The Law and the Prophets and the Transfiguration of Christ

Moses and the Prophet Elijah are present for the Transfiguration of Christ. They represent the Law and the Prophets, the two pillars of Israel's faith and ours.

February 25, 2026 by Father Gordon MacRae

“Nothing new in the Holy See.”  I hear these words from our Editor every week as she reviews with me a global traffic report for this blog. Being blind behind these stone walls to everything going on with a post after it leaves my archaic typewriter, this opportunity to know that someone out there is actually reading is vaguely comforting to me. We cannot know who is reading any particular post, but we can see where they are, and how many they are.

Our call always ends with “Nothing new in the Holy See.” It means that no one there has stopped to look from Beyond These Stone Walls. There is a sadness in that. There is a lot of controversy in Rome these days, and because I have a stake in it, I am both anxious about it and anxious to have a voice in it. I look intently at the affairs of Rome even if no one there is ever looking back. Current events there are sometimes manipulated by those with an agenda to reshape the Church in their own image, or to filter the Way, the Truth, and the Light through the age of relativism.

But all this has more to do with our politics than the far more important opportunities to explore, and allow to be shaped within us, the profoundness of our faith. Unlike other Catholic bloggers, I can write only one post per week so the affairs of Rome will have to wait. It is Lent, after all, and the Transfiguration of Christ in the Gospel this week shakes the Earth under my feet while the affairs of Rome only make me tremble a bit.

So no offense to my fellow Catholics embroiled over the dramas of Rome, and the tug-of-war closer to home as struggles over altar rails and Latin in the Mass threaten to replace our struggle to live the Gospel. I am painfully aware that in 2013 Pope Benedict XVI left the Chair of Peter. My entire life as a priest had been overshadowed by the light of two great men who became giants not only in faith but in the world. I will never forget that 1978 knock on my seminary room door and the voice that followed: “The Pope has died!” I shouted back, “That happened a month ago!” The face of the Church in the modern world changed as the first non-Italian in centuries became pontiff in the person of Saint John Paul II. Twenty-six years later in 2005 he was followed in the papacy by the brilliant Joseph Ratzinger, a theologian par excellence who became Benedict XVI. I have always been aware that the two popes who followed them had to fill the shoes of giants, so I have to always remind myself to cut them a little slack. I fend off any tendency to judge or compare them with their predecessors.

These are dark days for priests, and often dark for faithful Catholics as well. But darkness preceded the Transfiguration of Christ at the center of the Gospel for the Second Sunday of Lent, and as usual there is a story on its surface and a far greater one in its depths. Lord, be our Light.

Who Do You Say That I Am?

All three Synoptic Gospels have an account of the Transfiguration of Jesus, and the accounts are remarkably uniform. This week for the Second Sunday of Lent, it is Matthew’s turn, but all the elements he presents in his presentation of the Transfiguration of Christ are also presented by Luke who adds a component. Luke alone presents a reason for the Lord to bring three of His Apostles to the top of Mount Tabor:

“Jesus took Peter, James and John and went up the mountain to pray. While he was praying his face changed in appearance and his clothing became dazzling white. And behold, two men were conversing with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his exodus that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem.”

— Luke 9:28-30

I wrote of this same event and its place in Salvation History in my recent post, “Covenants of God.”

Some immediate understanding of this event would have dawned upon any faithful Jew and certainly registered with Peter, James and John. The account is highly reminiscent of an event in the Book of Exodus that took place some 13 centuries earlier:

“When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Law in his hands, as he came down from the mountain Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. And when Aaron and all the people of Israel saw Moses, because the skin of his face shown, they were afraid to come near him.”

— Exodus 34:29-30

Though the event of the Transfiguration of Jesus would vividly bring to the Jewish mind that passage from Exodus, it was also very different. It was like the difference between the Sun and the Moon. The Moon only reflects light radiated from the Sun. As brilliant as a full moon can appear in the darkness of night, it produces no light of its own. The face of Moses only reflected the light of grace radiated from God.

The Sun, on the other hand, radiates its own dazzling light, and to look too long would cause blindness. The light of the Transfiguration of Christ was “dazzling,” and it came from within. In those few moments — for Peter, James and John could have stood no more than a few — God lifted a corner of the veil to reveal the nature of the person Peter declared to be the Christ:

“The only begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father, through him all things were made. For our salvation he came down from heaven.”

— The Nicene Creed

I wrote of this account a few years ago in “A Transfiguration Before Our Very Eyes.” That post was more about the conversion that this episode can bring within a person who comes to some understanding of its spiritual dimensions. Canadian Catholic blogger Michael Brandon at “Free Through Truth” actually wrote a post about that post — and his was far better than mine — which he entitled, “Transfiguration, You and Me.”

The conversion that Michael Brandon and I both highlighted was that of Pornchai Moontri, and it is a most important story, not just for him, or for me, but for a Church embroiled in scandal. If you think I may beat this drum of Pornchai’s conversion too much, I challenge you to delve into it for I cannot emphasize it enough. Given the story told in “Pornchai Moontri and the Long Road to Freedom,” his conversion — a change not just of heart but of substance — should have been impossible. And he found no light in me, for I radiate none.

In the Gospel, the Transfiguration of Jesus was preceded by two pivotal events. On the command of Jesus, the Apostles fed 5,000 people with a mere five loaves of bread and two fish. When it was over, he asked the Apostles, “Who do the people say that I am?” They answered, “Some say John the Baptist” (for he had already been beheaded by Herod) “while some say Elijah or that one of the prophets of old has arisen.”

But what about you, asked Jesus. “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answered for all: “You are the Christ of God”. Jesus then told them a startling revelation bringing them to an inner darkness:

“You are to tell this to no one. The Son of Man, must suffer many things, be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever will lose his life for my sake, will save it.”

So answer for yourself the question that Jesus asked Peter, and, through the Gospel, asks each of us: “Who do you say that I am?” But before you answer, keep in mind a central tenet of human nature. Just like many of the Jews in the desert with Moses after having been delivered from bondage in Egypt, how many Catholics do you know who do not esteem the faith they inherited through the Blood of the Lamb of God and was passed on to us through countless martyrs at the cost of their lives? Your answer must cost you something of yourself. “What you inherit too cheap you may esteem too lightly.”

A Conversation with Moses and Elijah

I would like to delve deeper into the theological significance of the Transfiguration account and into its spiritual resonance. First, the very important story behind the story. The account is filled with great spiritual meaning. First, why do Moses and Elijah appear?

A lot in Sacred Scripture happens on mountaintops. In the Book of Exodus, Moses received the Covenant from God on Mount Sinai. In the First Book of Kings, the Prophet Elijah encountered God on Mount Horeb. On Mount Tabor — the place where long-held tradition places the Transfiguration — Moses and Elijah represent the Law and the Prophets, the two central pillars of faith in Judaism, and the foundations of God’s Covenant with Israel.

But how can they be present in heaven before the Resurrection of Jesus and the Exodus from sin and death? The greatness of Elijah is attested to by the sheer number of allusions to him in both the Old and New Testaments. In the Hebrew mind, it was Elijah who affirmed the supremacy of Yahweh over nature and human history, and was seen as the principal defender of traditional Hebrew morality.

Elijah can be present at the Transfiguration because he was taken on a chariot into heaven (2 Kings 2:1-18). It was an ingrained belief of Hebrew tradition that God would return Elijah to Israel even before this prophecy was set forth by the Prophet Malachi: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible Day of the Lord comes” (Malachi 4:5). Knowing the Scriptures, the presence of Elijah must have struck both hope and terror into the hearts of Peter, James and John.

But how is it that Moses was there with Jesus on Mount Tabor? This is where the Hebrew Scriptures and the legends of faith intersect. The Canon of Sacred Scripture reveals the story of Salvation History from Abraham to Jesus, but Israel also had a collection of oral and written traditions accepted by Rabbinical teaching as “Deuterocanonical” meaning, “Secondary Canon.” Some of these are also called “Apocryphal” texts from the Greek, “apokryphos” which means “hidden.” Some of what is in these texts intersects with the Bible, but remains a matter of pious traditional belief instead of historical verification. I once wrote of these discoveries in “Qumran: The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Coming Apocalypse.” There are others perhaps not yet discovered. The Book of Daniel (12:9) speaks of “words that are shut up until the end of time.”

An example of how one such text contributed to popular belief is the “Protoevangelium of James.” It circulated in the Early Church and was cited by one of the Church Fathers. It is the only source for a tradition that the parents of Mary were Joachim and Anna.

There were several texts outside of Scripture from which legends and traditions circulated regarding Moses. These include the Books of Enoch, the Book of Jubilees, and the Assumption of Moses. They influenced early Rabbinic beliefs and teachings about angels, for example, and the lives of Moses and other Biblical figures.

The Assumption of Moses reveals a tradition, now lost from the fragments of the text that have survived, about the death of Moses in the Sinai desert. In that legend, Satan tried to claim the body of Moses, but Michael the Archangel contended with Satan and won. Michael then escorted Moses into heaven, like Elijah, body and soul. That this legend became engraved into the beliefs of Israel, and passed to the Early Christian Church, is evident in the New Testament Letter of Jude who is writing to an audience that obviously already knows of the account:

“But when the Archangel Michael, contending with the devil, disputed about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a reviling judgment upon him, but said, ‘The Lord Rebuke you.’ ”

— Jude 1:9

It may be from this legendary story that, from the earliest time in the Christian Church, Saint Michael the Archangel has the role of escorting the souls of the dead to salvation. This is how Moses could thus be present with Elijah at the Transfiguration where they are reported to have discussed with Jesus the Cross, the Second Exodus. The road upon which Jesus is embarked is connected to the Law and the Prophets. It is to be an Exodus from the bondage of sin and death in which God will Himself pay the price for release that he once exacted from Pharaoh: The sacrificial death of his own Son.

The Feast of Tabernacles

The entire Gospel account of Transfiguration takes place against the backdrop of the Feast of Tabernacles. This is why, in his dreamlike ecstatic state, Peter wants to delay the parting of Moses and Elijah from Jesus by saying,

“Master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

Peter misinterprets the reason why they are all present in that place as being the annual Harvest Feast of Tabernacles (or tents), called in Hebrew, “Sukkot.” It is one of three Pilgrimage Feasts in the Hebrew calendar. It was originally a harvest feast, something like the American Thanksgiving, and called the “Feast of Ingathering” in the earliest Hebrew traditions. It lasts for seven days.

As I researched the connection between the Feast of Tabernacles, with its origin in Exodus 23:16, and the Transfiguration of Christ some thirteen centuries later, I came upon a long and detailed article about its history. As I studied the article, I was shocked to see at the end that it was written by my uncle, the late Father George W. MacRae, a renowned Scripture scholar who became rector of the École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem and Stillman Professor of Catholic Studies at Harvard University. It was an article he wrote for Catholic Biblical Quarterly in 1960, much of which became included in the New Jerome Biblical Commentary.

The Feast of Sukkot — variously interpreted as Tabernacles, Tents, Huts or Booths — had its roots in early Palestine as little huts were built in the fields, orchards and vineyards during the harvest. Much later, the Pilgrimage Feast was given a deeper religious meaning when it became connected to the events of the Exodus as a memorial to how the Israelites lived during their forty years of wandering in the desert after following Moses through the Red Sea.

It is an irony of Biblical proportions that this formed the scene for the revelation of Jesus as the Son of God about to enter Jerusalem for the New Exodus, the Exodus through the Red Sea of sin and death. It is the Exodus of the Cross through which Jesus will lead us to the New Jerusalem, the Promised Land, if we pick up our Cross and follow Him.

“This is my Son, my Chosen. Listen to him.”

— Luke 9:35

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

Qumran: The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Coming Apocalypse

He Has His Mother’s Eyes: The Vision of Our Lady of Guadalupe

“What Shall I Do to Inherit Eternal Life?” (Luke 10:25)

On Good Authority, “Salvation Is from the Jews”

Readers have told us that our Sacred Scripture collection, The Bible Speaks, is a treasure trove of meaningful biblical literature and fine reading for Lent.

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The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Christ in the Desert: A Devil of a Time

The Gospel according to St Luke tells the story of Jesus, revealed to be Son of God, led into the desert to be tested by the devil who does not give up easily.

Ash Wednesday, 2026 by Father Gordon MacRae

Many of our readers are aware that the Church follows a three-year cycle for Sunday Scripture Readings. As Ordinary Time now gives way to the Season of Lent, I explore the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent. Being in the “A Cycle,” the Gospel from Saint Matthew (4:1-11) seemed very familiar. Like much of Scripture, I knew that I had read about this passage, but I also felt certain that I had written about it. It is the story of Jesus following the revelation that he is the Son of God revealed at his Baptism in the Jordan. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is led into the desert by the Spirit to face Satan and a series of temptations for which, if he failed, his redemptive mission would end before it even began. All three of the Synoptic Evangelists, Matthew, Mark and Luke, tell the same story but from different perspectives and traditions. Saint Mark’s version appears in Year B in just three lines of Scriptural text (Mark 1:12-15). The Gospel According to Saint Luke is the most theologically nuanced of the three. So even though in our current cycle, the version from Saint Matthew is used on the First Sunday of Lent, it is very similar to that of Saint Luke. So I have chosen the latter to present in exegesis form for our post this week.

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In my estimation, one of the best movies about Catholic life in America taking a wrong turn has been deemed by some to be a bit rough around the edges. Robert DeNiro portrays Los Angeles Monsignor Desmond Spellacy, and Robert Duvall is cast as his brother, LAPD homicide detective Tom Spellacy in the 1981 film, True Confessions. The film is from a novel of the same name by John Gregory Dunne based on the famous Los Angeles “Black Dahlia” murder case of 1947.

DeNiro’s character, Monsignor Desmond Spellacy is a priest of some prominence in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in the late 1940s at the epicenter of the power politics of a Church beginning to succumb to the world in which it thrives. Amid corruption while being groomed to become the next Archbishop, the Monsignor nonetheless clings to an honest spiritual life just starting its inevitable fraying at the edges as he is drawn ever deeper into a tangled web of deceit.

Robert Duvall portrays his older brother, Tom Spellacy, an honest and dedicated — if somewhat cynical — L.A. homicide detective whose investigation of the murder of a prostitute brings him ever closer to the perimeter of an archdiocese circling the wagons of self preservation. The Church in America would see a lot more of this in the generation to come. Actor Charles Durning portrays the thoroughly corrupt owner of a large construction firm bidding for church building projects. About to be awarded Catholic Layman of the Year by the Archbishop of Los Angeles, he is also a person of interest in the murder investigation that a lot of powerful people want quietly covered up.

Those wanting to influence and sideline Tom’s investigation come up with evidence — a photograph. It depicts the murdered woman in a social scene with a few prominent people, one of whom, standing next to her, is Monsignor Desmond Spellacy, heir apparent of the archdiocesan throne.

The photograph is entirely bening, but it becomes for Tom Spellacy, as it was intended to be, evidence that the Monsignor knew the murdered woman. Many readers would be reminded by this today of the frenzied media fiasco that has been playing out to much fanfare, recriminations, and disgust about the Jeffrey Epstein files and the many lives, some innocent and some not-so-much, who are entangled by a mere photograph in Epstein’s posthumous web of corruption and deceit. In the hands of politicians on the eve of battle in the midtern national elections, such photographs have been honed as weapons of war in our bitter partisan politics. The film ends with the case solved, but Monsignor Spellacy banished to a small parish in the California desert, his hopes for political advancement in the Church destroyed.

Nonetheless, in the hands of media and various other entities, the photograph remains evidence and a legal and political quagmire for Detective Tom Spellacy tasked with an open and public investigation of a murder scene leading to political corruption. Tom knows that any pursuit of the case that involves this photograph will inevitably destroy the career and good name of his innocent brother. Tom struggles about what to do, but in the end he does the right thing. He pursues the truth of the matter wherever it leads.

The case is eventually solved and of course Monsignor Spellacy had nothing to do with the matter at hand. Someone is convicted (You have to watch the film to find out who). But in the moral sensitivies of the time, which was very much like our time, the photo with the murdered prostitute and the Monsignor becomes more enticing for the press than the murder itself. The photo ends up on the Front Page of the LA Times, and Monsignor Spellacy ends up where our Gospel passage begins: in the desert where he is exiled to a tiny parish in obscurity.

Being exiled in the desert is highly symbolic in Sacred Scripture. It has ancient roots in the Book of Leviticus. This book is composed of liturgical laws for the Levitical priesthood reaching back to 1300 BC as Moses led his people through a forty-year period of exile in the Sinai desert. Some of the ritual accounts it contains are far more ancient.

In a recent Christmas post, “Silent Night and the Shepherds Who Quaked at the Sight,” I wrote that the troubles of our time are the manifestation of spiritual warfare that has been waged in the world since God’s first covenant bonds with us. Before this covenant relationship, we were doomed. Since the covenants of God there is hope for us. We remain oblivious to spiritual warfare to our own spiritual peril. As I have written many times, we now live in a vulnerable time in God’s covenant relationship with us. The Birth of the Messiah and his walking among us are equidistant in time between our existence now in the 21st Century AD and Abraham’s first encounter with God in the 21st Century BC.

Our Day of Atonement Begins

The Gospel according to St Luke (4:1-13) is also set in the desert as the Day of Atonement begins for all humankind. Revealed in Baptism as the Son of God …

“Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days to be tempted by the devil.”

— Luke 4:1

The scene has roots in an ancient ritual for the Day of Atonement described in Leviticus 16:5-10. Aaron, the high priest …

“Shall take from the congregation of the people of Israel two male goats for a sin offering .... Then he shall take the two goats and set them before the Lord at the tent of meeting; and Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats, one for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel. And Aaron shall present the goat upon which the lot fell for the Lord, and offer it as a sin offering, but the goat upon which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the desert wilderness to Azazel …”

— Leviticus 16:5,7-10

This describes the ritual for purification known in Hebrew as Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, from Leviticus Chapter 16. The ritual reaches far beyond Moses into the time of God’s covenant with Abraham some 2000 years before the Birth of the Messiah.

There are two goats mentioned in the ritual: One for sacrifice, to Yahweh, and the other — the one bearing the sins of Israel — is “for Azazel.” This name appears only in Leviticus 16 and nowhere else in Scripture except here in the Gospel of Luke and in some of the apocryphal writings found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. One of them is the Apocryphal Book of Enoch, the name of a figure in Genesis who “walked with God” and “was taken up from the Earth.” As such, Enoch is presented in the genealogy of Jesus in Luke (3:37), and thus was spared the deluge of Noah and the destruction intended for all mankind.

The name Azazel is believed by most scholars to be the name of a fallen angel and follower of Satan. Azazel haunts the desert wilderness. Some scholars believe Azazel to be the being referred to as “the night hag” in Isaiah 34:14.

The Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible called the second goat “caper emissarius,” (“the goat sent out”). An English translation rendered it “escape goat” from which the term “scapegoat” has been derived. A scapegoat is one who is held to bear the wrongs of others, or of all. The symbolism in the Gospel of Jesus being led by the Spirit into the desert to face the devil is striking because Jesus is to become, by God’s own design, the scapegoat for the sins of all humanity.

In the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent, Jesus is described as “filled with the Holy Spirit.” This term appears in only three other places in Scripture, all three also written by Saint Luke. In the Book of Acts of the Apostles (6:5) Stephen, “filled with the Holy Spirit” was the first to be chosen to care for widows and orphans in the daily distribution of food. Later in Acts (7:55) Stephen, “filled with the Holy Spirit gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God” as he became the first Martyr of the Church.

The witnesses who approved of the stoning of Stephen “laid their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul” (Acts 7:58) whose radical conversion to become Saint Paul would build the global Church.

Also in Acts (11:24) Barnabas is filled with the Holy Spirit as he founded the first Church beyond Jerusalem for the Gentiles of Antioch. The sense of the term “filled with the Holy Spirit” in Saint Luke’s passages alludes to the hand of God in our living history.

In our first Sunday Gospel for Lent, Jesus, filled with the Spirit, “having returned from the Jordan,” is led by the Spirit for forty days in the desert wilderness. The Gospel links this account to his Baptism at the Jordan at which he is revealed as “Son of God.” This revelation becomes, in the desert scene, a diabolical taunt, and knowing that Jesus has fasted becomes the devil’s first temptation: “If you are the Son of God, turn this stone into bread.” Jesus thwarts the temptation and the taunt with a quote from the Hebrew Scriptures (Deuteronomy 8:3), “Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”

The symbolism is wonderful here. Like the Father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son — also from Luke (15:11-32) — God had two sons. In the Book of Exodus (4:21-22) Israel is called God’s “first-born son”:

“The Lord said to Moses, ‘When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles which I have put in your power, but I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. And you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, Israel is my first-born son, and I say to you, let my son go that he may serve me. If you refuse to let my son go, I will slay your first-born son’.”

It was the fulfillment of this command of God that finally broke the yoke of slavery and caused Pharaoh to release Israel from bondage. But, as the Parable of the Prodigal Son implies of the Prodigal Son’s older brother, Israel was not faithful to the Word of God, and spent forty years wandering in the desert as a result of its infidelity.

In the Gospel of Luke, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity assumed the humanity of the first son, and was led by the Spirit into the desert to save us in the Second Exodus, our release, through the Death and Resurrection of the Son of God, from the eternal bondage of sin and death.

Clerical Scandal and the Scandal of Clericalism

The second temptation is the lure of political power. In a single instant, the devil showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and said, “I shall give you all this power and glory for it has been handed over to me… all this will be yours if you worship me.” This has been the downfall of many, including many in our Church. Jesus again quotes from Scripture, “It is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and serve him alone” (Deuteronomy 6:13). This Gospel revisits the lure of political power immediately after the Institution of the Eucharist:

“A dispute arose among them, which of them was to be regarded as the greatest. And he said to them, ‘The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you. Rather let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves… I am among you as one who serves.”

— Luke 22:24-26

The Greek in which this Gospel was written used for the word “leader” the term “hēgoumenos.” Its implication refers especially to a religious leader. The Letter to the Hebrews (13:7) uses the same Greek term for “leaders,” and it is not their Earthly power which is to be emulated, but their faith to the extent to which they reflect Christ:

“Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God, consider the outcome of their life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

— Hebrews 13:7-8

Though it doesn’t generate the media’s obsession with sexual scandals, hubris and self-centered aggrandizement have been a far greater problem in our Church, and are the underlying catalyst for almost all other scandals, sexual, financial, and reputational. This culture has led Church leaders into the temptation of Earthly Powers, and too many have been eager participants. Some refer to this as “clericalism,” and in my opinion the best commentary on it was a brief article by the late Father Richard John Neuhaus in First Things entitled, “Clerical Scandal and the Scandal of Clericalism.”

The Payment of Judas Iscariot

Catholicism in America thrived when it had to earn its dignity. Once it became politically accepted, it went on in this culture to become comfortable, and its leaders (“hēgoumenos”) perhaps a bit too comfortable. Religious authority and the sheer masses of believers spelled political power. The pedestals upon which we stood grew in height with every clerical advance, and our bishops stood upon the highest pedestals of all with palatial trappings more akin to the courts of Herod and Caesar than the Cross of Christ the King, the same yesterday, today, and forever.

It is no mystery why, as the height of our pedestals grew, so did our scandals. This is perhaps why Jesus offered to us the way to pray “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” It is because he alone could be led by the Spirit into the desert of temptation and emerge without dragging along behind Him the evil He encountered there.

As the last temptation of Christ unfolded in the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent, it is now the devil, in a final effort, who dares to quote and distort the Word of God. He led Jesus to Jerusalem, and to the parapet, the highest point of the highest place, the Temple of Sacrifice. And now comes his final taunt:

“If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will give his angels charge of you, to guard you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone’.”

— Luke 4:9-11, quoting Psalm 91

This devil of the desert takes up the argument of Jesus, the Word of God, quoting Psalm 91 (11-12). The taunt to test God and “go your own way” is far deeper than the mere words convey. In Jerusalem, the devil will take hold of Judas Iscariot (Luke 22:3) leading to the trial before Pilate and the Way of the Cross. In Jerusalem, the powers of darkness, first encountered here in the desert, are mightily at work: “This is your hour, and the power of darkness.” (Luke 22:53)

The Church in the Western world has entered a time of persecution but thus far the institutional response — having traded the Gospel for “zero tolerance” in a quest for scapegoats to cast out into the desert to Azazel — does not bode well for the faith of a Church built upon the blood of the martyrs.

Perhaps, as the Spirit leads us into this desert, it is our vocation, and not that of our leaders, that is essential. Perhaps it is not clerical reform that is needed so much as a revolution — a revolution of fidelity that can only be lived and not just talked about. We will not find the Holy Spirit in a revolution that manifests itself in blessing sin or in any politically correct acquiescence to same-sex unions that some now call the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, and other moral distortions of our time. Those who abandon their faith in a time in the desert were leaving anyway, just waiting for the right excuse. To use the behavior of leaders to diminish and then abandon the Sacrament of Salvation is to cave to the true goal of Azazel. He could not lure Christ from us, but he can lure us from Christ and he is giving it a go.

The devil finally gives up in the desert scene of the Last Temptation of Christ in Luke Chapter 4. But the devil is not quite done. Luke’s Gospel tells that he will return “at a more opportune time.” Satan finds that time not in an effort to test Jesus, but rather to test his followers. He targets Judas Iscariot in the last place we would ever expect to find the devil: “Satan at The Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light.”

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this Ash Wednesday post. You may also like these other posts from Beyond These Stone Walls as we proceed through Lent:

Pope Francis Had a Challenge for the Prodigal Son’s Older Brother

A U.S. Marine Who Showed Me What to Give Up for Lent

Satan at The Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light

Behold the Lamb of God Upon the Altar of Mount Moriah

We presently have 39 titles in our collection of Scriptural posts, The Bible Speaks.

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Covenants of God from Genesis to the Book of Revelation

A Covenant is a kinship bond between two parties. It is the master-theme of Salvation History in which God draws believers into a family relationship with Himself.

January 28, 2026 by Father Gordon MacRae

“Testament” is the name given to the two principal divisions of the Christian Bible. It is derived from the Latin, “testamentum,” translated from the biblical Greek term, “diathēkē,” which is more properly translated as “Covenant.” In fact, the traditional designations of the biblical “Old Testament” and “New Testament” were inspired by Saint Paul’s distinction between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant in 2 Corinthians 3:6,14:

“Our sufficiency is from God who has qualified us to be ministers of a New Covenant, not in written code but in the Spirit; for the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life … not like Moses who put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not see the end of the fading splendor.”

This cryptic verse from Saint Paul requires some deeper analysis. I touched on it once in my post, “A Vision on Mount Tabor: The Transfiguration of Christ.”

Peter had just declared at Caesarea Philippi that Jesus is the Christ (Luke 9:18-22). As though to demonstrate the truth of that declaration, the face of Jesus shone momentarily like the sun. The story recalled for Hebrew hearers of the Gospel the account of Moses at Mount Sinai as he received the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17). Being in the presence of the Lord caused the face of Moses to shine brilliantly causing Aaron and other Israelites to fear approaching him. Moses then placed a veil over his face.

Some 3,000 years later, Saint Paul interpreted this as a sign that the Sinai Covenant is destined to fade so that the New Covenant in Christ may fulfill it. I will address this in the Sinai Covenant below. The point Saint Paul makes is that the glory of Jesus in the Transfiguration does not look back upon the Sinai Covenant for meaning, but rather the other way around. It is a statement from Saint Paul that the Old Covenant looks forward, and points us looking forward to the New. The Gospel of Matthew Transfiguration account gives symbolic witness to this (Matthew 17:8): On Mount Tabor, “When they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.” Saint Augustine in the Fifth Century offered a summation of the meaning of this passage: “The New Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old Testament is unveiled in the New.”

In his brilliant “Overview of Salvation History,” an introductory essay in the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, John S. Bergsma, PhD, identifies something interesting and unique in Catholic spiritual tradition. It is the concept of “Divine filiation,” the notion, unique in religion, that elevates us as sons and daughters of God by adoption.

In Islam it is considered blasphemy to claim to be a child of God. In Judaism of the Old Covenant it is but a metaphor, not meant literally, but figuratively and symbolically. In Classical Buddhism it is simply irrelevant because individual personhood is itself an illusion remedied, for the Buddhist believer, by cycles of reincarnation.

Only Christianity holds that we become — literally become — sons and daughters of God the Creator, our Father and the source of all fatherhood. This is identified in Saint Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians (3:15):

“For this reason I bend my knees before the Father from whom every family in Heaven and on Earth is named.”

“Abba, Father” is an Aramaic and English term that occurs three times in the New Testament. The first time (Mark 14:36) quotes Jesus directly:

“Abba, Father, all things are possible to you; remove this chalice from me; yet not what I will, but what you will.”

The term was then reiterated by Saint Paul (Romans 8:15 and Galatians 4:6). “Abba” is an Aramaic term that reveals an especially familiar bond between father and child. Aramaic, closely related to Hebrew, was the common language in the Near East from about 700 BC to 600 AD. Each time “Abba” was used in the New Testament it was paired with the Greek equivalent of “Father.” This gave us the English translation, “Abba, Father” denoting the connection with Jesus as children of God.

After the fall of man, the only remedy for broken Covenants was for God to adopt us, and for us to strive to live up to that adoption. We strive still.

The Covenants of Adam, Noah, and Abraham

The people of Israel were also unique in ancient Near Eastern religion in their belief that God had established a Covenant relationship with them and with their ancestors. In the Catholic Bible Dictionary (Doubleday 2009) a companion volume to the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, Dr. Scott Hahn identifies a sequence of Covenants found in the biblical text. There are six of them, each built upon the preceding one. Together they account for all of Salvation History. They are identified through the mediation of different individuals: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and then ultimately, in the Covenant that fulfills them all, Jesus Christ.

In the Creation Covenant mediated by Adam, creation culminates on the Sabath, which is the sign of a Covenant elsewhere in Scripture (Exodus 31:12-17). The term used for the making of the Covenant with Noah is not the usual one for Covenant initiation (in Hebrew, kārat), but rather a term indicating the renewal of a pre-existing Covenant (in Hebrew, hēqim).

The five Covenants before Jesus end in varying degrees of failure or success. The Covenant with Adam collapses upon the revelation of his disobedience. Having eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in disobedience to the directive of God, the Covenant collapses as Adam is cast out from Eden. Many generations later God establishes a new Covenant with Noah. In an act of both judgement and re-creation God again plunges the world under the primordial waters described in Genesis 1:2. God saves the righteous man, Noah and his family along with pairs of every animal and creature in an ark. As the water receded, the ark came to rest on Mount Ararat. Noah, a new Adam figure, emerges from the ark and performs the priestly act of offering sacrifice (Genesis 8:20). God renews the previous Covenant repeating the blessings originally given to Adam. According to John S. Bergsma, PhD, in his “Overview of Salvation History,” “sin has left a lasting wound,” and disharmony between man and nature. But the filial relationship of man in Covenant with God does not last long. Noah betrays his priestly-patriarcal role. He becomes drunk and lies naked in his tent (Genesis 9:21). His son Ham, in an enigmatic deed described in Genesis as seeing “the nakedness of his father” (Genesis 9:22) causes Noah to curse Ham’s descendents through his son Canaan (Genesis 9:25). The phrase, “seeing the nakedness of his father,” is widely seen as a euphemism for an incestuous encounter between Noah’s son Ham and the wife of Noah. So where the Covenant with Adam was marred by disobedience, the Covenant with Noah was marred by perversion.

Many generations pass through the next three chapters of Genesis when, in Genesis 12:3, God bestows upon Abram the promises of a great nation, a great name, and universal blessing upon mankind. God incorporated these promises into a formal Covenant. Then God bestowed upon Abram a greater name, “Abraham” (Genesis 17:5). This Covenant becomes subjected to the ultimate test of loyalty: that Abraham should offer his beloved son Isaac in sacrifice to God (Genesis 22:2). I explored this account in detail in “Behold the Lamb of God Upon the Altar of Mount Moriah.”

An Angel of the Lord stayed Abraham’s hand and pointed to a ram in the thicket, which became the substitute sacrifice for Isaac just as 2,000 years later, Jesus became the substitute sacrifice for us.

The Covenants of Moses, David, and Jesus

Unlike the aftermath of the Covenants with Adam and Noah, the Covenant with Abraham did not collapse under a catastrophic fall. Even though the Covenant is complicated by the sins of his descendants, God fulfills his promise to Abraham, but Abraham’s lineage ends up in Egypt.

Generations passed. Abraham’s descendant, Joseph, one of the sons of the Patriarch Jacob, was betrayed by his own brothers and sold into slavery in Egypt. Thus, centuries later, Israel became a nation in bondage in Egypt until Moses led the Israelites out of captivity to the Promised Land. God called upon Moses from a burning bush on Mount Horeb (Exodus 3:6, 10). God identified himself as “The God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring forth my people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt.”

Once the children of Israel were released from bondage, Moses led them to Mount Sinai where the Lord established a national Covenant — the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments. No sooner than the Sinai Covenant had been established, however, it was broken. Some Israelites were enticed at Mount Sinai into worship of a golden calf, an icon of an Egyptian deity. Moses expelled them and then Israel was subjected to wandering in the desert as penance. Moses is mentioned more in the New Covenant (the New Testament) than any other Old Testament figure.

Centuries later, around 1,000 BC, King David arose in Salvation History. He descended from the tribe of Judah and is introduced in Scripture as a young shepherd in Bethlehem, which came to be known in our Nativity accounts as the “City of David.” David was a gifted poet and musician. He composed many of the psalms in the Hebrew Bible setting some of them to music. He was also a warrior known to history as having slain the giant Philistine warrior, Goliath (1 Samuel 17:48).

The Prophet Samuel annointed David as King over Israel, “and the Spirit of the Lord came mightly upon David from that day forward (1 Samuel 16:13).” Like a New Adam, David also functioned as a priest and a prophet while Israel expanded to become an empire.

Under the reign of David’s son, Solomon, Israel became a great military power in the Ancient World. His greatest accomplishment was the building of the Temple in Jerusalem and the Ark of the Covenant, which I described in these pages in “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

The terms of Davidic Covenant are layed out in 2 Samuel 7. The elements of the Davidic Covenant include Nathan’s oracle (2 Samuel 7:8-16) about David’s intention to build a sanctuary for Yahweh.

The New Covenant Gospels, especially Matthew and Luke, depict Jesus as the heir of David and the one to restore the Davidic Covenant. God’s Covenant with Jesus was the Institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper. Jesus identifies his own body and blood as the sacrificial elements of this New Covenant.

This was something entirely new in the Bible and in Salvation History. Jesus did not simply make a Covenant, but rather “became” a Covenant, a living bridge linking us to God. It was, and is, the fulfillment of all of Salvation History.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. It will be added to our collection of special Scripture posts about Salvation History.

You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

A Vision on Mount Tabor: The Transfiguration of Christ

Behold the Lamb of God Upon the Altar of Mount Moriah

The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God

On the Great Biblical Adventure, the Truth Will Make You Free

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“This is my beloved Son on whom my favor rests.”

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Silent Night and the Shepherds Who Quaked at the Sight

The shepherds of our Nativity Story lived difficult lives in the social strata of the Ancient Near East, but they are summoned by angels to Bethlehem for a reason.

At Christmas

Note from Father Gordon MacRae: I first wrote this post at Christmas in 2018 but it surprisingly became one that we wanted to present anew at Christmas. It drew tens of thousands of readers from throughout the Holy Land and the Middle East and Asia. During Christmas week in 2018, 50,000 came to this post from India alone. These are historically regions where shepherds thrived. They are near the heart of the most beloved Christmas hymn of our time, Silent Night.

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“Silent Night, Holy Night,
Shepherds quake at the sight.
Glories stream from heaven afar,
Heavenly hosts sing alleluia.
Christ, the Savior is born,
Christ, the Savior is born!”

— Silent Night, Verse 2

“Silent Night,” one of our most beloved and enduring Christmas hymns, was the result of an accident. It was first heard at the Christmas Midnight Mass in the little church of Saint Nicholas in Oberdorf, Upper Austria in 1818. On Christmas Eve, the church’s organ failed. So in a pinch, the young Austrian village priest, Joseph Mohr, hastily composed some verses for a simple song while organist Franz Gruber just as hastily set them to music.

They finished just in time to sing it at Midnight Mass accompanied by the soft strumming of a guitar. The congregation was mesmerized. The untitled song became known for its first words in German, “Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht.” In 1839, a group of Austrian folk singers performed it for the first time in the United States where it was translated into English. “Silent Night, Holy Night” quickly became synonymous with Christmas. Just like the season itself, the song was written in chaos but became an enduring summons to serenity and the real meaning of Christmas.

As I began to write this post, I was mentally about as far as anyone could be from “All is calm, all is bright,” and “sleeping in heavenly peace.” It is a challenge to write an uplifting Christmas post from my current location, and an even greater challenge to write it in the aftermath of all that has gone on in the Church and the world in the last few years. It was he subject of my 2023 Christmas post, “Christmas for Those Bowed Down by the Fatigue of This World.”

On the Birth of the Messiah

There was a lot of controversy that Christmas about the removal of faithful shepherds whom many of us have come to know and admire. This has happened while apparently less than stellar shepherds have been elevated before our eyes. This Christmas, the controversy has continued with the suppresion of the Traditional Latin Mass through which many devout Catholics have found comfort and joy. To be a shepherd was once a difficult life that has become a vocation. There is a lot of attention on the qualities of the Church’s shepherds right now. Let’s go back to the beginning.

Accounts of the infancy and childhood of Jesus appear in only two of the canonical Gospels: Matthew (1:18 – 2:23) and Luke (1:5 – 2:52). The two accounts have only the most basic elements of the story in common: Mary’s virginal conception, and the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. I once wrote of how that came about, and how Bethlehem came to be called in Scripture the “City of David.” That post was “The Holy Spirit and the Book of Ruth at Pentecost.”

The Gospel of Matthew alone contains the story of the Magi, the threat posed by Herod, and the Flight of the Holy Family into Egypt. The Gospel of Luke alone has the Angel of the Lord summoning shepherds to witness the newborn King.

Some scholars propose that the Gospel’s Infancy Narratives were added later and were of little interest to the early Church. I take the opposite view. Other accounts in the Apocryphal (meaning “hidden”) Gospels arose out of the first two centuries of the Church. They are not included in the canon of inspired Scripture, but they reveal the Early Church’s fascination with the Birth and childhood of Jesus. Their stories were sometimes embellished, but traditions from the earliest times of the Church cling to some of their accounts.

The Apocryphal Gospel of James, preserved in Greek from no later than the early Second Century, is the sole source of the names of Mary’s parents, Joachim and Anna. It is also the only source of the story of the Presentation of Mary in the Temple, and a more detailed account of the fears of suspicion about her pregnancy.

The Arabic Gospel of the Infancy, of unknown origin, is a later compilation of earlier oral traditions none of which can be measured against history. It has an expanded account of the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt from the Gospel of Matthew. It also presents a story only vaguely recalled about the Holy Family’s encounter in the desert with Dismas and Gestas, the names given by Tradition to the two criminals who were later crucified with Jesus. It is a story I included in “Dismas, the Good Thief Crucified Next to Christ the King,”

The History of Joseph the Carpenter, of Egyptian origin in the first few centuries, AD, contains stories of the life of Joseph which are not reflected in any of the Gospel narratives. They include an expanded account of the Flight into Egypt and a popular story about his soul being removed by an angel at the time of his death in the presence of Jesus and Mary. These sources and others reflect the popular interest of early Christians with the Birth of the Messiah and the legitimacy of the accounts that found their way into the Gospels of Matthew and Luke writing from two different traditions. In the Gospel of Luke, for example, it has long been believed that Luke’s source for the story of the Birth of the Messiah was Mary herself.

Moses [when he was a shepherd] Defends Jethro’s Daughters by James Jacques Joseph Tissot. Courtesy of Jewish Museum.

The Biblical Shepherds

Sheep herding was a profession of the common man — or woman — in the ancient world. For the most orthodox Jews in the time of Jesus, it was a position with low social rank and often disdained. It has always plagued the faithful that some religious leaders can become oblivious to the tenets of their own faith. Shepherds were looked down upon even as God Himself was seen as the Shepherd of Israel (Genesis 49:24 and Psalm 80:1). The most popular Scriptural identification of God as shepherd is in Psalm 23:

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. In verdant pastures He gives me repose. Beside restful waters He leads me. He restores my soul.”

— Ps. 23: 1-2

There are 123 references to shepherds in Sacred Scripture, beginning with one of the most ancient accounts, the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis (Chapter 4). Scripture depicts an age-old tension between shepherds and those who till the land. Each regarded the other as antagonistic to his interests. Clearing land for farming in the Ancient Near East meant that shepherds had to travel far and wide to find land suitable for grazing. In contrast, the pasturing of flocks damaged both land and crops.

With severe limits in both land and water, this forced shepherds into a nomadic life, and an economic rivalry with agriculture. Sheep had to be led from pasture to pasture as changing seasons required migration over vast distances. Shepherds had to find not only suitable and available grazing, but a water supply. Shepherds had to shelter their flocks in inclement weather and protect them from wild beasts and disgruntled farmers. Scripture is filled with wolf and sheep allegories.

The Prophet Amos was a shepherd, but some Prophetic voices present some shepherds as “unfaithful” (Ezekiel 34:2-10), as “simple-minded” (Jeremiah 10:21), as letting their flocks scatter:

“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the flock of my pasture—oracle of the LORD.

Therefore, thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, against the shepherds who shepherd my people: You have scattered my sheep and driven them away. You have not cared for them, but I will take care to punish your evil deeds.”

—Jeremiah 23:1-2

The Scriptural references continue portraying some shepherds: as “leading people astray” (Jeremiah 50:6), as “lacking in grace or understanding” (Isaiah 56:11ff). In our time, some of our most outstanding shepherds are themselves left to wander.

Despite the fact that shepherds were socially frowned upon, God showed favor to many shepherds throughout Scripture, calling them to heroic and pivotal missions. The story of Cain and Abel in Genesis (4:2 and following) has Cain tilling the earth while Abel is a sheepherder, aka, shepherd. When it came time to offer their gifts in sacrifice, Abel’s gift was found to be more pleasing to God resulting in humanity’s first homicide. Many generations later, Jacob, grandson of Abraham, described in a plea to Laban his life as a shepherd:

“It was like this with me: by day the heat consumed me, and the cold by night, and my sheep fled from my eyes.”

— Genesis 31:40

Joseph, the Joseph who was the main focus of Genesis chapters 37 to 50, was the youngest of his brothers and a shepherd. Jealous of their father’s favoritism toward him, his brothers sold him to slave traders who took him to Egypt. He later assured their salvation, saving their lives in a time of famine in Israel.

In Egypt, Jews came to be identified as nomadic shepherds and shepherding came to be seen by the Egyptians as an abominable life (Genesis 43:32). Moses, called by God to receive the Covenant, was first a shepherd. Saint Luke’s account of the shepherds called to Bethlehem has an echo of Moses’ encounter with God on Mount Sinai as he received the Commandments:

“And in that region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an Angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear”

— Luke 2:8-9

Adoration of the Shepherds by Bartolome Esteban Murillo. Courtesy of Museo del Prado.

Come to Bethlehem

Many generations later still after Moses, David, a shepherd, boasted of having killed lions with his bare hands when they attacked his father’s flocks. The Birth narrative in the Gospel of Luke also has an echo of King David’s humble origin as a shepherd (1 Samuel 16:1-23). St Luke presents an image of the call of the Shepherds by an Angel of the Lord as being privileged with a vision of King David’s successor. It is presented in language highly reminiscent of a king descended from David:

“Be not afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you. You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. Then suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly hosts saying, ‘Glory to God in the Highest, and on Earth peace to men with whom he is pleased.”’

— Luke 2:10-14

As mentioned above, elements of Saint Luke’s Gospel account suggest that Mary was herself the source of this information. When the shepherds came to Bethlehem that night and found her with Joseph and the Christ-child just as the angel had said, Mary heard the account of their encounter with the angels and the heavenly hosts in the darkness. When the New Testament speaks of darkness, we cannot really imagine it. With the total absence of any artificial light, their darkness was dark indeed. “But Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2:19).

The Christmas Proclamation traditionally proclaimed from the Roman Martyrology on the Vigil of Christmas begins with creation and connects the birth of the Lord with the major events of both sacred and secular history. The Proclamation reveals something of crucial importance for our time.

Abraham, our Father in Faith, came out of Ur of the Chaldees to encounter God who forged a covenant with Him in the 21st Century before the Birth of Christ. We now live in the 21st Century after. This places Christ the King at the very center of Salvation History from our perspective. It is no mystery that the time in which we live now is so tumultuous, with Earthly Powers vying with Heaven for the souls of humankind. Christ now stands equidistant in time between God’s covenant with Abraham and our present.

We must come to understand the cosmic importance of the time in which we live and the battle for souls being waged here. We must hope and pray that the shepherds of our time come to understand that as well, and live — not just speak, but live — faithfully and courageously, the Gospel we profess.

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The Roman Martyrology Proclamation of the Birth of Christ:

The twenty-fifth day of December when ages beyond number had run their course from the creation of the world, when God in the beginning created the heavens and earth, and formed man in His own likeness; when century upon century had passed since the Almighty set his bow in the clouds after the Great Flood, as a sign of covenant and peace — In the twenty-first century since Abraham, our father in faith, came out of Ur of the Chaldees; in the thirteenth century since the people of Israel were led by Moses in the Exodus from Egypt; in the tenth century since David was anointed King; in the sixty-fifth week of the prophecy of Daniel; in the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad; in the year seven hundred and fifty-two since the founding of Rome; in the forty-second year in the reign of Caesar Octavian Augustus, the whole world being at peace — Jesus Christ, eternal God and Son of the eternal Father, desiring to consecrate the world by his most loving presence, was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and when nine months had passed since His conception, was born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem of Judah, and was made man.

— The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: There are plenty of voices in this secular culture trying to suppress the real meaning of Christmas. Please share this post with others. If you are alone at Christmas, or know anyone who is, you and they are invited to spend some time with us. The first of our links below is our annual Christmas post filled with music, videos, and the Christmas Proclamation. We also invite you to Saint Maximilian Kolbe’s Eucharistic Adoration Chapel linked below.

Christmas for Those Bowed Down by the Fatigue of this World

Joseph’s Dream and the Birth of the Messiah

Upon a Midnight Not so Clear, Some Wise Men from the East Appear

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The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Joseph’s Dream and the Birth of the Messiah

Saint Joseph is silent in the Gospel account of the Birth of the Messiah, but his actions reveal him as a paradigm of spiritual fatherhood and sacrificial love.

At Christmas

Note from Father Gordon MacRae: An important post at Beyond These Stone Walls appeared here recently with the title I Have Seen the Fall of Man: Christ Comes East of Eden. It is a bit heavy on the theology of Salvation and so the comments on it were limited. One of them, by Thomas Ryder left me pondering the nature of Sacred Scripture. I have never imagined that anything I write could be considered “sacred,” but Mr. Ryder’s comment introduced for me an awareness of how much of our New Testament was written from prison by Saint Paul. Mr. Ryder wrote:

“St. Paul’s epistles, many written from prison, are astonishing, not just for the brilliance of the exegesis, but for his insight into humanity and the beauty of his language. Fr. MacRae is his very worthy successor.”

I wanted to crawl under my prison bunk and hide, but there was no room.

In 2016 I wrote this Christmas post from prison. The story it tells turns out to be the Gospel from Saint Matthew for the Fourth Sunday of Advent at Mass this week leading to our celebration of the Birth of the Messiah. So like so many of our Christmas hymns, it is worth repeating for it is the reason for this Season.

At the time I wrote it, I had been living in dire straits with eight prisoners per cell. Daily life there was chaotic and draconian. The word “draconian” refers to a set of punishing conditions notorious for their severity and heavy-handed oppression. The word was derived from Draco, a Seventh Century B.C. politician who codified the laws of Athens to severely oppress the rights and liberties of its citizens.

Pornchai Moontri was living in that same setting with me, though neither of us had said or done anything to bring it about. It was simply a bureaucratic development that we were told would last for only a few weeks. One year later, we were both still there. Later in 2017 we were finally moved to a saner, safer place, but that Advent and Christmas in 2016 are etched in my mind as a painful trial, with but one bright exception.

Many of our friends were also thrust into that same situation, living eight to a cell in a block of 96 men seemingly always on the verge of rage. I was recently talking with a friend who was there with us then. He said that what he recalls most from the experience was how Pornchai and I went from cell to cell on our first night there to be sure our friends were okay. And what he recalled most about Christmas Eve in that awful setting was Pornchai setting up a makeshift workspace in our cell to make Thai wraps for all the other prisoners on the block.

Over the previous week in visits to the commissary, I stocked up extra tortilla wraps and ingredients. Our friends helped with distribution as Pornchai undertook his first-ever fast food job. The hardcore prisoners around us were amazed. Nothing like this had ever happened here before. Just weeks earlier, Donald Trump was elected President. He announced a policy that foreign migrants seeking to stay in the United States would first be sent to Mexico to await processing. While the entire cellblock was eating Thai wraps, Pornchai announced to loud cheers that they are henceforth to be called “Thai Burritos.”

It was in that inhumane setting that I first wrote the story of Joseph’s Dream and the Birth of the Messiah described in the Gospel according to St. Matthew (1:18-24). It was the Gospel for the Fourth Sunday of Advent back then. When I went back to look at my 2016 post on that Gospel passage about Joseph’s dream I decided to write it anew.

Among The People Who Walked in Darkness

The Gospel of Matthew begins with “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham.” (Matthew 1:1). Many have pointed out some differences between the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew’s account and that found in the Gospel of Luke (3:23-38). They are remarkably similar in the generations from Abraham to King David, but from David to Jesus they diverge. This is because Matthew traces the genealogy of Jesus forward from Abraham through King David to Jesus in the line of Joseph who connects to Jesus by adoption, the same manner in which we now call God “Our Father.”

The genealogy in the Gospel of Luke, on the other hand, begins with Mary and runs backward through David to Abraham and then to Adam. It is a fine point that I have made in several reflections on Sacred Scripture that we today find ourselves in a unique time in Salvation History. Abraham first encountered God in the 21st Century before the Birth of Christ. We encounter God in the 21st Century after. At the center of all things stands Jesus whose Cross shattered a barrier “To the Kingdom of Heaven through a Narrow Gate.”

That both genealogies pass through David is highly significant. This is expressed in the first reading from Isaiah (9:1-6) in the Vigil Mass for the Nativity of the Lord on Christmas Eve:

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom, a light has shone. You have brought them abundant joy and great rejoicing... For the yoke that burdened them, the pole on their shoulder, and the rod of their taskmaster you have smashed as on the day of Midian.... For a child is born to us, a son is given us; upon his shoulder dominion rests. They call him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father Forever, Prince of Peace. His dominion is vast and ever peaceful from David’s throne and over his kingdom which he confirms and sustains by judgment and justice now and forever.”

— Isaiah 9:1-6

The differences in the genealogy accounts are a testament to their authenticity. Matthew stresses the Davidic kingship of Jesus over Israel by adoption through Joseph mirroring our adoption as heirs to the Kingdom. Luke, by tracing the ancestry of Jesus through Mary all the way back to Adam, stresses a theological rather than historical truth: the Lordship of Jesus over sin and grace and our redemption from the Fall of Man — a Savior born to us through Mary.

The Birth of the Messiah

What initially struck me in Saint Matthew’s account of the Birth of Jesus is its language inferring the sanctity of life. Having just passed though a disappointing national election in America in which the right to life was center stage, we heard a lot of talk about fetal heartbeats, viability, and reproductive rights. Our culture’s turning away from life is also a turning away from God. The fact that many nominally Catholic politicians lend their voices and votes to that turning away is a betrayal of Biblical proportions. In the Story of God and human beings, we have been here before. Planned Parenthood is our culture’s Temple to Baal.

The Gospel passages about the Birth of the Messiah clearly establish a framework for the value Sacred Scripture places on human life. Mary is never described as simply pregnant, or in a pre-natal state, or carrying a fetus. She is, without exception from the moment of the Annunciation, declared to be “with child.” But it was not all without politics, obstacles, and suspicions, and fears of finger-pointing to discredit her fidelity.

The story begins with Matthew 1:18-19 and Joseph pondering how best to protect Mary from the scandal that was surely to come.

“Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit. Her husband, Joseph, being a just man unwilling to expose her to disgrace, resolved to send her away quietly.”

— Matthew 1:18-19

I am struck by the fact that in the Gospel, Mary never attempted to explain any of this to Joseph. What would she have said? “An angel appeared to me, said some very strange things, and when he left I was with child?” Would Joseph have just accepted that without question? Would you? The story’s authenticity is in its human response: “Joseph being a just man unwilling to expose her to disgrace, resolved to send her away quietly.” (Matthew 1:19)

It is important to understand the nuance here. What made Joseph and any Jewish man, a “just” man in the eyes of the Jews — and in the eyes of the Jewish-Christian Evangelist, Matthew — is his obedience to the Law of Moses which required a quiet divorce. Early Church traditions proposed three theories about why Joseph became resolved to send Mary away quietly.

The first is the “suspicion” theory, the weakest argument of the three but one held by no less than Saint Augustine himself in the early Fourth Century. The theory presents that Joseph, like what most men of his time (or any time) might do, initially suspected Mary of being unfaithful in their betrothal, and thus felt compelled to invoke the law of Deuteronomy 24:1-4 to impose a bill of divorce because he had found something objectionable about her.

In that theory, Joseph clings to his decision until an Angel of the Lord sets him straight in a dream. However the theory entirely overlooks the first motive ascribed to Joseph in the Gospel: that of being a just man “unwilling to expose her to disgrace.” (Matthew 1:19)

The second theory is the “perplexity” theory proposed by Saint Jerome also in the early Fourth Century. In this, Joseph could not bring himself to suspect Mary of infidelity so the matter left him in perplexity. He thus decided to quietly send her away to protect her. According to this theory, his dream from the Angel of the Lord redirected his path with confirmation of what he might already have suspected. This theory was widely held in medieval times.

The third is the “reverence” theory. It proposed that Joseph knew all along of the divine origin of the child in Mary’s womb, but considered himself to be unworthy of her and of having any role in the life of this child. He thus decided to send her away to protect the divine secret from any exposure to the letter of the law. This theory was held by Saint Thomas Aquinas in the Thirteenth Century.

But I have a fourth theory of my own. It is called Love, Sacrificial Love, the essense of fatherhood.

But first, back to Joseph’s dream.

The Angel of the Lord

“As [Joseph] considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken through the prophet: ‘Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called, Emmanuel (which means ‘God with us’). When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him. He took Mary as his wife, but he knew her not until she had borne a son, and he called his name Jesus.”

— Matthew 1:18-24

There is a lot to be unpacked from this passage. This account represents the first of three dreams experienced by Joseph in which he was instructed by an “Angel of the Lord” to undertake specific action relative to his pivotal role in the lives of Mary and Jesus. The method of delivery for each message is not just some rank and file angel — though that would certainly have sufficed — but rather an “Angel of the Lord.” The title appears only a rare few times in the Hebrew Scriptures and only four times in the New Testament: Once in Acts of the Apostles and three times in the Gospel of Matthew, and only in reference to Joseph’s dreams about the Birth of the Messiah.

There are 126 references to dreams among the characters of Sacred Scripture. Some of the pivotal moments in Salvation History were set in motion through dreams. In the original Greek of St. Matthew’s Gospel, the term used for Joseph’s three dreams about the birth of Jesus is ‘onar,’ and it is used nowhere else in Sacred Scripture but here. It refers not just to a dream, but to a divine intervention in human affairs.

Coupled with the fact that the dream is induced by an “Angel of the Lord,” the scene takes on a sense of Divine urgency when compared with other angelic messages. The urgency is related to Joseph’s pondering about what is best for Mary, a pondering that could unintentionally thwart God’s redemptive plan for the souls of all humankind.

There are many parallels in this account with events in the life of the Old Testament Joseph in the Book of Genesis. Both had the same name. Both were essential to Salvation History. Both were in the line of King David — one looking forward and the other backward. Both were the sons of a father named Jacob. Both brought their families to safety in a flight to Egypt. God spoke to both through dreams.

The task of the Angel of the Lord is to redirect Joseph’s decision regardless of what motivated it. The divine urgency is to preserve the symbolic value of King David’s lineage being passed on to Jesus by Joseph’s adoption. The symbolism is immensely powerful. This adoption, and the establishment of kingship in the line of David in the human realm, also reflects the establishment of God’s adoption of us in the spiritual realm.

Remember that the title, “King of the Jews” is one of the charges for which Jesus faced the rejection of Israel and the merciless justice of Rome. There is great irony in this. Through the Cross, Jesus ratifies the adoption between God and us. Mocked as “King of the Jews,” He becomes for all eternity Christ the King and we become the adopted subjects and heirs of that Kingdom. It is difficult to imagine the Child born in Bethlehem impaled upon the Cross at Golgotha, but He left this world as innocent as when he entered it. His crucified innocence won for us an inheritance beyond measure.

And Saint Joseph won for us an eternal model for the sacrificial love of fatherhood.

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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post in preparation for our observance of the Birth of the Messiah. You may also like these related posts:

I Have Seen the Fall of Man: Christ Comes East of Eden

The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God

Saint Joseph: Guardian of the Redeemer and Fatherhood Redeemed

How December 25 Became Christmas

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

“What Shall I Do to Inherit Eternal Life?” (Luke 10:25)

The Gospel for the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time is the Parable of the Good Samaritan, a meaningful story on its face, but far more urgent in its depths.

Catholic writer Ryan A. MacDonald published a Letter to the Editor in Our Sunday Visitor some years ago (August 29, 2010) entitled “Priests Vulnerable to False Accusations.” His published letter included this paragraph:

“To paraphrase the Gospel parable, ‘this priest was beaten by robbers and left on the side of the road in our Church.’ A growing number of Catholics have been unwilling to pass him by no matter how sick we are of the sex abuse story.”

— OSV, August 29, 2010, p18

Ryan commended Our Sunday Visitor for its bold acknowledgment that Beyond These Stone Walls was selected as the “Best of the Catholic Web” in the category of Spirituality by OSV readers.

I was struck by the image Ryan conveyed. There is far more to the famous “Good Samaritan” parable of Luke 10:25-37 than meets the eye.

So I spent some time looking at its theological background and meaning because for some time I have wanted to add this famous parable to our collection of posts on Sacred Scripture under the heading From Abraham to Easter. I hope that you will visit this collection on occasion to mine the great theological depths of some of the best known passages of Sacred Scripture. I find in the Parable of the Good Samaritan an urgent summons to mercy. Every reader here knows this parable, but if you let me sift it a bit, it has layers that may surprise you.

A lawyer stood before Jesus “to put Him to the test” (Luke 10:25). The lawyer in this setting was an expert in the Mosaic Law handed down in the Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses, and specifically in the Books of Numbers and Deuteronomy. The lawyer’s intent was not to query Jesus for answers, but to trap Him in contradiction in the presence of his disciples. There are actually three intended hearers in Jesus’ telling of this parable — the lawyer, the disciples, and us, the readers — all bringing different world views to the scene.

The lawyer opened the dialogue with a question the answer to which he already knows: “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Note the word “inherit.” The lawyer did not expect to earn or gain eternal life, but rather to inherit it as something due to him as an heir. The lawyer-expert in the Mosaic law finds the source of his due inheritance in the law itself.

So Jesus returned the opening volley with a question on the lawyer’s own terms, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” The lawyer then goes on to quote the two highest tenets of the Law of Moses, the first from Deuteronomy 6:5: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.” Then the second, from Leviticus 19:18: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” In another setting (Matthew 22:36-40) Jesus told a Pharisee — perhaps even this same Pharisee — “On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.”

But back to Luke 10. Jesus commended the lawyer for his insight. “You have answered rightly. Do this and you will live.” The encounter could have ended there, but the lawyer had not finished laying his trap. “And who is my neighbor?” he asked.

After all, the Book of Leviticus (19:18), in citing the second half of what Jesus called the “Greatest Commandment,” has a preface that could have been cause for debate between Jesus and this lawyer. “You shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge against the Sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” So, for the Pharisee-lawyer, the identity of “neighbor” is arguably unclear. While laying his trap, the lawyer elicits from Jesus a parable that springs the trap, and cracks open a door to Eternal Life to be inserted into the lawyer’s sense of justice, and ours.

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him, and departed leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed came to where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion, and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 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.”

— Luke 10, 30-37

The Questionably “Good” Samaritan

Note that the lawyer’s question is not “What shall I do to attain eternal life?” There is little we can do to attain it. The word “attain” implies merit. The lawyer’s question asks “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” The key action term in the question is “inherit,” and the actor who will provide the inheritance is not the lawyer, but Jesus himself, the sole being who, through the will of the Father, has merited entry into Paradise. I described the scene in which that merit took place in “Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found.”

The lawyer hearing the parable would form a spontaneous judgment about each of the three people who traveled that road to Jericho. The lawyer would be united in sympathy with the first two — the priest and the Levite — and not only with them but with their actions in the parable as well. The lawyer would readily see why the priest and the Levite who observe the beaten man left “half dead,” choose to pass by. They are simply observing the laws of ritual purity, in this case one set down in the Book of Leviticus 21:1-3, “None of them shall defile himself for the dead among his people except for his nearest of kin.”

The priest is descended from the priesthood of Aaron, a part of the priestly hierarchy that offers sacrifice on the peoples’ behalf according to the priestly code of Leviticus (Chapters 1-16). The lawyer would readily know that on his way to Jerusalem in the parable, the priest would risk defiling himself and his ritual sacrificial offering under the law if he touched the dying man. And the Levite is in the same boat. The Levitical priesthood was established when Moses, having received the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, returned to discover the Israelites worshiping a golden calf in the Book of Exodus (32). Moses summoned the tribe of Levi for ministerial service to exact punishment upon the idolaters (Exodus 32:27).

Thus, within the tribe of Levi, the descendants of Aaron received the priesthood, and men of the tribe of Levi who did not descend from Aaron comprised a second hierarchical tier of the Levitical priesthood. The priest offered sacrifice while the Levites guarded and transported the Tabernacle and assisted the Temple priest (Numbers 1:47-54). The lawyer would surmise, as do we, that the priest and the Levite were on that road from Jericho to Jerusalem to offer sacrifice on behalf of their communities as required by Levitical law. The parable has a quality of verisimilitude. The road passed through lots of rugged territory where brigands and robbers were known to hide and ambush.

In the parable of Luke 10, the lawyer readily knows, both the priest and the Levite risked becoming defiled under the ritual laws of sacrifice if either one stopped to help the “half dead” man. The third traveler, the one from Samaria, is a whole other story for the lawyer and for the disciple-hearers as well. The term, “Samaritan” appears for the first time in the Second Book of Kings (17:29) where the people of Samaria are described as idolaters, the very type that the tribe of Levi was called upon to extinguish from the Israelites at Mount Sinai.

Jews saw Samaritans as the descendants of foreign colonists planted by the Assyrians. For their part, Samaritans insisted they were descendants of the tribes of Benjamin and Manasseh who managed to survive the Assyrian destruction of Samaria. In the Gospel of John (4:9) a Samaritan woman was surprised that Jesus would even speak to her “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria.” The Gospel text of John went on to explain the obvious, that “Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” In John (4:27) even the Apostles were shocked that Jesus would speak to a Samaritan woman.

Samaritans figured that the more recently unfaithful Judea, whose population was itself exiled to Babylon because of gross unfaithfulness and whose temple in Jerusalem was utterly destroyed, were consummate liberals. The Jews, thinking they themselves were most exact in their observance of the Law, however many loopholes they thought they found, were incriminated by the very existence of the ultra-conservative Samaritans. The Samaritans closely observed the Torah, the Law, accepting the first five books of the Law alone, but rejecting all the prophets and the writings as distraction. What irked the Jews especially was that the Samaritans added an eleventh self-referential commandment that worship should take place in Samaria, on Mount Gerizim only, not in Jerusalem. The last place the Jews thought they might find mercy is with the Samaritans.

In the end, both justice and the lawyer’s trap were turned on their heads when Jesus asked, “Which of these three do you think proved neighbor to the man who fell among robbers?” The poor lawyer, his head spinning, could not even bring himself to say the word, “Samaritan.” He answered, “The one who showed mercy on him.”

Then, in final response to the lawyer’s original question, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus admonished him, “Go, and do likewise.” Be the one who shows mercy despite its cost to yourself, or your standing, or your Facebook “Like” score.

Inheritance

You might argue that unlike the Samaritan in this parable, you have never been given such an opportunity to be the instrument of the Mercy of God. The Gospel of Matthew (25:31-46) ends with this segment: “ ‘Truly I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.’ And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

This Gospel lays out “The Judgment of the Nations” and along with it the fulfillment of the law of inheritance:

“Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”

— Matthew 25:31-36

On that last point, you might argue that you have never come to one in prison. If you are reading this, you just did!

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post about one of the most popular and important parables of Jesus. You will also find this post in our Sacred Scripture collection, “From Abraham to Easter.”

You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls.

To the Kingdom of Heaven through a Narrow Gate

Behold the Lamb of God Upon the Altar of Mount Moriah

Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found

The Feast of Corpus Christi and the Order of Melchizedek

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Advent of the Mother of God

Advent begins a time to release ourselves from the grip of Earthly powers to prepare the Way of the Lord and make straight His path.

Advent by Father Gordon MacRae

The Gospels According to Matthew and Luke are the Scriptural sources for the events of Advent and Christmas. They have many similarities and some differences. Matthew alone tells the story of the Magi, a story I unfolded here in “Upon a Midnight Not So Clear, Some Wise Men from the East Appear.” Only Luke has the story of Saint Gabriel the Archangel and the Annunciation. It seems that Mary herself was his source for that account and the events to follow. That Gospel passage graces two important Feast Days within Advent: The Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception on December 8, and the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12. I unfolded the deeper recesses of that account as well in “Saint Gabriel the Archangel: When the Dawn from On High Broke Upon Us.”

Both Evangelists often present two stories, one on the surface, and one with much deeper meaning and historical context for those “with eyes to see and ears to hear” making these accounts far richer stories with deeper significance. What lies beneath the lines of the Gospel has to be excavated by seeing and hearing with the hearts and minds of the original hearers of this Good News.

Saint Luke’s account of the Annunciation is followed immediately by Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth who awaits the pending birth of John who would become known as the Baptist. It’s a short account, easy to read and ponder, but it tells two stories — maybe even three — one on its surface and one or two that lay beneath. I am going to reproduce it here:

“In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country to a city of Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the child [who would become John the Baptist] leaped in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. She exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”

— Luke 1:39-45

This account comprises the Second Joyful Mystery of the Rosary and is familiar to all of us. At face value, it relates a joyous encounter between Mary and Elizabeth, her cousin and the wife of Zechariah and expectant mother of John the Baptist.

Then there is a second level of meaning, though subtle, that astute Jewish hearers might detect in Luke’s account. The experience of the child leaping in Elizabeth’s womb in the presence of the prenatal Jesus recalls the Old Testament story of Rebekah (Genesis 25: 22-23), pregnant with the twins, Jacob and Esau. Both Luke’s Gospel and the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, use the Greek word “skirtáō” to describe this “leaping” or “struggling” of the child in the womb.

In Saint Luke’s account, “the child leaped (skirtáō) in her womb” is used to infer that the child in Mary’s womb would be greater than his slightly older cousin, John (expressed in John 3:16 and 3:27-30). In the Old Testament case of Rebekah, it was to show that Jacob would have preeminence over his slightly older brother, Esau, as God Himself explains:

“The children struggled (skirtáō) together within her… And the Lord said to her, ‘Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples, born to you, shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger.”

— Genesis 25: 22-23

Also, Elizabeth’s declaration, “Blessed are you among women,” reverberates in Jewish ears back to the experiences of Jael and Judith (Judges 5:24-27 and Judith 13:18). Blessed for their heroic courage in warding off the enemies hostile to Israel, Jael and Judith struck mortal blows to the head of the enemy. In Mary’s case, the victory will be even greater as she puts the head of the enemy beneath her feet (Genesis 3:15).

Elizabeth’s question put to Mary — “Why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” — does not denote a simple visit between cousins. Every occurrence of “Lord” in this account and throughout this chapter in Luke (there are seven such references in this chapter) refer to God. Elizabeth’s declaration that Mary is the Mother of God (Theotokos, in the Greek) became the first Marian dogma to be expounded by the Church and defined, at the Council of Ephesus in A.D. 431.

Preceding these verses in Luke’s Gospel — and found nowhere else — is the beautiful account of the Archangel Gabriel’s Annunciation to Zechariah and then to Mary, and the very different ways the Archangel approaches them with Divine News. It demonstrates the great reverence and deference with which the Evangelist and early Church viewed Mary. It was a reverence that spilled over into art, as evidenced in the great painting “The Annunciation” by Fra Angelico.

The New Ark of the Covenant

And then there is yet another layer of meaning for keen Jewish ears in Saint Luke’s Visitation account. There are several striking parallels between Mary’s visit with Elizabeth and King David’s reaction to the return of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem 1,000 years before. In Luke 1:39, Mary proceeds in haste “into the hill country to a city of Judah.” In the Second Book of Samuel (6:2) David arose and went to the very same place. In Luke 1:43, Elizabeth asks, how is it “that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” In Second Samuel 6:9, David asks, “How is it that the Ark of the Lord comes to me?” In Luke 1:41, “When Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the child leaped in her womb…” In Second Samuel 6:16, “As the Ark of the Lord came into the City of David, Michal the daughter of Saul saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord.”

The parallel is extremely important for the hearers of Luke’s words. The importance rests in the way the Ark of the Covenant was viewed by the people of God. It was a chest made of acacia wood — about 3.75 feet long and 1.5 feet wide (1.1 meters by 0.5 meters) lined both inside and outside with gold (Exodus 25:10-26). At its four corners were placed heavy rings of gold through which acacia poles could be slipped to carry the Ark since it could not be touched by human hands.

The lid was composed of a solid slab of gold that formed the “kapporet” or “mercy seat,” the place of atonement. It was surmounted by two solid gold cherubim which formed a throne so that the Ark itself became a footstool for God (Numbers 10: 33-35).

The Ark was built upon the command of God at Mount Sinai, and it housed the two stone tablets on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed. It also contained a golden vessel of manna (Exodus 16:34) and the rod of Aaron (Numbers 17:10). The Ark became the evidence of the Lord’s intimate association with Israel, a sign of the Covenant, and a housing for the Presence of God. When the Jews encamped, the Ark was placed in the Holy of Holies where Moses “conversed with the Lord” (Numbers 7:89).

During a struggle with the Philistines, the Ark was captured (1 Samuel 4:11) and taken. The Philistines suffered seven months of earthquakes and plagues (1 Samuel 5:3-9) until the Ark was returned. It stayed for twenty years at Kiriath-Jearim until that scene above in Second Samuel (6:16) when David leaped before it as it returned to the Tabernacle in Jerusalem.

The Ark remained there for the next 400 years until the fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. to the Babylonians (Jeremiah 3:16). It was not counted among the spoils claimed by the Babylonians but the Second Book of Maccabees (2 Macc 2-5) described that it was saved from destruction by the Prophet Jeremiah and hidden on Mount Nebo where it would stay “until God gathers His people together again and shows His mercy” (2 Macc 2:7).

Thus emerged throughout Israel the expectation of a Messiah, a Branch of David and a Son of God. In Saint Luke’s subtle but powerful short paragraph about the Visitation is found an entire nation’s wealth of understanding about the return of the Ark of the Covenant and the hope of a Messiah. In the subtle hand of Saint Luke, it is in Mary, the Theotokos, the God-bearer, the Ark of the New Covenant that the Dawn from On High broke upon us. Hers is a soul that magnifies the Lord.

The vision of the Ark in the Book of Revelation (11:19-12:1) hints at this identification: the “woman clothed with the sun” is the Mother of God. And she wants the last word. The door to that Word was opened on the Solemnity of her Immaculate Conception. The Word is “Mercy,” a divine Christmas gift, and it is the great tragedy of our age that so many do not even know they need it.

O Come, O Branch of Jesse’s stem;
From Every foe deliver them
That trust Your mighty power to save,
And give them victory over the grave.

O Come, O Key of David, come,
And open wide our heavenly home;
Make safe the way that sets us free,
And close the path to misery.

Rejoice! Rejoice! O Israel.
To thee shall come Emmanuel.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Our regular weekly post will appear here on Wednesday. The above post was first published several years ago in an older version of this blog. Because of its popularity and focus on Advent, we have restored it and updated it substantially. You may note that some of the wonderful reader comments were posted on the original version of this post.

We have all been through a lot in the few three years. Advent is a time to correct our focus on all that really matters. For more Advent reading we recommend the following posts:

Saint Gabriel the Archangel: When the Dawn from On High Broke Upon Us

How Our Lady of Fatima Saved a World in Crisis

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

What Belongs to Caesar and What Belongs to God

Pharisees set a trap for Jesus with a query about paying tax to Caesar. Like much in the Gospel, this has a story on its surface and a far greater one in its depths.

Note from Father Gordon MacRae: One of the most frequent religious questions in the Google database of searches is also the Gospel at Mass for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time. With that question, the Pharisees laid out a trap for Jesus.

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Prisoners often come to my door with questions. Sometimes they simply don’t have the ability to search through the library for answers and sometimes they just assume that a guy my age must know at least something about almost everything. My friend, Pornchai Moontri, when he was here with me, used to sometimes chime in with answers of his own.

One day a prisoner asked me, “Do you know any Latin? Pornchai shot back, “Of course he does. Latin was his first language!” The implied meaning was that I am old enough to remember when Latin was spoken on the streets of the Roman Empire. The prisoner didn’t get the joke so he didn’t laugh. I got it, and I still look forward to my quid pro quo moment.

But Pornchai may not have been entirely wrong. I went to a public high school as a teen growing up on the North Shore of Massachusetts in the 1960s. (Yes, locals still call it the “Noath Shoah”). I graduated from Lynn English High School when I was only one month seventeen in 1970, and what I most remember about those years is Latin. At Lynn English I studied basic, intermediate, and advanced Classical Latin with Miss Ruggiero who also moderated the “Latin Club” of which I was a charter member.

Latin was not my first language, but I became proficient in my first language, English, only because I studied Latin. I owe a great debt to Miss Ruggiero because she was never satisfied with our merely learning the discipline of Latin declinations and conjugations. We also had to study in depth the setting in which it was spoken: the vast Roman Empire that had spread throughout the known world.

The Roman Empire

The Roman Empire lasted for only five centuries. One of them, the one we now call the First Century A.D. (Anno Domini, Latin for “the Year of the Lord”) includes the Roman occupation of Judea during the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and the life of the Early Church.

The Empire began to spread from the city of Rome to the rest of Italy and neighboring regions to become the Roman Republic about 500 years before the birth of Jesus. In 49 B.C., Gaius Julius Caesar, a Roman military strategist and politician, prevailed in a civil war and became dictator of the Republic. He ruled for only five years when he was assassinated on the Ides of March (March 15). The month of July was named in his honor. Caesar’s longtime military deputy, Mark Antony, and Caesar’s grandnephew, Gaius Octavius, defeated Caesar’s assassins and rivals. Then they turned on each other. At the battle of Actium in 31 B.C., Octavius prevailed over a plot by Roman governor Mark Antony and the Egyptian princess, Cleopatra, Caesar’s former mistress who took up with Mark Antony. It’s one of the great soap operas of history.

In 27 B.C. the Roman Senate proclaimed Octavius to be the Roman Republic’s supreme leader giving him the title, “Augustus,” meaning “exalted or holy one.” Most historians cite 27 B.C. as the date the Roman Empire was born. Its first Emperor took his title and added “Caesar” in honor of his great-uncle, Julius.

Caesar Augustus thus meant, “Caesar the Exalted Holy Roman Emperor.” It was a title and not a name. Augustus was also given the titles, “Pontifex Maximus,” supreme head of the state religion, and “Pater Patriae,” Father of the Fatherland.

The month of August was named in the ancient Roman Calendar in honor of Caesar Augustus. It’s easy to see the Roman influence not only in the Latin language of the Church but in the religious titles later assigned by tradition to the papacy. It’s a crime against history to allow Latin to fade from Catholic Tradition, for Christianity transformed it from the language of Earthly powers to the language of the Church. I once wrote of the meaning of this loss in the life of the Church in “A House Divided: Cancel Culture and the Latin Mass.”

From 27 B.C. forward, “Caesar” became the title for a string of Roman rulers. Three are mentioned by name in our New Testament: Augustus, who reigned at the time of the birth of Jesus (see Luke 2:1); Tiberius, in whose fifteenth year as Emperor Jesus was baptized by John at the Jordan (Luke 3:1); and Claudius (Acts 18:2), who commanded that all Jews leave the city of Rome. Others, such as Caligula and Nero, are not mentioned by name but had a profound effect on early Christianity.

By the birth of Jesus, Augustus centralized power by turning to the Equestrian Order, Roman citizens with wealth, power, and property, and sustained their loyalty by appointing them governors over the various regions of Roman occupation. When Jesus was about 14 years of age, Tiberius succeeded Augustus as Emperor, and later appointed one of the Equestrian Order, Pontius Pilate, as governor of Judea.

In some ways in the early years of the advance of Rome into Palestine, the Jews saw it to their advantage. It was a chance to free themselves from the oppression of the Seleucids, the Greek dynasty under Antiochus IV Epiphanies who overtook the Jerusalem Temple in 167 B.C. and replaced the Torah in the Sanctuary with the cult of Zeus.

This is a story of great imperial oppression and Jewish resistance that is laid out in the First Book of Maccabees (1 Macc 8:1-6) which spoke positively of the advancing Romans and an alliance with the Jews to expel the Greek oppressors. It is the story of the Jewish Festival of Hanukkah. A century before the birth of Jesus, Rome became the dominant force in the Mediterranean region, having replaced the Hellenistic Greek influence that sought to destroy the Hebrew language and expression of faith.

Caesar and Christ

So when I came to the Gospel reading for the Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, I was struck by the answer Jesus gave to the religious scholars of his day, the Pharisees, who had set out to entrap him. Armed with a thorough knowledge of Hebrew Law, they asked Jesus if it is permissible for Jews to pay the census tax to Caesar.

The brief story that the Gospel tells in Matthew 22: 15-22 is a good story on its face, but if you are willing to venture a little deeper under into its depths, the result is fascinating. So sometime before or after you hear the Gospel for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, invest a little of your own ordinary time for a careful reading of the rest of this post.

It is impossible to fully understand the dynamic in this account between Jesus and a group of Pharisees without some exploration of its setting. First, the story on the surface:

“The Pharisees went off and plotted how they might entrap Jesus in speech. They sent their disciples to him, with the Herodians, saying, ‘Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. And you are not concerned with anyone’s opinion, for you do not regard a person’s status. Tell us, then, what is your opinion: Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?’” The trap is set.

“Knowing their malice, Jesus said, ‘Why are you testing me, you hypocrites? Show me the coin that pays the census tax.’ Then they gave him the Roman coin. He said to them, ‘Whose image is this and whose inscription?’ They replied, ‘Caesar’s.’ At that he said to them, ‘Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.’ When they heard it, they marveled; and then they left him and went away.”

— Matthew 22: 15-22

Why were the Pharisees plotting against Jesus at all? It began in an earlier chapter of the Gospel, Matthew 12. The Pharisees challenged Jesus over his disciples plucking grain on the Sabbath because they were hungry. The chapter then culminates in his Sabbath Day healing of a man with a withered hand. Using the Pharisees’ own expertise in Hebrew Law and the Prophets, Jesus challenged them to consider the prophetic meaning of “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice” (quoting from the Prophet Hosea 6:6). Stymied by the challenge, “the Pharisees went out and took counsel against him on how to destroy him.” (Matthew 12:14).

The next encounter between Jesus and the Pharisees is the account of their question about whether the Hebrew Law permits Jews to pay a census tax to Caesar. When Jesus asked to see the coin that would be used, and then asks whose image is on this coin, he cut to the heart of their trap with one of his own.

The coin was a denarius stamped with the profile of the Emperor, Tiberius Caesar. The tax was deeply offensive to the Pharisees because of a law set forth in the Book of Exodus:

“You shall not make for yourself a graven image whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath… You shall not bow down to them, or worship them.”

— Exodus 20:4-5

To pay a tax to Caesar using the coin of the realm, one engraved with Caesar’s image, was considered a direct affront to the Hebrew Law, and yet the Roman occupation required it and it was the price Jews paid for freedom from the oppression of the Greeks who committed a far more serious abomination: total desecration of their Temple. So paying it was an accommodation that the Jews begrudgingly obliged despite the Mosaic Law.

But what these Pharisees wanted to know from Jesus was not whether or not to pay the tax, but his opinion on whether it was in accord with the Law of Moses. The trap was set no matter how he answered. If his opinion was that it was lawful to pay, then it would be a public insult against the Law of Moses which could be used to discredit him. If he said it was not lawful to pay, then it would have been a public insult against Rome which could be used to accuse him of insurrection.

But in the end, Jesus trapped the entrappers by saying something that caused them first to marvel, and then to simply go away in silence. His trap had multiple tiers. The first was to play upon the word, “image.” The coin bore the image and likeness of Tiberius Caesar. Therefore, for Jesus, it belonged to him.

To pay the tax is simply to render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. It would be a clearer violation of the law against graven images for a Jew to keep the coin. But the Pharisees would also see in this a subtle reference to a passage in Genesis with great authority:

“So God created man in his image; in the image of God he created him.”

— Genesis 1.27

Hence the second part of Jesus’ challenge: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.”

This meant not just their obedience to the Law, but their very selves. The gist of the implication is even stronger. This higher duty, for Jesus, is incumbent not only upon these Pharisees, but even upon Caesar himself, and that was a revolutionary thought that put the Pharisee’s in a stupor.

For the Pharisees to challenge him in any way after this would have required their affirmation that Caesar is an ultimate authority that surpasses even the will of God. So they were left to marvel, and then they just left. This places an entirely new meaning on the accommodations to Caesar made by religious authorities of Jesus’ time — and perhaps even our own.

Somehow, between this scene in the Gospel of Matthew that is proclaimed at a Sunday Mass, and the Gospel of John that we will hear in Holy Week, came the final descent of faith and the cost of believing culminating in the scene before Pilate that became one of my most read Holy Week posts, “The Chief Priests Answered, ‘We Have No King but Caesar.’”

It was the ultimate accommodation to Caesar from which there is no return. As for the vast Roman Empire that tried to make its Emperor god, the successor of Peter remains in Rome to this day. The successor of Caesar is but a footnote on history.

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The dotted line in the map above marks the perimeter of the Roman Empire at the time of Jesus.

Note from Father Gordon MacRae: You might want to pay a visit this week to our new feature on the Home Page, “Special Report,” to read my post, “Synodality Blues.”

For more forays into the deeper wells of Scripture visit these posts on Beyond These Stone Walls:

Saint Luke the Evangelist, Dear and Glorious Physician

The Passion of the Christ in an Age of Outrage

The Chief Priests Answered, “We Have No King but Caesar”

Behold the Man, as Pilate Washes His Hands

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Waking Up in the Garden of Gethsemane

The Agony in the Garden, the First Sorrowful Mystery, is a painful scene in the Passion of Christ, but in each of the Synoptic Gospels the Apostles slept through it.

It seems so long ago now, but a few years back I wrote a post that stunned some TSW  readers out of the doldrums of a long nap in the Garden of Gethsemane where, sooner or later, we will all spend some time. That post was “Pentecost, Priesthood, and Death in the Afternoon.”

It was about one of our friends, a middle-aged prisoner named Anthony, and his discovery of having terminal cancer. Anthony was one of the most irritating and obnoxious individuals I had ever met. He was the only prisoner I have ever thrown out of my cell with a demand that he never return. Very few people have had that kind of effect on me, but Anthony was masterful at it.

But then Anthony discovered that he was dying. As an unintended result of our “falling out” he believed that he could not come to me. He was Pornchai Moontri’s friend but the story of his impending doom was my comeuppance. I cannot forget the day that Pornchai told me, “You have to help Anthony. He is going to die and he doesn’t know how.” After a long sleep when the priest in me had succumbed too much to the prisoner, that was my awakening in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Over the next 18 months, Pornchai and I took care of Anthony for as long as we possibly could before handing him over to the prison version of hospice from where we would never see him again. But before that happened, Anthony became a Catholic, was received into the Church, and had a transformation of spirit that, in the midst of death, proclaimed an incomparable stress on life.

Pornchai and I were eyewitnesses to how all the things that once took priority in Anthony’s life just fell away. He became, in the end, like “Dismas, Crucified to the Right” of the Lamb of God. It seemed so ironic that it was his impending death that opened up for Anthony a world of faith, hope and trust that overcame all other forces at work in his life. In the end, I no longer, recognized the man I had once so disdained.

Not long after leaving us, Anthony died in the prison’s medical center where a small group of hospice volunteers took turns being with him around the clock. I once wrote of Anthony’s death, and of an event that shook our world back then, but it’s a story worth telling again. I told it at a brief memorial service for Anthony that was attended by about sixty prisoners, twice the normal for such things.

At the service in the prison chapel, those attending were invited to speak. So Pornchai nudged me and said, “Tell them about the book.” I told those in attendance that Anthony left this world having committed a second crime against the State of New Hampshire: an unreturned library book. The rest of the story generated a collective gasp.

The Library where I work has a computer system that tracks the 22,000 volumes from which prisoners can select and check out books. When a prisoner is released from prison without returning a book, an alert would come across the screen a week later to give us a last chance to find and retrieve a book left behind.

I had no knowledge that Anthony ever checked a book out of the Library. I never saw him there, and he never asked me for a book. But a week after he died, this appeared on my screen:

“Anthony Begin #76810 — Gone/Released — Heaven Is for Real”

The Agony in the Garden

Heaven is for real, but for it to be a reality for us required an Exodus from the slavery of sin and death. That second Exodus commenced in the Garden of Gethsemane, and in the course of it, God exacted from Himself the same price — the death of His Son — that he imposed upon Pharaoh to bring about the first Exodus.

The Biblical account of Jesus and His Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane opens the Passion Narrative of the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In the Gospel of John (18:1), the place is simply referred to as “across the Kidron Valley where there is a garden.” John, writing from a different tradition, cites only the betrayal by Judas there whereas the other Gospels precede that betrayal with the agony of Jesus at prayer.

Almost immediately preceding this in each of the Synoptic Gospels was the Institution of the Eucharist at what has been famously depicted by Leonardo Da Vinci as The Last Supper. This was the decisive turning point in Salvation History:

“Drink of it, all of you, for this is the blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you I shall not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink of it anew with you in my Father’s Kingdom.”

— Matthew 26: 28-29

Following this in the account of Saint Luke, Jesus addresses Peter about the spiritual warfare that is to come:

“‘Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren.’ And [Peter] said to him, ‘Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.’”

— Luke 22:31-34

Peter’s “readiness” for prison and for death will soon become an issue. From here the scene moves to the Mount of Olives where Jesus went to pray “as was His custom” (Luke 22:39).

Only the Gospels of Matthew and Mark name the place “Gethsemane.” Once there, Jesus withdrew from His disciples to pray. As you already know, the suffering and death he now faced would be set in motion by the betrayal of Judas who provided “the more opportune time” that Satan awaited when the Temptation of Christ in the desert failed (Luke 4:13), a scene depicted in “To Azazel: The Fate of a Church That Wanders in the Desert.”

Jesus, fully human in his suffering by God’s design, recoils not only from the image of suffering he knows to be upon Him, but also by the weight of the Apostolic betrayal just moments away. The betrayal by Judas is intensified by the dreadful weight of humanity’s sin for which Jesus is offered up as the Scapegoat — the Sacrificial Lamb of God — for the sins of all humanity.

For Hebrew ears, the account of Jesus at Gethsemane is a mirror image in reverse of a scene that occurred at this very same site 1,000 years earlier. It was a story not of a son obedient unto death, but of a son who betrayed his father. It was the agony of King David and his flight from his son, Absolom, and his traitorous revolt. As David learned that his trusted counselor, Ahithophel, had betrayed him in league with Absolom…

“David went up the ascent of the Mount of Olives, weeping as he went, with his head covered and walking barefoot, and all the people who were with him covered their heads and went up, weeping as they went. David was told that Ahithophel was one of the conspirators with Absolom.”

— 2 Samuel 15:30-31

And, as with Judas 1,000 years later, Ahithophel hanged himself when the consequences of his betrayal weighed upon him.

In Saint Matthew’s account of the Gethsemane scene (26:37), Jesus left His disciples and brought Peter, James and John with Him to the place of prayer. Note that Peter, James and John witnessed Jesus raise the daughter of Jairus from death (Mark 5:37) and they were also witnesses to His Transfiguration in the presence of Moses and Elijah that I wrote of during this Lent in “Turmoil in Rome and the Transfiguration of Christ.”

In the Gospel of Luke (22:31ff) Jesus is alone and apart from the others as He prays in agony in the face of death: “Father if you are willing, remove this chalice from me; nevertheless not my will but yours be done.” I cannot tell you how often I have prayed that same prayer in the last 25 years. I pray it still.

In the Gospel, God answers the prayer of Jesus, not by removing the suffering, for His suffering is to be our Exodus, but by strengthening Him to endure it. And He will endure it unto death:

“There appeared to him an angel from heaven to strengthen him. And being in agony, he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down upon the ground.”

— Luke 22:43

In each of the Gospel accounts, Jesus returned to His disciples to discover that they have all slept through His agony. None were there to console Him except the angel sent from heaven while humanity slept.

Consoling the Heart of Jesus

The Gospel of Saint Mark presents a more vivid account of the inner suffering that betrayal and death brought to the heart of Jesus. Mark describes that Jesus “began to be greatly distressed and troubled” (Mark 14:33). The Greek of Mark’s Gospel used the terms έκθαμβεῖσθαι and άδημονεῖν which vividly express in Greek the depth of distress and anxiety that came upon Him. The comfort the angel brings is reminiscent of Psalm 42:

“Why are you cast down O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.”

— Psalm 42:12

The coming betrayal by Judas marks the climax of the ministry of Jesus who has left hints throughout the Gospel of Mark:

“And he began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly.”

— Mark 8:31

“The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and when he is killed, after three days he will rise.”

— Mark 9:31

“Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and deliver him to the Gentiles, and they will mock him, and spit on him, and scourge him, and kill him, and after three days he will rise.”

— Mark 10:33-34

So how do we, His disciples by Baptism and by the fidelity we claim, how do we console the heart of Jesus at Gethsemane? For the answer, I am indebted to Father Michael Gaitley, M.I.C. for his profound book, Consoling the Heart of Jesus which was the text for a six-week course offered here by the Marians of the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy.

Like many, I believe I learn the most from Sacred Scripture when the circumstances of my life force me to live it. So picking up this book for the first time, I asked myself, “How can I console Jesus, who is happy in Heaven, while I am stuck in this hellhole called prison?” That’s what Pornchai Moontri called it in these pages in his post, “Imprisoned by Walls, Set Free by Wood.”

Father Gaitley has an answer called “Retroactive Consolation” that comes from the theology of Pope Pius XI and the Dominican theologian, Réginald Marie Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. whom Father Gaitley quotes:

“During his earthly life and particularly while in Gethsemane, Jesus suffered from all future acts of profanation and ingratitude. He knew them in detail with a superior intuition that governed all times… Thus his suffering encompassed the present instant and extended to future centuries. ‘This drop of blood I shed for you.’ So in the Garden of Olives, Jesus suffered for all, and for each of us in particular.”

— Consoling the Heart of Jesus, P. 394

So, if His suffering is projected into the future, how can our consolation of Him at Gethsemane become retroactive into the past? What will awaken us from our sleep in the Garden of Gethsemane? Jesus Himself provides that answer, and it has something to do with our story about Anthony that began this post. It is laid out powerfully in the Gospel of Matthew:

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and care for you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.’”

— Matthew 25:37-40

Now

“Arise. Let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand.”

— Matthew 26:46

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Editor’s Note: Please share this Holy Week post with your contacts on Facebook and other social media. To prepare for a meaningful Holy Week and Easter, you may also like these other posts from along the Way of the Cross at Beyond These Stone Walls :

A Personal Holy Week Retreat at Beyond These Stone Walls

The Chief Priests Answered, ‘We Have No King but Caesar’

Behold the Man, as Pilate Washes His Hands

Simon of Cyrene at Calvary: Compelled to Carry the Cross

Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found

Mary Magdalene: Faith, Courage, and an Empty Tomb