Third Sunday after Epiphany

Thoughts for the Week - Fr. R. Taouk 
25th January 2015

Our Lord and His Contenders by Rev. Fr. Sertillanges

Jesus had to overthrow the old Jewish religion. Imbued as we are with Christian principles which have governed the human mind for centuries past, we cannot fathom what novelties these very principles must have seemed in the days when Jesus promulgated them on the Lake of Galilee.

The crime of the Jews was, not that they found the doctrine of Jesus strange, or that they were scandalized by it; it was that they would not acknowledge our Saviour's titles and right to teach, and that they persisted in condemning Him as an impostor and a seducer of the people. They always had some pretext for opposing Him, and they ever managed to colour their opposition with a semblance of truth. We well know in what emphatic terms Jesus proposed His doctrine: 'Moses said unto you, Do this; I say, Do that. Moses commanded this; I command that. Think of it! To speak thus to the Jews. To stand up against Moses and reform his laws. It was sacrilege, it was treason; because to the Jews, Moses was people and religion and law; no one could touch Moses without, at one and the same time, overturning all these. Jesus announced the ruin of the Temple, the Temple so dear to them all, which was in truth the home and centre of the people, the religion and the law. He attacked and condemned the priests, who were the leaders of the people, and taught religion and the law.

He spoke kindly to the Gentiles, and announced their incorporation in His Church. The Jewish exclusiveness was fifteen centuries old, and had been established by God Himself; and if now Jesus would have them believe that the time for it was past, and that in the days to come there must be no distinction between Jew or pagan, but that all humanity must profess one creed, then truly His was a doctrine hard to believe, and their cold and narrow hearts would not open to it. And then to this hardness and narrowness the priests and rulers in Jerusalem added passion, hypocrisy, and vice. These were the men whom Jesus opposed. We may ask how it was that Jesus, gentleness itself, appeared so severe to the priests and doctors of the law. This is a question which often confronts us, and it lays bare a very common delusion.

There are some who would always like to picture to themselves Jesus as the meek Lamb of God; the One who was meek and humble of heart; the Man who spoke sweet parables and gave gentle discourses; the fair Boy so often painted in pious pictures, with sunny locks and soft white hands, mild even to effeminacy. No, Jesus Christ was not at all times like that. He was meek and humble of heart above all, but when occasion arose He was terrible also. He shows us God in every form. God is our Father, and so tenderly does He love us that even the very hairs of our head are numbered; but, also, great as is His mercy towards the repentant sinner, and deep as is His compassion for His weakest child, so great and so deep is also His anger against the proud and the false of heart.