March 24, 2025
Monday of the Third Week of Lent
Lectionary: 237
Reading 1
Naaman, the army commander of the king of Aram,
was highly esteemed and respected by his master,
for through him the LORD had brought victory to Aram.
But valiant as he was, the man was a leper.
Now the Arameans had captured in a raid on the land of Israel
a little girl, who became the servant of Naaman’s wife.
“If only my master would present himself to the prophet in Samaria,”
she said to her mistress, “he would cure him of his leprosy.”
Naaman went and told his lord
just what the slave girl from the land of Israel had said.
“Go,” said the king of Aram.
“I will send along a letter to the king of Israel.”
So Naaman set out, taking along ten silver talents,
six thousand gold pieces, and ten festal garments.
To the king of Israel he brought the letter, which read:
“With this letter I am sending my servant Naaman to you,
that you may cure him of his leprosy.”
When he read the letter,
the king of Israel tore his garments and exclaimed:
“Am I a god with power over life and death,
that this man should send someone to me to be cured of leprosy?
Take note! You can see he is only looking for a quarrel with me!”
When Elisha, the man of God,
heard that the king of Israel had torn his garments,
he sent word to the king:
“Why have you torn your garments?
Let him come to me and find out
that there is a prophet in Israel.”
Naaman came with his horses and chariots
and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house.
The prophet sent him the message:
“Go and wash seven times in the Jordan,
and your flesh will heal, and you will be clean.”
But Naaman went away angry, 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.
Are not the rivers of Damascus, the Abana and the Pharpar,
better than all the waters of Israel?
Could I not wash in them and be cleansed?”
With this, he turned about in anger and left.
But his servants came up and reasoned with him.
“My father,” they said,
“if the prophet had told you to do something extraordinary,
would you not have done it?
All the more now, since he said to you,
‘Wash and be clean,’ should you do as he said.”
So Naaman went down and plunged into the Jordan seven times
at the word of the man of God.
His flesh became again like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.
He returned with his whole retinue to the man of God.
On his arrival he stood before him and said,
“Now I know that there is no God in all the earth,
except in Israel.”
Responsorial Psalm
R. (see 42:3) Athirst is my soul for the living God.
When shall I go and behold the face of God?
As the hind longs for the running waters,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
R. Athirst is my soul for the living God.
When shall I go and behold the face of God?
Athirst is my soul for God, the living God.
When shall I go and behold the face of God?
R. Athirst is my soul for the living God.
When shall I go and behold the face of God?
Send forth your light and your fidelity;
they shall lead me on
And bring me to your holy mountain,
to your dwelling-place.
R. Athirst is my soul for the living God.
When shall I go and behold the face of God?
Then will I go in to the altar of God,
the God of my gladness and joy;
Then will I give you thanks upon the harp,
O God, my God!
R. Athirst is my soul for the living God.
When shall I go and behold the face of God?
Verse Before the Gospel
I hope in the LORD, I trust in his word;
with him there is kindness and plenteous redemption.
Gospel
Jesus said to the people in the synagogue at Nazareth:
“Amen, I say to you,
no prophet is accepted in his own native place.
Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel
in the days of Elijah
when the sky was closed for three and a half years
and a severe famine spread over the entire land.
It was to none of these that Elijah was sent,
but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon.
Again, there were many lepers in Israel
during the time of Elisha the prophet;
yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”
When the people in the synagogue heard this,
they were all filled with fury.
They rose up, drove him out of the town,
and led him to the brow of the hill
on which their town had been built,
to hurl him down headlong.
But he passed through the midst of them and went away.
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/032425.cfm
Commentary on 2
Kings 5:1-15
The central character in today’s First Reading is Naaman, an
army commander from Syria under the king of Aram, probably Ben-Hadad II. He was
held in high esteem by his king because of military victories, which the Bible
attributes to the power of Yahweh. In the writer’s view, victory is to be
attributed to the God of Israel, who is seen as the ruler and controller of the
fate of all nations, and not just that of Israel.
Now, Naaman was a ‘leper’. The New Jerusalem Bible calls
his condition a “virulent skin disease” because, whatever it was, it did not
seem to exclude Naaman from coming in close contact with people. In ancient
times, real leprosy was, tragically for the victim, often confused with other
chronic skin diseases.
Although Israel had concluded a peace treaty with the
Aramaeans during the reign of King Ahab, there were still minor skirmishes on
the borders between the two states for control of a place called Ramoth Gilead.
These followed a battle in which King Ahab had been killed. It was as a result
of one of these skirmishes that a young Israelite girl was taken captive. She
would prove the link in bringing healing to Naaman.
We could well stop to reflect for a few moments on this
young girl. Although a simple slave, she played a crucial role in the healing
and, together with the austere prophet Elisha, offered a startling contrast to
the ostentatious wealth of Naaman—wealth which had no role to play in his being
restored to health.
She knew about the prophet Elisha, who was living in Samaria
and suggested that her master should go to him for healing. The king,
Ben-Hadad, gave his full approval for Naaman to go to Samaria and see Elisha
and promised to write a letter of introduction to King Joram of Israel. The
Syrian king obviously believed that Elisha was subject to Joram and that the
prophet’s services could only be bought with a generous gift—hence the 10
talents of silver (a huge amount of money), 6,000 shekels of gold and the 10
festal robes which Naaman brought with him. He thought that God’s gift of
healing could only be bought with money.
On the other hand, King Joram is horrified by this and rends
his clothes in despair. His own faith in God’s healing power was so weak that
he thought that Ben-Hadad was simply looking for a pretext for war by asking
the obviously impossible—the cure of a leper. But when Elisha hears of it, he
scolds the king for his failure to consult his prophet.
Naaman now arrives in all the glory of someone in his
exalted position with horses and chariots. He will overawe the prophet by his
presence, power and show of wealth. He must then have been somewhat surprised
to be told by the prophet what he must do. And what he had to do was to bathe
seven times in the River Jordan. Elisha clearly indicates that the healing
power comes from the power of the God of Israel, but only if the general does
what he is told by the prophet.
The prophet himself was not strictly speaking a healer.
Ritual washings were practiced among the Eastern religions as a purification
rite, and the number seven was generally known as a symbol of completeness.
Naaman was to wash in the muddy waters of the Jordan River, showing that there
was no natural connection between the washing and the desired healing. Perhaps
it was also being suggested that one needed to pass through the Jordan, as
Israel had done (see Jos 3—4), in order to obtain healing from the God of
Israel. Much later, Jesus would also pass through the same waters of the Jordan
and be filled with the Spirit of his Father.
Naaman finds this an affront to his dignity. He expected the
prophet to come out to him, wave his hand magically over the afflicted spots
and effect an immediate cure. Instead, he has to do what he is told by someone
he regards as a foreign underling. And what is worse, he is asked to bathe in
the Jordan. What was wrong with the rivers that flowed through Damascus—the
Abana and Pharpar? The Abana was called the ‘Golden River’ by the Greeks and is
usually identified with the Barada River today, which rises in the Anti-Lebanon
Mountains and flows through the city of Damascus. The Pharpar River flows
eastwards from Mount Hermon, just to the south of Damascus. In fact, the waters
of these rivers were hygienically far superior to the muddy waters of the
Jordan. But that was precisely the point—it was not the water which brought the
healing.
Deeply insulted, Naaman turns round to go home. But his
servants plead with him. After all, if Naaman had been asked to do something
difficult, he would have done so. Why not obey the prophet when he asks
something so easy? Naaman puts his pride behind him, goes to the river seven
times and emerges with his skin like that of a new-born child. He is both
physically and spiritually reborn.
However, we need to be aware that there is a deeper meaning
to the story. Naaman, the Gentile submitting to the command of Yahweh through
his prophet, is put forward as a contrast to a disobedient Israel, which still
wavered in its divided allegiance to Yahweh and to Baal. God’s blessings are
only to be found in total submission to his will and his commands. In today’s
Gospel, Jesus will bring up this point himself, much to the anger of the Jews
to whom he was speaking.
The clear lesson of the story is given in the last sentence
when, after being cured, Naaman goes back in gratitude to Elisha and says:
Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except
in Israel…
A minor lesson for all of us arises from Naaman’s
indignation at being told to bathe seven times in the river Jordan. Wisdom
comes from the slaves in his household who said to their master:
…if the prophet had commanded you to do something
difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you
was, ‘Wash, and be clean’?
How often do we not see God coming into our lives because of
our prejudices and blind spots?
It must be understood from this passage that the true healer
is not Elisha, nor the muddy waters of the Jordan river, but God himself. And
the healing is the result, not of the washing in the river, but in Naaman’s
eventual submission and obedience to God’s spokesman.
It was exactly the lack of this attitude on the part of the
people of Nazareth (spoken of in today’s Gospel) that prevented Jesus from
healing the people of his own town.
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Commentary on Luke
4:24-30
This Gospel, and the Gospel story of the Samaritan woman
(John 4:1-42), are both linked by the story told in today’s First Reading about
Naaman, a Syrian general, who was miraculously cured by Elisha the prophet.
The Gospel is the second part of the scene in the synagogue
in Nazareth, where Jesus officially announces his mission as Messiah, Saviour
and Liberator. The first reaction was one of amazement that Jesus, their
townsman, could speak with such power:
All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious
words that came from his mouth. (Luke 4:22)
There was amazement, but no real faith in him. Familiarity
had blinded them to his true identity, and they reject him. For them he is just
‘Joe the carpenter’s boy’.
Jesus says he is not surprised by this reception:
Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown.
He then goes on to give two examples taken from the lives of
two well-known Old Testament prophets. They are not quite examples of prophets
not being received by their own people, but rather of prophets reaching out to
other peoples, non-believers.
When there was a great famine among the Israelites, it was a
Sidonian widow who was helped by Elijah. Sidon was the place where Jesus would
heal a gentile woman’s daughter. There were many leprous people in Israel, says
Jesus, but Elisha was sent to cure Naaman the Syrian, another Gentile.
Jesus’ hearers are incensed by what appear to them arrogant
and insulting words. In their minds, they were not rejecting a prophet but an
impostor. They find his remarks about Elijah and Elisha highly objectionable.
The references to Elijah and Elisha help to emphasise Luke’s
image of Jesus as a prophet like those who went before him. They also lay the
foundation for the future mission of the Apostle to the Gentiles.
We too can very easily fail to recognise the voice of God in
certain people who in fact—whether they are aware of it or not—are bringing a
message from him. Like the people of Nazareth, we can think we know them too
well to have to listen to them. We feel it would be inconceivable that God
could speak to us through such people. Fair warning that this probably happens
most of all with people we see every day during our lives.
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https://livingspace.sacredspace.ie/l1032g/
Monday, March 24, 2025
Season of Lent
Opening Prayer
Just and holy God, our loving Father,
You offered us Your hand in
friendship and You sent us Your Son Jesus to go with us on the road of
obedience and loyalty.
God, we often hurt this friendship; we act
as if we were not Your sons and daughters. See the look of shame on our faces.
Forgive us, for we count on You. Accept our thanks for continuing to take us as
we are and loving us notwithstanding our sins.
We ask You this through Christ our Lord.
Gospel Reading - Luke 4: 24-30
Jesus said to the people in the synagogue
at Nazareth: “Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native
place. Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of
Elijah when the sky was closed for three and a half years and a severe famine
spread over the entire land. It was to none of these that Elijah was sent, but
only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon. Again, there were many
lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was
cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” When the people in the synagogue heard
this, they were all filled with fury. They rose up, drove him out of the town,
and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl
him down headlong. But he passed through the midst of them and went away.
Reflection
Today’s Gospel (Lk 4: 24-30) forms part of
a larger part (Lk 4: 14-32). Jesus had presented His program in the synagogue
of Nazareth, using a text from Isaiah which spoke about the poor, the
prisoners, the blind and the oppressed (Is 61: 12) and which mirrored the
situation of the people of Galilee at the time of Jesus.
In the name of God, Jesus takes a stand
and defines His mission: to proclaim the Good News to the poor, to proclaim
release to prisoners, to give back sight to the blind, to restore liberty to the
oppressed. After finishing the reading, He updates the text and says, “Today
this text is being fulfilled even while you are listening!” (Lk 4: 21). All
those present were astonished (Lk 4: 16, 22b). But immediately after there was
a reaction to discredit. The people in the synagogue were scandalized and did
not want to know anything about Jesus.
They said, “Is He not the son of Joseph?” (Lk 4: 22b). Why
were they scandalized?
What is the reason for this [unexpected] reaction?
Because Jesus quoted the text from
Isaiah only to the part that says, “to proclaim a year of favor from the Lord,”
and He omits the end of the sentence, which says, “to proclaim a day of
vengeance for our God” (Is 61: 2). The people of
Nazareth remained surprised because
Jesus omitted the phrase on vengeance.
They wanted the Good News of the
liberation of the oppressed to be an action of vengeance on the part of God
against the oppressors. In this case the coming of the Kingdom would be only a
superficial social change, and not a change or conversion of the system. Jesus
does not accept this way of thinking. His experience of God the Father helps
Him to understand better the significance of the prophecies. He takes away the
vengeance. The people of Nazareth do not accept that proposal, and the
authority of Jesus begins to diminish: “Is He not Joseph’s son?”
•
Luke 4: 24: No prophet is ever accepted in his
own country. Jesus answers, “No prophet is ever accepted in his own country!”
In fact, they did not accept the new image of God which Jesus communicated to
them through this new and freer interpretation of Isaiah. The message of the
God of Jesus went beyond the limits of the Jewish people and opened itself to
accept the excluded and all humanity.
•
Luke 4: 25-27: Two stories of the Old Testament.
In order to help the community to get beyond the scandal and to understand the
universality of God, Jesus uses two well known stories of the Old Testament:
one of Elijah and the other one of Elisha. Through these stories He criticized
the people of Nazareth who were so closed up in themselves. Elijah was sent to
the foreign widow of Zarephah (1 Kg 17: 7-16). Elisha was sent to take care of
Naaman of Syria (2 Kg 5: 14). The people of Nazareth felt threatened by this.
Paul makes a similar statement with similar results too (Acts 22: 21)
•
Luke 4: 28-30: They intended to throw Him off
the cliff, but He passed straight through the crowd and walked away. What Jesus
said did not calm the people down. On the contrary! The use of these two
biblical passages caused them to become
more angry. The community of Nazareth reached the point of wanting to kill
Jesus. And thus, at the moment in which He presented His plan to accept the
excluded, Jesus Himself was excluded! But He remained calm! The anger of the others
did not make Him change His mind. In this way, Luke indicates that it is
difficult to overcome the mentality of privilege which is closed up in itself.
And he showed that the polemic attitude of the gentiles had already existed in
the time of Jesus. Jesus had the same difficulty which Luke had with the Hebrew
community in his time.
Personal Questions
•
How do I carry on the gift of the Good News in
the world today?
•
Who are the excluded whom we should accept more
warmly in our community?
•
Does taking on poverty, oppression, or blindness
(in all its forms) start on a personal level and spread to my community, or do
I wait for the community to act before taking personal action?
Concluding Prayer
My whole being yearns and pines for Yahweh's courts; My heart
and my body cry out for joy to the living God. (Ps 84: 2)
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