Page 61 - Demo

MATTHEW -
said, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.’ 27Moved with compassion the master of that servant let him go and forgave him the loan. 28When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a much smaller amount.* He seized him and started to choke him, demanding, ‘Pay back what you owe.’ 29Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ 30But he refused. Instead, he had him put in prison until he paid back the debt. 31Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were deeply disturbed, and went to their master and reported the whole affair. 32His master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to. 33p Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?’ 34Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt.* 35* q So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart.”
VI. MINISTRY IN JUDEA AND JERUSALEM
191* When Jesus* finished these words,* he left Galilee and went to 2
Marriage and Divorce.
the district of Judea across the Jordan. Great crowds followed him, and he cured them there. 3a Some Pharisees approached him,
18:20
We pray alone, in our hearts, in our rooms, when we awaken, when we go to sleep. This prayer to God is good and essential. But Jesus gives a privileged place to the prayer of the community. When even the smallest community—two or three—prays together, Jesus promises to be in their midst. Thus Pope Paul VI could call it an “absurd dichotomy” “to love Christ but without the Church, to listen to Christ but not the Church, to belong to Christ but outside the Church.”1
18:23
Jesus concludes this teaching with a parable about forgiveness. The king does not just give the man an extension—he cancels the entire debt. The man is understandably grateful to the king, but when in his turn he encounters a man in debt to him, he does not show the same mercy. Our relationships with each other matter. God will forgive us in direct proportion to how we forgive each other.
19:1
Jesus’ teaching on marriage and divorce is rooted in God’s plan for creation. God made human beings male and female so that they might come together and be not two, but one. To separate a married couple is, then, to break, to tear apart, this work of God.
1 Evangelii nuntiandi, 16.
Chapter 18
p. [18:33] Sir 28:4.
q. [18:35] 6:15; Jas 2:13.
Chapter 19
a. [19:3–9] Mk 10:2–12.
49
* [18:28] A much smaller amount: literally, “a hundred denarii.” A denarius was the normal daily wage of a laborer. The di erence between the two debts is enormous and brings out the absurdity of the conduct of the Christian who has received the great forgiveness of God and yet refuses to forgive the relatively minor o enses done to him.
* [18:34] Since the debt is so great as to be unpayable, the punishment will be endless.
* [18:35] The Father’s forgiveness, already given, will be withdrawn at the nal judgment for
those who have not imitated his forgiveness by their own.
* [19:1–23:39] The narrative section of the fth book of the gospel. The rst part (Mt 19:1–
20:34) has for its setting the journey of Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem; the second (Mt 21:1– 23:39) deals with Jesus’ ministry in Jerusalem up to the nal great discourse of the gospel (Mt 24–25). Matthew follows the Marcan sequence of events, though adding material both special to this gospel and drawn from Q. The second part ends with the denunciation of the scribes and Pharisees (Mt 23:1–36) followed by Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem (Mt 23:37–39). This long and important speech raises a problem for the view that Matthew is structured around ve other discourses of Jesus (see Introduction) and that this one has no such function in the gospel. However, it is to be noted that this speech lacks the customary concluding formula that follows the ve discourses (see note on Mt 7:28), and that those discourses are all addressed either exclusively (Mt 10; 18; 24; 25) or primarily (Mt 5–7; 13) to the disciples, whereas this is addressed primarily to the scribes and Pharisees (Mt 23:13–36). Consequently, it seems plausible to maintain that the evangelist did not intend to give it the structural importance of the ve other discourses, and that, in spite of its being composed of sayings-material, it belongs to the narrative section of this book. In that regard, it is similar to the sayings-material of Mt 11:7–30. Some have proposed that Matthew wished to regard it as part of the nal discourse of Mt 24–25, but the intervening material (Mt 24:1–4) and the change in matter and style of those chapters do not support that view.
* [19:1] In giving Jesus’ teaching on divorce (Mt 19:3–9), Matthew here follows his Marcan source (Mk 10:2–12) as he does Q in Mt 5:31–32 (cf. Lk 16:18). Mt 19:10–12 are peculiar to Matthew. * [19:1] When Jesus nished these words: see note on Mt 7:28–29. The district of Judea
across the Jordan: an inexact designation of the territory. Judea did not extend across the Jordan; the territory east of the river was Perea. The route to Jerusalem by way of Perea avoided passage through Samaria.
* [19:3] Tested him: the verb is used of attempts of Jesus’ opponents to embarrass him by challenging him to do something they think impossible (Mt 16:1; Mk 8:11; Lk 11:16) or by having him say something that they can use against him (Mt 22:18, 35; Mk 10:2; 12:15). For any cause whatever: this is peculiar to Matthew and has been interpreted by some as meaning that Jesus was being asked to take sides in the dispute between the schools of Hillel and Shammai on the reasons for divorce, the latter holding a stricter position than the former. It is unlikely, however, that to ask Jesus’ opinion about the di ering views of two Jewish schools, both highly respected, could be described as “testing” him, for the reason indicated above.