Scripture Notes: Examine Yourselves (2 Corinthians 13)

At the end of his second letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul both warns and commands. There have been problems in the Corinthian Church, sins and rivalries, disunity and liturgical abuse, pride and disdain for truth and goodness. And Paul is determined to correct this. He warns the Corinthians that if he comes to them again and the problems are still active, he will not spare them. He will deal firmly with them because, as a minister of Jesus Christ, he is capable of acting by the power of God, not to condemn them (although this is a risk if they fail to repent) but to bring them to conversion.

But Paul also commands the Corinthians to “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are holding to your faith. Test yourselves.” They need a reality check, and Paul knows all too well that they are the only ones who can truly administer it. They may or may not accept what he says. They may or may not receive the truth from his pen or his lips.  But they absolutely must discern the truth within themselves. They have to look closely at what they really believe and how they really act, not with the idea of excusing themselves or pretending or trying to shove reality in a corner somewhere and ignore it, but with sincerity and truth. 

This is not an easy task. It was not for the Corinthians, nor is it for us. In fact, it can be very painful to learn the truth about ourselves. Yet it is necessary. We need to be humble enough to know and admit that we sin all the time, that we are not yet the people God wants us to be, that we tend to hem and haw, to rationalize, to tell ourselves that we are not really that bad, that we are actually pretty good people overall, and that we do not have much to repent of. But it simply is not true, and if we obey Paul’s command to examine ourselves, and do so in all sincerity, we will see much more clearly. Then we will be able to go to God in prayer and to meet Him in the sacrament of Confession and to receive the grace He wants to give us as He forgives us and strengthens us to grow closer to Him and to obey His will in love.

Scripture Notes: Crucified with Christ (Galatians 2)

“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me.” St. Paul is quite clear in his letter to the Galatians: Christ is everything to him, his whole world, his whole life, the center of his being and his mission. 

In baptism, Paul died with Christ, just like we all do, and he rose with Christ, just like we all do. The water is a symbol of both death and life, and because baptism is a sacrament, it effects what it symbolizes. It makes us a new creation, filled with the divine life that we call sanctifying grace. God loves us so much that He came to die for us. He gave Himself for us when the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity became incarnate and suffered and died on the cross. We enter into that suffering and death but only so that we can enter into the new life of the Resurrection. We no longer live our old sinful lives; rather Christ lives in us. 

Scripture Notes: Thirsting for God (Psalm 143)

“I stretch out my hands to Thee; my soul thirsts for Thee like a parched land. Selah.” Parched. There are times when we all feel parched, dry, exhausted. Life takes its toll and drains us. We have all experienced it. 

So what do we do? We follow the advice of the psalmist in Psalm 143. We stretch out our hands to God. We recognize that at the bottom of our dryness is a thirst for Him. We pray. We rest in Him. We bring our exhaustion and anxiety and set it before him. 

The little word “Selah” that appears at the end of this verse is also key. Although saints and scholars have reflected on and debated about it for centuries, Selah’s original meaning remains a mystery. But since it is part of Sacred Scripture, authored by God, this word is included for a reason. God wants to get our attention and elicit a response. At the very least we are supposed to stop and look up, to focus on God, to turn our hearts to Him. In this case, maybe we can make the psalmist’s words our own in a deep way and add our own prayer to God based on what we are experiencing, even if, perhaps especially if, we feel as dry and parched as the psalmist.

Scripture Notes: Remember My Chains (Colossians 4)

At the end of his Letter to the Colossians, St. Paul tells his audience, “Remember my chains.” He is indeed in prison. His preaching of the Gospel has brought him to the attention of the Romans, who are more than suspicious of anyone who dares to proclaim a king and a lord other than Caesar, and that is exactly what Paul insists upon. Jesus Christ is King and Lord. 

Paul’s reminder to the Colossians comes from his desire for them to realize that they will face persecution for their Christian faith, but he also wants them to support each other in this and in all trials. We must remember each other’s chains. We all have struggles. We all have chains that bind us, fears, worries, doubts, temptations, sins, relationship issues, health problems, emotional difficulties. Most of the time we cannot see these in other people, and sometimes we do not even fully recognize them in ourselves. 

So we should be mindful that when people act strangely or seem unfriendly or detached, they might be feeling their own chains tightening around them. We may not approve of their behavior, but we should at least remember their chains, for we have our own chains that sometimes affect how we respond to others. So we must always recall and apply St. Paul’s admonition, “Remember my chains.”

Scripture Notes: The Truth (John 4)

Jesus demands nothing less than the full truth from us. After speaking for a while to the woman at the well in Samaria, he tells her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” Perhaps there is a pause as the woman thinks about what she will say next. She decides on the truth: “I have no husband.” This must have been so difficult to say. This woman knows that she is sinning by living with a man to whom she is not married. Maybe she has been trying to convince herself that he really is her husband on some level, or maybe she has tried to push the nagging internal accusation of her sin out of the way.

But here before Jesus, the One Who gives the living water that this woman now desires (even though she does not fully understand what it means), she determines to come clean, both to Jesus and to herself. She speaks the truth. 

This is what Jesus is looking for, and He calmly acknowledges it. He tells her that she is right in what she has said, that she has had five husbands and the one she has now is not her husband. She has spoken truly. Notice that Jesus does not accuse her or scold her or berate her. He simply speaks truth back, getting everything out in the open so that it can be seen and dealt with and retired. A bad situation must be acknowledged before it can be handled, and that is what Jesus does here. Now that the woman has spoken truth, He can take her further and lead her through that truth to a better way of life. 

We do not know what happens to this woman after her encounter with Jesus. We do know that it changes her life, for she comes to believe in Him not just as a prophet or a holy man but as the Messiah, and she hurries to tell others about Him. We can imagine and hope that she turns from her sinful ways and embraces the truth not just in words but in life, for that, too, is what Jesus calls all of us to do: speak and live the truth.

Scripture Notes: Cleansing the Temple (John 2)

When Jesus entered the Jerusalem Temple’s Court of the Gentiles that day, He was greeted by chaos. The place looked, sounded, and smelled like a cross between a barnyard, a marketplace, and a bank. Salesmen appealed to potential worshipers to buy animals for sacrifice. Money-changers offered to swap out currency that could not be used in the Temple area with acceptable coins, for a fee, of course.  The Temple of God had become just another place for business transactions, buying and selling, and probably more than a bit of cheating.

This was not at all what was supposed to be. Since the Gentiles could go no farther into the Temple, this courtyard was designed as a place where they could pray and worship God. But how could anyone pray with all this racket? The world had crept in and taken over, and that was not all right. 

So Jesus did something about it, something quite dramatic, in fact. He made a whip out of cords, and He drove the animal sellers and the money-changers right out of the Temple area. He knocked over tables, sending coins flying in every direction. He told them to stop making His Father’s house a marketplace. A different kind of chaos erupted as animals dashed about with their owners chasing them, money-changers leaped after their escaping coins, and Jesus laid into all of them about what was and was not right behavior in the very House of God.

This is not an image of Jesus that the modern world is comfortable with. We want to tame Him, to make sure that He is kind and gentle, to see to it that He suits our sensibilities. Jesus is pure love, through and through, but love is often stern and even rather scary, for it wills the good of the other and does what it must to make that good happen. And sometimes what is good for us is the last thing we want, so love does not seem very loving. 

But the fact is that what Jesus did in the Temple area was all about love. Something had gone drastically wrong, and it needed to be corrected. Jesus came and saw and acted. His actions may seem harsh to us, but they were exactly what He needed to do to show love at that moment. What was going on in the Temple was not good, it was not loving toward God or toward other people, so it had to be stopped.

This incident should make us reflect on how we behave in God’s house, in church. Do we act with reverence to God and respect to others by doing our part to maintain a quiet, prayerful atmosphere? Do we remember that we are in the very presence of God and respond accordingly? Food for thought...

Scripture Notes: The Open Door (Revelation 3)

In Revelation 3, Jesus has a message for the Church in Philadelphia (in Asia Minor, modern Turkey). He tells these faithful Christians that He has set an open door before them, a door that no one can shut. They do not have much power, He recognizes, yet they have kept His Word and refused to deny His Name. Even in the face of temptation and persecution, they have remained faithful. They have endured with patience, so now Jesus will guard them and keep them in the “hour of trial” that is coming upon the world. He loves them, He assures them. And when He comes (and that will be soon), they must hold fast to the crown of life that He has given them. 

If they do this, they will conquer, and Jesus will make them a “pillar in the temple” of God. In other words, He will make them firm and secure, reaching up to God and upholding others. Jesus will also write the Father’s name and His own name upon them. They will belong to God. They will be His forever and ever. They will enter through that open door, not on their own strength but by the power of God’s grace working in and through them.

What Jesus tells the Church in Philadelphia He also tells us. We, too, face an open door, but we can turn away from it. We, too, are weak and lack power, but God gives us He strength. We, too, are called to keep His word and remain faithful. We, too, must practice patient endurance. We, too, have to prepare for the hour of trial and face it assured that God loves us and wants to save us. We, too, must trust in His gifts and strive to receive the wonderful things He longs to give us. Then we, too, will one day walk through the open door of God’s love and enter into an eternity of intimacy with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.