A Friend With Answers
by Fr. David M. Knight
Tuesday, January 9, 2024
Week 1 in Ordinary Time
Lectionary No. 306
1Samuel 1:9-20; Responsorial: 1Samuel 2:1, 4-5, 6-7, 8; Mark 1:21-28
He taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. Mark 1:22
It’s great to know someone who knows the truth and will share it with you.
Some Catholics want this is so much they put blind trust in any priest or bishop, regardless of his qualifications. That is “clericalism.”
In Jesus’s time, people looked to the scribes for truth. But the scribes just handed on what they read in the law; with no personal insight into its meaning. The clericalism that made people trust in the scribes led them into the legalism of the Pharisees. And the “chief priests,” (archiereis, “hierarchy”) supported this. The chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees were the most resistant to Jesus (Mark 10:33), just as triumphalists, clericalists, and legalists are today.
Jesus shared God’s mind and will and heart. He knew the Truth in God’s mind that inspired the law; the Good God’s will intended it to bring about; and the mercy that God’s heart brought to its application. So he taught “as one having authority.”
Jesus is our only Teacher (Matthew 23:8; Jeremiah 31:34). All the rest of us are just fellow students. We judge what others say by comparing it to what we have heard from Jesus (or read in his word) and consulting “the Spirit of truth”—who abides within us (John 14:17).
Friendship is interaction. Interact with Jesus and he will teach you truth.
ACTION: To evaluate what you hear, imagine Jesus saying it.
PRAYER: “Lord, be with me. Let me be with you.”
Reflections brought to you by the Immersed in Christ Ministry
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