Hi everyone, welcome back to the Daily Gospel Exegesis podcast.
This is going to be a bonus episode where we respond to some
listener questions that have been sent in.
Thank you so much for sending in your questions.
I always want to do my best to answer your questions as best I
can, obviously keeping in mind that sometimes I'm drawing on
the opinions of particular scholars.
And as with most things in Catholic biblical teaching,
there's typically not an official Catholic teaching on
particular Bible verses. But there are some questions
that we can get answers to. And there have been lots of
questions sent through in the last few months.
So we'll get to as many as we can.
So firstly, we have a question from Dale.
He says, hi, I've been listening to your daily gospel exegesis
and I continue to learn so much from it.
Thank you. And Dale has a question here
about Mary's role in Mark 321. So that is the incident where
Jesus family comes to see Jesus while he's preaching, and
they're standing outside the house.
And the text of Mark 321 says that his mother is there,
including his brothers and sisters and mother, and they
think he's out of his mind. So Dale's question is, I find it
hard to believe that Mary could be grouped in with those who
were thinking Jesus was out of his mind.
Is this your perspective or is it that Mary just did not
understand what Jesus was doing? Similar to the finding in the
Temple, perhaps I'm in the group who thinks that Mary was along
for the ride and perhaps to serve as a calming mediator
between those relatives of Jesus who were thinking Jesus to be
out of his mind. I viewed this most especially in
light of Mary's role at the wedding feast of Cana and
because of the church's high regard of Mary.
And she's not specifically mentioned in the relatives.
So I think you've got a good intuition here, Dale.
The church doesn't officially have a teaching on this, but it
does seem highly unlikely that Mary would think Jesus is out of
his mind given remember everything that's happened to
Mary by this point that Angel Gabriel has already told her
that he's going to be the Son of God.
One of the things I mentioned in my commentary in that episode is
Mary doesn't have full knowledge about how Jesus ministry is
going to look. At least that seems to be the
case. She's doesn't know everything
about it. So there is a possibility that
Jesus is doing a lot of things that are quite unexpected and
it's possible that she's quite worried about him.
So maybe that's the reason she comes along.
Whereas Jesus brothers and sisters literally think he's out
of his mind. Mary is coming along because she
is worried about him and she wasn't expecting him to do the
things that he's doing that did not fit the model of Messiah
that she and most other Jews had.
That's one possibility. You could take an even more
conservative position, which is that Mary didn't have any
concerns about Jesus. She was just being coming along
for the ride because she travelled with these brothers
and sisters of Jesus. Or perhaps she was going to sort
of act as a mediator, not necessarily approving of what
they're doing, but actually doing the opposite where she's
trying to stop them. These are all different
possibilities. The text doesn't tell us.
Dale does mention here at the end of his question, the
Ignatius Study Bible seems to distance Mary from this group of
relatives by translating the word to be friends instead of
relatives. But I'm concerned with the
accuracy of this translation. What do you think?
I have heard that translation before where they say that it's
Jesus friends who are outside who are worried about him.
I don't think that's likely though, because think about what
Jesus goes on to say in that passage.
He goes on to say who are my real brothers and sisters and
mother? And then he talks about his
spiritual brothers and sisters. That doesn't really make sense
if it's not his actual brothers and sisters outside that he's
drawing a contrast to, it doesn't really make sense.
So I hope that answers the question, Dale, There are some
mysteries here about it, about Mary's role in some of these
early events. There's a question here from
Lolly. She asks, A friend asked me, why
do we Catholics say in the Apostles Creed that Jesus
descended into hell? Jesus is without sin.
Hell is for people who reject God and died without repentance.
My answer was that Jesus had a divine nature in a human form in
order to redeem our original sin so that we human beings can
eventually be transformed to share in God's love.
Jesus undertook this original sin, died, and thus descended to
hell. Is there a better explanation?
I think this is a great question.
Lolly. There are a lot of a lot of
confusion even amongst Catholics about that line in the Apostles
Creed. He descended into hell because
at first glance it sounds like it's it's he's going to the
place the hell of the damned where other evil people go.
But the Catechism of the Catholic Church actually answers
this really clearly. And the Catechism says it's
using hell in a different sense. That word hell can have
different meanings. And the Catechism makes it
really clear that when we say the Apostles Creed, what we're
affirming is that Jesus descended to the realm of the
dead. So the place where dead people
go, he's the church is not intending to teach that he was
punished in what we would call Gehenna, the place where evil
people go. That's not where Jesus went.
Jesus, Jesus soul went to the place of the dead, which is
often in Hebrew referred to as Sheol or Hades.
But it's not necessarily a place of punishment.
So the Catechism is really clear on that.
I'd encourage you to look at part one of the Catechism about
the creed. We do need to be careful about
the language we use here. Lolly mentions that Jesus had a
divine nature in a human form and that's that is one way of
putting it. But we can also say Jesus had
two natures and he was one divine person.
I think it's it's best to to stick with he's saying he had a
complete human nature, a complete divine nature, and it
is God in human flesh. But if we can avoid the word
form, the word form can be a little bit misleading.
But I hope that that helps answer your question about hell.
There's a question here from Linda and she says, I listen to
daily exegesis on Hello and I'm a supporter.
I eagerly anticipate listening each day as I always learn so
much and I'm reaffirmed in my faith.
I also love your accent. Thank you for those comments,
Linda. I'm glad you're getting a lot
out of the podcast. She then goes on to ask a
question about early in the Gospels, when Jesus is in
Nazareth, there's that scene where they, the people of
Nazareth, are quite surprised and they say, is this not the
carpenter's son? And then in some of the Gospels
they say, is this, is this not Jesus the son of Mary?
And in our exegesis, we talked about how that was an unusual
thing to say in that culture. Normally you would say this is
the son of Joseph, as in the son of the Father.
We talked about different explanations as to why.
Why does the why do the people in Nazareth here call Jesus the
son of Mary and not the son of Joseph?
I do think the most likely explanation is that Joseph had
been was deceased for quite a while before then.
So it's been quite a while since Joseph has been on the scene and
therefore Mary has been the only parent on the scene for Jesus
for for much of his growing up and therefore over time he
became known as the son of Mary. However, one of the
possibilities that we mentioned in that exegesis is that maybe
the townspeople are doing it as a slur, as in, isn't this the
son of Mary? Because there were rumours at
the time that Mary, well indeed Mary did become pregnant before
Mary and Joseph consummated the marriage.
In fact, they never consummated the marriage in Catholic
teaching. And it may well be that people
in the time when Mary became pregnant, they knew that Mary
and Joseph were not yet living together and therefore there
might have been a rumour that Mary had become pregnant by
someone else. So this might have been a slur
from the people of Nazareth saying, oh, well, it's Mary's
son, but we don't know if it's Joseph's son.
So Linda has a question here about using, is it right to say
that Mary was not married at the time that she conceived Jesus?
It's complicated because you will see some Catholic
apologists and Catholic websites saying that in fact Mary was
married to Joseph. It it really is a technicality
in terms of language, because most precisely we would say that
Mary was betrothed. And as we've talked about in our
exegesis, in that culture there were two stages of marriage.
The first stage was the betrothal, which was a legally
binding document, and then the second stage they would live
together under the same roof and then consummate the marriage.
In the Gospels, Mary has done stage one of marriage.
She is betrothed to Joseph. So in one sense, she's legally
married to Joseph. However, we can also say that
she's not fully married to Joseph.
I think it's quite appropriate to say that, and different
Catholic theologians have different takes on this, but
certainly it's not when we say that Mary was not fully married
to Joseph, we're not denying that she was betrothed to
Joseph. It's just a a technicality of
language and you can go either way on it as to whether you
think that means Mary was really married or not to Joseph.
It's neither here nor there really.
But I hope that that helps you understand why we talked about
it that way in the episode. Marl has a practical question
about the podcast, and it's a good one to ask.
It's about the lectionary, actually, she says.
I love the podcast. Thank you for creating such
wonderful content. My question is why do gospel
readings get repeated weeks apart?
For example Tuesday of week one of ordinary time was mark 121 to
28 and then again on the 4th Sunday of ordinary time.
And what Marla here is talking about is sometimes the weekday
readings and the Sunday readings are the same, but at random
times of the year. That has to do with the weekday
cycle, which is Monday through to Saturday.
In the lectionary has its own cycle of gospel readings that
repeats annually. But Sunday operates on a
different cycle, which is a three-year cycle.
That means that you'll sometimes hear readings that you've
already heard on a weekday. You'll hear that on a weekend or
a Sunday in that year, sometimes close to when you've already
heard the weekday reading. Sometimes it might be a few
months apart. And so the basic answer is the
weekday cycle and the Sunday cycle are two different cycles
and there can be repeats between the two cycles.
So I hope that answers the question.
We have a question here from Chris, quite a personal question
and it's about the Pharisees. My question is about Jesus and
the Pharisees. You mentioned that Jesus sees
the Pharisees as stopping Gentiles from reaching God by
their rules and teachings being too strict.
With that logic and the rules of the Catholic Church, could it be
seen as the same as the Pharisees?
So what Chris is referring to is in some of the episodes where
Jesus is confronts the Pharisees, one of the big issues
Jesus has with the Pharisees is he makes it harder for people to
the Pharisees make it harder for people to enter the Kingdom.
So there's the that famous speech where Jesus says you tie
heavy, you tie heavy burdens on men, but you don't lift a finger
to help them get rid of those burdens.
Now, Chris goes on to give a bit of a personal story about
himself, and I won't share that, but he talks about his own
marriage and the enorman process, where he's found the
enorman process quite hard. And there were some issues and
technicalities with his baptism certificate.
And he's also been told he can't receive communion until he gets
the annulment sorted out, which is certainly in accordance with
Canon law. If someone is still already in a
valid marriage and the annulment has not yet been granted, or
it's not known if an annulment will be granted, then it's not
appropriate for that. If the person attempts to
remarry, then it's not appropriate for that person to
be admitted to communion. So he goes on to say, here I'm
finding out that I can't have communion for at least 12 weeks
at the earliest because of rules.
We've also run into other hiccups like selecting
godparents and Christian witnesses, going back and forth
with the church on forms, documents needed by the parish,
when one godparent is just going to be a Christian witness.
It seems like we have to fight to overcome obstacle and
obstacle to live with God in the Catholic Church.
So I, I think the experience you've had, Chris, is probably
familiar to many Catholics who would get frustrated about the
processes associated with the sacraments.
I think the distinction I would want to make is the Pharisees
unnecessarily put unnecessary burdens on people that stop them
from entering the Kingdom of God.
Now here with the sacraments, we don't really have a barrier to
entering the Kingdom of God per SE.
This is not an issue of salvation.
This is an issue that the examples that he talks about
here, issues of accessing the sacraments.
And the Church does have a lot of rules about accessing the
sacraments because we believe that God's grace is imparted
through those sacraments. And to put it in a nutshell, the
Catholic Church wants to ensure that people who are people are
not living in a deeply sinful, immoral life when they receive
these sacraments. And you can get into the the
complexities of the Sacramento theology here.
So I do think there's a distinction here.
Whereas the Pharisees were actually stopping people from
entering the Kingdom of God. And in fact, Jesus says that we
don't have that here. We have people who are already
in the church, bound by the church's rules.
So they're already part of the ecclesial church, but they're
struggling to deal with some of the legal technicalities.
So that's probably the first distinction that I would want to
make. Now, of course, there are
further questions about do some of the processes take too long?
Are some of the processes too involved?
And we do know that many people do get put off by these
processes and they don't want to come back to the Catholic Church
because they see it as unnecessarily burdensome.
There probably are some practical solutions there, but
that has to be sorted out on the local level between priests and
bishops and the diocesan tribunals that are involved in
these things. The churches, ecclesiastical
law, the fundamental principle, in fact Canon law says this is
wanting the salvation of people. So when the church puts barriers
in people's way, or another way of putting that is the church
wants to be careful to make sure the person can get over the
barrier and there aren't barriers that haven't been
considered. That's because the church cares
for that person. They want to make sure they're
living the the life that God wants them to live.
They're not in a state of sin. They're not going to encourage
other people to be in a state of sin.
And they're concerned about the individual as well as the people
around that individual and the good of the whole church.
So, and that is very much a part of the New Testament as well
where Jesus says there does come a point where you need to step
in if you sense that there is sin in the Christian community
that is influencing other Christians.
He goes on to talk about confirmation and communion and
the processes where his kids have to learn to say the act of
contrition by memory, they have to memorise it.
Whereas in some parishes they can just read it off a sheet and
they don't have to memorise it. Again, this is just a a kind of
a local thing. It's a decision that local
pastors make. Obviously there's advantages to
memorising the act of contrition and really thinking about it
rather than just reading it off a sheet of paper.
But those pros and cons with both these are conversations
that priests need to have with their parishioners to explain
their reasoning about why they want to prepare people for the
sacraments in this way. So I don't think that there is a
parallel here between the Pharisees and the Church in
terms of both of them having a lot of rules.
That's absolutely true. I hope that helps address some
of your concerns. Certainly the experience you're
talking about is an experience that many Catholics have had.
Ultimately, we would want to say that unlike the Pharisees, the
Church is. The church's ultimate goal is to
make it easier for people to access God and to receive his
grace. And to do that, they have to
remove barriers and those, the removal of those barriers can
take time, and the church wants to make sure that that's done
properly. So there's certainly some
superficial similarities, but there's a fundamental difference
in terms of the way the old covenant rules operated and the
new covenant ecclesiastical disciplines are ordered towards
something quite different. I hope that that's a helpful
answer. And talking to a parish priest
is often the best way to resolve these frustrations with
ecclesiastical processes. So I do encourage you to do
that. The next question is from Kamiel
and it's a question, a really good one, about Luke chapter 2.
So this is about the prophetess Anna in verse verses 36 to 37.
It's it talks about how old Anna is and his, his question here is
in the podcast you mentioned that Hannah is 84 years old.
But my Dutch translation says Hannah was a widow for 84 years.
So it's a question about is the text saying that Anna the widow
was 84 years old or is it saying that she was a widow from 84
years? It does depend on the
translation. There are different manuscripts
here. For example, the the American
Standard version says she'd been a widow even unto 4 score and
four years. So that one's a bit confusing
because you could go either way with it.
The Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition, which is what
a lot of Catholic scholars use today, say she she was with her
husband seven years and as a widow till she was 84.
So that one implies that the best translation is that she's
84 years old. And that's what we said in the
podcast. But then there are other
translations. So the international standard
version, which is another one that uses good texts, says she
was a widow for 84 years. So there is a difference of
opinion here about and it does depend on which manuscript you
rely on. There's no definitive answer on
this one. It's a really good question.
Thank you, Camille. We have another question here
from Nancy, and she starts off by saying thank you for the
podcast, and she's learned a lot from it.
And she's talks a bit about her own journey where she was raised
a Catholic, but now she's a bit uncertain about the Catholic
faith. So she's just considers herself
just a Christian. I hope that you'll continue the
journey, Nancy, in discovering the fullness of God's truth,
which we believe as Catholics can only be found in the
Catholic faith. So keep asking questions, keep
using good resources to go deeper.
So her question is about Mark Chapter 9, verses 2 to 10.
That's the transfiguration. And this is a really good
question. She wants to know, how is it
that Peter and the other disciples knew that it was Moses
and Elijah? Because Jesus doesn't introduce
them, He just starts talking with them, and then the other
disciples get frightened. So that's a really good
question. How do they know it's Moses and
Elijah? It does seem that during this
scene, eventually they work it out because Peter says let me
make a booth, one for you, one for you Jesus, one for Moses,
and 1:00 for Elijah. So he works it out.
I wonder if it was just in the Jewish consciousness that they
knew the basics of what Moses and Elijah look like that that's
one possibility. I think it's more likely that
there was just something so striking about their appearance.
That it was just obvious that this has to be Moses and this
has to be Elijah. These were basically the two
highest reverenced people, except perhaps for Abraham in
the Jewish faith. And I think it's, it's perhaps
some point in the discussion, they might have overheard some
of the things that Jesus said to them.
And that would have made it even more obvious that it was Moses
and Elijah. So it might be that they didn't
know exactly who they were initially, but as the
conversation went on, the disciples worked it out.
So I hope that that's a helpful answer.
And again, it's a really good question that we might not get
get a definitive answer on. Another question here about
Mary. This is from Andrew.
So Andrew says thanks for your explanation on betrothal and the
full consummation of marriage in the culture at that time.
So this goes back to what we said in an earlier question
about the two stages of marriage.
But he still says, even given that, would there not have been
alarm or scandal among those around Mary and Joseph for her
pregnancy, since they were betrothed at the time of the
discovery of her pregnancy and presumably not yet consummated?
It's a good question. Would people have been
scandalised when they learned that Mary was pregnant?
Again, there's probably two ways of resolving this.
Firstly, it could well be that yes, people were scandalised.
There are some passages in the Gospels and it's not definitive.
We talk about these when they come up.
It's not definitive, but perhaps people did think that Jesus was
born out of wedlock. Perhaps that was a rumour that
was going around and there might have been an element of scandal.
For example, in the Gospel of John, there's a scene where the
Jewish leaders confront Jesus and they say we were not born of
fornication. And some scholars think that
perhaps there's kind of a it's a, a jab at Jesus, as in we were
not born of fornication, but you were.
Now that's So that's one possible answer.
Maybe there was some controversy.
Secondly, though, if we look at how the Gospel of Matthew tells
us about Joseph's reaction, it seems that it was quite early in
the pregnancy that Joseph learns that Mary is pregnant.
And remember, Joseph is thinking about separating from Mary.
But then the Angel says to him, don't do that.
Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to take her into
your home. Presuming that Joseph acted on
that quickly, and given that it seems that Angel appeared to
Joseph quite early in the pregnancy, it's reasonable that
Mary and Joseph then did move. Mary did move into Joseph's
house, and they did do stage two of the marriage publicly fairly
early in the pregnancy, perhaps before people found out that she
was pregnant. That is a possibility as well.
I hope that's helpful. Vivian has a good question here
about the anointing of Jesus by the woman identified as Mary of
Mary Bethany in the week leading to Jesus death.
So remember, she anoints his head and his feet prior to his
death. And she's wondering what was
Mary's reason for anointing Jesus in advance of his death?
Was that a common practice in that culture?
As far as we can tell, no, that's not a common practice to
anoint someone before they die. So one way of thinking about
this is that she is just trying to give him some sort of honour,
particularly in terms of kingship.
So in the Old Testament, anointing someone's head was
associated with the dedication of kings.
So you can look at One Samuel 9 and also One Samuel 16.
It's in First Kings as well. So maybe this is her way of
saying of proclaiming that Jesus is her king.
But the Gospels do sort of hint that she's doing this as a sort
of a symbol of his upcoming death.
Perhaps she thinks that she's not going to get a chance to do
that after his death. It was really only wealthy
people who had this special kind of anointing.
A lot of people remember if you're crucified, a lot of
people were just chucked into pits and they were not buried
properly. So it's not like everyone got a
burial. Maybe she's worried that Jesus
is not going to get a proper burial and a proper anointing,
so she's trying to take that opportunity while she can.
So again, there's some possibilities.
I hope that's helpful. Vivian also has a question about
reconciling the resurrection accounts on Easter Sunday.
She says Matthew 28 opens with verse eight, or this appearance
opens with verse 8, which says that Mary Magdalene and the
other Mary went away quickly to announce the news to the
disciples and Jesus met them on their way.
So they approached, embraced his feet and did him homage.
So that appearance to the women is narrated in Matthew 28 in
John chapter 2011 to 18. How is it that Mary Magdalene
suddenly does not recognize the risen Christ whom she and the
other Mary paid homage to in Matthew 28 verse 9?
This is a really good question and scholars have wondered about
this. What?
What's Mary Magdalene's movements here?
The solution that I would suggest is that Mary Magdalene
came with the other women to the tomb, but when she saw that the
tomb was empty, she ran away. She, she left immediately to go
tell Peter and John, whereas the other women stayed at the tomb.
And this is a common way of, of narrating in that time where
they'd just say the women, which makes you think that all the
women are still there. But it's quite possible that
Mary Magdalene has split off by this point.
So Mary Magdalene does not see the angels.
She doesn't hear the Angel say things like he has risen.
Go tell the others. She's already gone to tell Peter
and John. So she goes to tell Peter and
John. She gets Peter and John and then
Peter and John come back now. Meanwhile, the other women, who
are sort of running a bit later than Mary Magdalene, they're on
the road to tell the 11 disciples what they've seen.
On the way there, they encounter Jesus, which is narrated in
Matthew 28, but Mary Magdalene is not in the group at that
time. Meanwhile, Mary Magdalene gets
back to the tomb with Peter and John.
Apparently the other women are not with her because they're
still on the way back to the other disciples.
Then Mary Magdalene has the appearance where she sees Jesus
as the gardener. So they're actually two separate
appearances. Mary Magdalene only experiences
one of them. We don't know which one came
first. Chronologically, Jesus can
easily move between two places, so it but they both happen at
approximately the same time. I hope that that's a helpful
resolution. It's not the only solution that
people have proposed, but I think it's the one that makes
the most sense. We should treat the appearance
of Jesus as a gardener to Mary Magdalene as an individual
appearance just to Mary Magdalene after she's split off
from the other group of women who were doing something else at
that time. I hope that helps.
We have a question here about Bible translations, and this is
quite a common 1. Robert wants to know what
translation of the Bible is used in the podcast.
So we use the translation of the Bible that the lectionary, the
General Roman Lectionary, uses, which is the Jerusalem Bible.
It's not a translation that's widely used outside the
lectionary, but that is what the General Roman Lectionary uses.
A lot of countries stick with the General Roman Lectionary
translation. The USA doesn't.
So if you're listing in the USA, you will notice that the
lectionary general, Roman lectionary translation that you
hear on the podcast is not the same as the one you hear at
Mass. But most countries continue to
use the Jerusalem Bible. Last question for this bonus
episode is from Mundani and it's a little bit of a confusing
question. He's asking about Sabbath and
how that relates to Sunday for Christians.
So he says why do we as Christians disregard the Sabbath
of Muslims and Jews? Is there a clear passage from
the Bible that the practice of Christianity about Sabbath was
Sunday? So firstly, I would encourage
you to have a look at the Catechism of the Catholic
Church. That will be your best resource
here where it explains exactly what the relationship is between
the Sabbath and Sunday for Christians.
It doesn't. It's not exactly like Sunday has
replaced the Sabbath. The best way of thinking about
this is it's fulfils the Sabbath.
And he wants to know, is there a clear passage from the Bible
that the practice of Christianity was Sunday?
There is one in particular, which is in the Book of
Revelation. John there, the person having
the vision says something happened to him on the Lord's
Day. And so apparently that was the
way that they had started to refer to as Sunday.
And so that is the hint, a key hint that we start to get this
idea that they treated Sunday in a special way in the book of
Acts. It's quite true that they
didn't. It's not obvious that they had a
weekly Sunday Eucharist. But as he goes on in this e-mail
to say, isn't that the case that they had a daily Mass in the
book of Acts? That's true, at least in some
places in the book of Acts they were able to have a daily Mass,
but as the decades went on they got an increasing awareness that
Sunday is their special day and Sunday basically became the high
day for Christians. But I would encourage you to
look at the Catechism of the Catholic Church in this section
on the 10 commandments. When it gets to the commandment,
you shall honour the Sabbath. There's quite a detailed
explanation of the Catholic theology about Sunday, so thank
you for all of those who've sent in questions.
There are many more that we haven't got to today in this
bonus episode, but we'll do many more of these in the coming
weeks. Thanks so much for your support
over the ministry. Please keep it in your prayers
and continue to tell people about what you're learning.