On the Thursday of the twenty-eighth week in Ordinary Time, the Church keeps the memorial of Saint Teresa of Jesus, the Carmelite reformer of Avila, virgin and Doctor of the Church. Our difficulty is an old one. We turn the knowledge of God into a tangle of rules. The Word of God answers in three steps: a Father who chooses us, a mercy that is sung, and a key that is taken away.
Woe to you, who build the tombs of the prophets, while it is your fathers who killed them! Clearly, you are testifying that you consent to the actions of your fathers, because even though they killed them, you build their sepulchers. Because of this also, the wisdom of God said: I will send to them Prophets and Apostles, and some of these they will kill or persecute, so that the blood of all the Prophets, which has been shed since the foundation of the world, may be charged against this generation: from the blood of Abel, even to the blood of Zachariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary. So I say to you: it will be required of this generation! Woe to you, experts in the law! For you have taken away the key of knowledge. You yourselves do not enter, and those who were entering, you would have prohibited. Then, while he was saying these things to them, the Pharisees and the experts in the law began to insist strongly that he restrain his mouth about many things. And waiting to ambush him, they sought something from his mouth that they might seize upon, in order to accuse him. (Lk 11:47-54)
The first reading opens the letter to the Ephesians with a blessing, before it asks anything of anyone. Paul, the apostle of Jesus Christ, writes that God "chose us in him before the foundation of the world, so that we would be holy and immaculate in his sight, in charity" (Eph 1:4). Our holiness is therefore not a prize that we win by effort, but a calling given before we existed, and love is its measure. Every human being is a child of God, and every one is invited to resemble the Father.
But where does this calling lead us? The apostle Paul answers that the Father has made known the mystery of his will, so as "to renew in Christ everything that exists through him in heaven and on earth" (Eph 1:10). Thus Christ is the centre in whom all things are gathered, and all holiness passes through him. He frees us from our sins, and his whole life shows that God is love and mercy. The happiness of a Christian is to know this, and to know that the gift is offered to all.
The responsorial psalm, our second step, turns the blessing into a song, and it summons the whole assembly to sing a new one. Its reason is given in a single verse: "He has remembered his mercy and his truth toward the house of Israel" (Ps 97:3). Mercy and truth go together here, because God keeps faith with his people and makes his justice seen by the nations. So the knowledge of God is a wonder sung in the open, and every person may hear it.
The Gospel places Jesus before the experts in the law, who honour the prophets with monuments. "Woe to you, who built the tombs of the prophets, while it is your fathers who killed them!" (Lk 11:47). The tombs look like fidelity. And yet they keep the prophets at a respectful distance, because they honour the prophets while they repeat the refusal that struck them down. Jesus does not utter this woe to condemn them for good, but to call their hearts back to conversion.
The third step reaches the root of the matter, for the experts in the law "have taken away the key of knowledge" (Lk 11:52). They locked the knowledge of God inside a tangle of prescriptions in which ordinary people could no longer find their way, so that they did not enter themselves and held back those who were entering. But Jesus speaks in truth and in simplicity. He calls God Father, he teaches us to pray to him with trust, and he is himself the key. The Son opens to us the door of a filial relation, so that God is known as a Father to love and not as a Law to fear.
In the spirituality of Bethlehem, the Child laid in the manger is already this key, and he opens the door of the Father without forcing it. There the gift is welcomed in littleness and in trust. Thus the knowledge of God is learned there with the heart before the head, in the trust of a child before whom every claim falls away. Holiness is simply to let the Father love through us.
Today the Word of God invites us to examine the keys that we carry, whether they are learning, office, or the habits of our own household. Each of them was given for opening, but each turns into a lock when it is kept for ourselves. So let us ask which door we hold shut, and let us give it back to the Son who opens.
We announce the knowledge of salvation with words, but above all with the way we live: simple in speech, truthful in judgment, and trusting in the Father. That the Son opens to us the house of the Father should be enough to awaken our gratitude. Let our lives be an open door to that house, where every nation may enter and sing.
Scripture text: Catholic Public Domain Version (CPDV), public domain.
Prayer of the Day
Lord Jesus, child of Bethlehem and Son of the Father, open for us the door that rules and pride had closed. Teach us to know the Father as mercy and truth, and to receive every gift with thanksgiving and with open hands. Keep us at that open door, where the simple enter and the nations sing. Amen.
For Meditation
- Which keys do we carry, whether learning, office, or the habits of our household, and do they still open a door for others?
- Where do we honour the prophets of the past while we avoid the living word that asks something of us today?
- How can we announce the Father's mercy and truth, in words and above all by the way we live?
