SATURDAY, JUNE 1ST, 2013. 8TH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

SIRACH 51: 12cd-20/ MARK 11:27-33

My dear friends, today’s gospel presents to us a sacred drama between Jesus and the religious leaders. They wanted to trap Jesus with the question they placed before him. With their authority and arrogance, they asked Jesus “on whose authority do you act like this? Sometimes my dear friends, we too take on this attitude of the chief priests and the teachers of the law. People then and now put way too much importance on meeting the qualifications of men for religious authority and not nearly enough on meeting God's qualifications. Jesus was too ordinary in the eyes of the chief priests and teacher’s of the law that he couldn’t have gotten his authority from God. Perhaps, he should have appeared majestic and prestigious. We too are likely to give consideration to a theologian who graduated from Harvard Divinity School as being more worth listening to than a preacher who has studied and believed the Scriptures. If we are like this, then we would fit well into this group of leaders who attacked Jesus in our gospel reading today. However, as he always does, Jesus outsmarts them again. 

Our first reading speaks about how a person yearns for wisdom. And Jesus displays the abundance of this wisdom in his response to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. Jesus throws back another question to them and submits that his response to their initial question would only be determined by their response to the one he asked. He therefore asked them; “was John’s ministry and baptism from God?” If they agreed to the fact that John’s baptism was from God, they would be castigated for not accepting John. If on the other hand they undermine it, they are likely to attract the wrath of the people. For they believed John was a prophet from God. As such, with their own guns, they shot themselves in the leg. Upon realization of the type of dilemma they are in, they became silent. A silence which made Jesus’ victory lucid, and attests to the fact that Jesus’ authority was divine. Let us therefore pray for the direction of the Holy Spirit and openly sought wisdom as the first reading encouraged us to.
HAPPY NEW MONTH TO YOU ALL !!!