Had Thursday and Friday not been a Solemnity and a Feast day, respectively, with prescribed readings that superseded the normal readings for those days, we would have concluded our readings from the First Letter of Peter. We will resume with the Second Letter of Peter on Monday. Today we have a solitary reading taken from the Letter of Jude (Jude 17:20‑25). Jude is a very short letter, consisting of just one chapter of 25 verses. Our reading comes from the latter part of the letter. In general, the letter is a stern warning against false teachers who are doing untold harm to the community.
The first piece of advice is to take heed of the prophetic teachings of the Apostles. The coming of godless heretics should not take believers by surprise, for it had been predicted by the apostles.
Addressing them as “Beloved”, in contrast to the ungodly false teachers about whom this letter speaks at length, Jude gives them some exhortations on how to cope with these threats to their faith. He urges them to pray under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Secondly, they are to remember that they live in the love of God. God keeps believers in his love and enables them to keep themselves in his love. As Paul had said: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor heights, nor depths, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)
As long as they remain open to that love, the Christians will, “… look forward to the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.” At the same time, those who are confused by the false teachers need to have their thinking corrected, while others need to be snatched from imminent destruction and loss: “have mercy on some who are wavering; save others by snatching them out of the fire; and have mercy on still others with fear, hating even the tunic defiled by their bodies.”
St. Jude cautions that in showing mercy and compassion to those who stray, we must be cautioned against being trapped ourselves by the allurement of their false teaching. The wicked are pictured as so corrupt that even their garments are polluted by their sinful nature.
The reading ends with a magnificent doxology, one of the finest in the whole of the New Testament: “Now to him who is able to keep you from falling and to make you stand without blemish in the presence of his glory with rejoicing, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.”
Every age in the Church, not least our own, people have gone around with all kinds of strange and new messages. There are always those who, in Paul’s words, have “ears tickled” for the latest novelty. Some of these novelties can be highly destructive, as we have seen in the case of some of the more outlandish sects where many people, including children, unnecessarily lost their lives, or where there was indulgence in behavior that was either bizarre or humanly degrading and abusive.
The Christian churches, including the Catholic Church, have their faults and need to continue to learn where the Truth is, but there is a solid foundation in the Word of God that comes to us through Jesus that we abandon at our peril.
In our Gospel reading (Mark 11:27-33) Jesus has now come to Jerusalem. This is the last phase of his public life. Hostility is building up against him. In today’s reading, while walking in the Temple area, he is confronted by a group of Jewish leaders, chief priests, scribes and elders. These are the people who formed the Sanhedrin, the supreme council, which will later condemn him to death. They ask: “By what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you this authority to do them?”
The implication is that he is not doing it on their authority, which they regard as supreme. In his usual manner, Jesus counters with another question. He asks them if the work of John the Baptist was of human or divine origin.
They immediately realize that answering Jesus’ question raises a serious dilemma. If they were to say John’s baptism was from God, then it could be asked why they did not take part in it (as large numbers of the ordinary people did – and as Jesus himself did). The Gospel had described the leaders as simply coming to observe John, as outsiders and judges.
On the other hand, if they were to say they considered John’s baptism as merely a human thing, then it would offend all those people who had the highest respect for John and saw in him a prophet of God.
Weakly Jesus’ questioners reply: “We do not know.” A strange and not very convincing reply from the spiritual leaders of the people! Because these leaders did not answer Jesus’ question, he then refuses to answer the question they asked of him.
But Jesus’ case was similar to that of John. The people, who had heard Jesus speak (“Never has anyone spoken like this!”) and saw his cures (“God has visited his people”), had no doubts whatever about the source of Jesus’ authority: “They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.” (Mark 1:22)
The leaders’ own question was a clear indication of their prejudice and willful blindness in the face of overwhelming evidence.
We too, can have a similar blindness. We can refuse to see the presence and activity of God in situations where we do not want to see it, in people where we do not want to see it. But God can use any person, any experience, good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, to communicate with us.
May God Bless You and Grant You His Peace!