Saturday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time Year 2 2024

St Justin Martyr

Title

Focusing on Loving the Trinity

Outline

Look at our gospel today

Jesus, probably with a group of disciples around him, is in the Temple and leaders in two Jewish parties, those of the Sadducees (chief priests) and those of the Pharisees (scribes and perhaps elders) confront him. “By what authority are you doing these things? Or who gave you this authority to do them?”

Jesus asks them a question in return, “Was John’s baptism of heavenly or of human origin?” They are stuck, for saying “heavenly” would reveal hypocrisy in their not having been baptised by John and “human” would put them in danger with the people.

Now in John one has someone more acceptable to these leaders in that he was super kosher in eating and donned the traditional prophetic dress. But his message was about the kingdom and the coming king, while he did not use the means of this world to bring him. Yet not to see God, to see heavenly origin, in John was not to see it in Jesus.

Jesus was different from John in that he did not follow strictly the rules of kashrut as the Pharisees understood them nor did he wear prophetic “clericals,” but he demonstrated divine power and had cleansed, that is, led a prophetic demonstration in the Temple that briefly stopped its functioning. So he was the harder to grasp.

For our purposes note how Jesus never splits from John nor John from Jesus, even in Mark, despite their different styles and methods. There is one kingdom and one king that both announced. And those leaders who confronted Jesus surely knew that Jesus seemed to arise out of the Baptist movement, yet Jesus was not a splinter group. They were one.

Now look at Jude

Jude may be the most disliked book in the New Testament, but it is more important than we often realize.

The apostles had predicted that “in the last times,” that is in this age of the Church Militant, there would be “scoffers” who follow “their own ungodly passions” in the Church. So they, as Clement of Alexandria said, “separate believers from one another” under the influence of their own distorted belief, for, as Augustine says, “The enemy of unity has no share in God’s love” and is therefore devoid of the Spirit. Cyril of Alexandria applies this to the Nestorians, who divide even Christ himself. Notice the constant theme of division in both text and commentator.

But having seen that turn your eyes from division back to God. “build yourselves up in your most holy faith; pray in the holy Spirit.” “Keep yourselves in the love of God and wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.” Loving God and setting our hope on him is central.

But since God is love we must always love our the one caught in a division: “On those who waver, have mercy; save others by snatching them out of the fire; on others have mercy with fear.” In other words, by Spirit-inspired love and Spirit-informed reason bring them back; be merciful in this way.

Then, turning back to God, Jude promises them protection: “To the one who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you unblemished and exultant, in the presence of his glory, to the only God, our savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord be glory, majesty, power, and authority from ages past, now, and for ages to come.” God will protect you.

So Sisters, that is our calling

As with the Jewish leaders who at root divide Jesus from John but in the end cannot see God in either, the powers of these last days will seek to divine the Church, divide the Church as a whole, divide national expressions of the Church, divide dioceses, divide orders from the church or internally, always divide.

Our duty is first to focus on our Lord, on growing in the faith, on being filled with his love, on hoping in Jesus.

But having done that we do not reject those who have left but reach out to them to draw them back, always empowered by the love of God.

Those are our priorities; may we keep to them.