Exploring difficult Scripture readings

February 14, 2019
Alex M. Saunders, MD
San Carlos
 
A comment about the Scripture commentary by Father Charles Puthota (“Love is the supreme gift,” Jan. 31:
 
It is the easy way out to extract love from a difficult set of Scriptures and to ignore the rest. This column and the weekly homily are the only teaching opportunities on our Scriptures in the archdiocese. If neither one touches and teaches on the difficult readings, then people in the pews (PIP) remain uninformed. The USCCB in its last key statement on preaching urges us to explain the Scriptures. Indeed, it spends the last of four chapters on the mode of catechesis on the Scriptures. To show what I mean, let me ask a few questions PIP would ask, arising from the same readings of the same week.
 
1. Is God telling Jeremiah to speak the message to kings and priests even if that message contradicts these authorities? Prophets find God’s message in the signs of the times. Who are today’s prophets? Should today’s priests listen to them?
 
2. Does love of all God’s children today include helping overcome overpopulation in developing countries? Or should we love them while we watch them die of starvation?
 
3. St. Paul’s analogy of seeing indistinctly in a mirror works if we remember that in those days mirror technology was imperfect, made of polished metal. What are the childish things that St. Paul put aside when he became a man? Does St. Paul mean child and man when he talks about “Now and then”? Or is he hoping for better mirror (and other) future technology?
 
4. Jesus sees prophets going to feed and heal outlanders in preference to Jews. Why does he on purpose antagonize his own people? Is this an example of love?
 
Perhaps Shakespeare had it right:
 
“Love is not love that falters
 
When it alteration finds.”
 

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