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
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