MY THOUGHTS ARE NOT YOUR THOUGHTS, NOR ARE YOUR WAYS MY WAYS

My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. I chose this quote from Isaiah 55, 8 because it sheds a light on today’s bible readings (2 Kgs 5:1-15 and Lk 4:24-30)  and will help me in my reflection. 

There is this Naaman, a Syrian and an army commander. He was highly esteemed and he was valiant, but he was a leper. A little girl, a servant of the leper’s wife, spoke about a prophet who could cure her master. Naaman obtained permission to seek the prophet, but when he reached Elisha’s house, the prophet did not come out to meet him, but sent a message to the leper and told him to go and wash himself seven times in the River Jordan. Naaman was angry and went away saying: “I thought that he would surely come out and stand there to invoke the Lord his God, and would move his hand over the spot, and thus cure the leprosy.” His servants convinced him that if the prophet had asked him to do something extraordinary he would have done it and he went to the river, washed and he was cured.

Jesus mentioned this healing in today’s gospel as one of two examples of how “no prophet is accepted in his own native place”.  The people in the synagogue of Nazareth were angry at Christ’s words and drove him out of town in order to kill him. “But he passed through the midst of them and went away”.

This last sentence caught my attention when I was meditating on today’s readings and, somehow, it got attached to Naaman’s anger at not being well received by the prophet. “I thought” he said “that he would invoke the Lord, touch me and cure me!”

A couple of days ago I read a meditation about Judas. The writer asked what went sour in this disciple’s relationship with the Christ that lead him betray his lord. I imagined that perhaps nothing went sour in Judas’ relationship with Jesus. Maybe, only maybe, that Judas thought of a manner to make some easy money. He did not share his plan with Jesus, and his plan became a tragedy.

I am not trying to explain Judas’s behaviour. But it is not difficult to imagine that having seen Jesus pass through the midst of those who wanted to make him king or to kill him he thought that Jesus could easily do it the third time. His plan was to hand his Lord to his enemies and get the thirty pieces of silver. Jesus would pass through and not let himself be arrested. Judas could remain with the money for it was not his fault that Jesus was not arrested. Judas could have thought this an easy way to earn money.

When he saw that Jesus let himself be arrested by the mob, Judas might have said: “I thought that Jesus would pass unharmed through the angry crowd. He did it before, why didn’t he do it now?”

Judas did not consult Jesus about his plan and Jesus did not accept to play his part in the plot. Matthew tells us that when Judas “saw that Jesus was condemned, he repented” (Mt 27, 3). His repentance, though, was to no avail for the disciple did not break down and weep bitterly as Peter did. Judas broke down, yes, and killed himself! Surely he thought that his sin was “greater than God’s mercy” as God explained to Catherine of Siena. “The despair of Judas” He told her, “displeased Me more, and was more grave to My Son than was his betrayal of Him. So that they are reproved of this false judgment, which is to have held their sin to be greater than My mercy, and, on that account, are they punished with the devils, and eternally tortured with them“ (Dialogue 37).

Of course, this story is the fruit of my imagination! However it makes me think of the many Judas of our days who think up ways to make easy money by appropriating themselves of other people’s lives. Many might think that slavery was abolished. It never was, except on paper and in cases where it was in the interest of the powerful who found it cheaper to employ free people and migrants, than to keep slaves! Every day we learn of people being kidnapped in view of ransom money. Human trafficking is daily on the news and we learn of the many that drown in the Mediterranean when trying to reach Europe in inhuman conditions.

Can these people convert? Yes, of course they can for God’s mercy is infinitely greater than their malice. However and unfortunately, it seems that few take Peter’s example and repent and cry bitterly for their sins, whereas many choose Judas’s way that leads them to their own destruction.

Happy are those who embrace God’s ways, meditate on his thoughts and work hard to free people from all sorts of slavery, even that of those who want to make easy money by betraying their fellow human beings.

Delivered on March 9, 2015