jesus had just asked the Pharisees a question: “Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath rather than to do evil, to save life rather than to destroy it?” It’s a pretty simple question. And so how do the Pharisees answer it?
They don’t. “But they remained silent,” Mark tells us. And it’s easy to see why. A “Yes,” would be a lie and would highlight their hypocrisy. But a “No,” would be a public admission of their lack of charity. They had set out to trap Jesus and, once again, he had trapped them. Usually, it was their words that exposed them. This time it was their silence. What happens next? Well, Mark tells us that Jesus looked “around at them with anger and grieved at their hardness of heart,” and then went on to heal the man’s hand.
It's interesting, virtually every scene in the Gospels has at one time or another been the subject of a painting. Except this scene. I know of no painting that shows Jesus looking around at the Pharisees with anger. I suspect such a painting wouldn’t be very popular among those who have this distorted image of a warm and fuzzy Jesus who roams through Galilee and Judea dispensing hugs.
It reminds me of a woman who told me she had left the Church to “join a denomination that wasn’t so judgmental.” I just told her to read the gospels and then tell me Jesus doesn’t judge.
“Why
was Jesus angry?”
One translation says, “Because they had closed their minds.” And another, “Because of their hard-heartedness.” Closed minds or hard hearts -- these only seem different. The mind is open by its very nature. Notice how young children are very open-minded, always ready and able to learn. It’s only when they grow up and get stupid like the rest of us that they do otherwise; for it is the heart that closes the mind.
But these particular Pharisees had lost any sense of compassion for others. They had ceased being childlike. They had stopped loving. And because love couldn’t penetrate their hearts, their minds were closed as well, so tightly that they couldn’t even recognize the hand of God in the miracles that occurred right before their eyes. They had created an almost impenetrable barrier to the gift of faith.
The Apostles, on the other hand, were in a
sense more childlike, more open to the Spirit’s urgings, more open to receiving
the gift, more willing to love.
You see, brothers and sisters, hatred closes, and love opens. Indeed, love is itself an opening, a kind of wound.
The 14th century mystic, Julian of
Norwich, when she prayed, prayed for “the wound of true compassion.”
Let’s all pray today that we may never be
healed of it!
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