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From: Nehemiah 2:1-8

Nehemiah is authorized to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem

[1] In the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Ar-taxerxes, when wine
was before him, I took up the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had not been
sad in his presence. [2] And the king said to me, “Why is your face sad, seeing
you are not sick? This is nothing else but sadness of the heart.” Then I was very
much afraid. [3] I said to the king, “Let the king live for ever! Why should not my
face be said, when the city, the place of my fathers’ sepulchers, lies waste, and
its gates have been destroyed by fire?” [4] Then the king said to me, “For what do
you make request?” So I prayed to the God of heaven. [5] And I said to the king,
“If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favour in your sight, that you
send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers’ sepulchers, that I may rebuild it.” [6]
And the king said to me (the queen sitting beside him), “How long will you be
gone, and when will you return?” So it pleased the king to send me; and I set him
a time. [7] And I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, let letters be given to me
to the governors of the province Beyond the River, that they may let me pass
through until I come to Judah; [8] and a letter to Asaph, the keeper of the king’s
forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the fortress of
the temple, and for the wall of the city, and for the house which I shall occupy.”
And the king granted me what I asked, for the good hand of my God was upon
me.

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Commentary:

2:1-20. Putting his trust entirely in the Lord, Nehemiah used every resource avail-
able to him to help his compatriots. He prayed for four months – from Chislev
(1:1) to Nisan (v. 1) – and then used an opportunity that presented itself to outline
his plans to the king; he managed not only to get Artaxerxes’ authorization to go
to Judah and rebuild Jerusalem, but also to requisition the necessary materials
(vv. 1-9). The king referred to (v. 1) was probably Artaxerxes 1 (465-425 BC);
and the twentieth year of his reign was 445 BC.

When Nehemiah reached the city of his ancestors, he initially met with opposition
from the governor of Samaria, Sanbalat, and from Tobiah, a rich landowner who
was related to priestly families (cf. 6:17-18). However, he did manage to get
influential people in Jerusalem (vv. 16ff) to join in his project. Acting prudently
and yet boldly, he was confident that God would help him in his endeavours
(v. 20).

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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.

From: Luke 9:57-62

The Calling of Three Disciples

[57] As they were going along the road, a man said to Him (Jesus), “I
will follow you wherever You go.” [58] And Jesus said to him, “Foxes
have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has
nowhere to lay His head.” [59] To another He said, “Follow Me.” But
he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” [60] But He said
to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and
proclaim the Kingdom of God.” [61] Another said, “I will follow You,
Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” [62] Jesus
said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back
is fit for the Kingdom of God.”

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Commentary:

57-62. Our Lord spells out very clearly what is involved in following
Him. Being a Christian is not an easy or comfortable affair: it calls
for self-denial and for putting God before everything else. See the
notes on Matthew 8:18-22 and Matthew 8:22.

[The notes on Matthew 8:18-22 states:

18-22. From the very outset of His messianic preaching, Jesus rarely
stays in the same place; He is always on the move. He “has nowhere
to lay His head” (Matthew 8:20). Anyone who desires to be with him
has to “follow Him”. This phrase “following Jesus” has a very precise
meaning: it means being His disciple (cf. Matthew 19:28). Sometimes
the crowds “follow Him”; but Jesus’ true disciples are those who “follow
Him” in a permanent way, that is, who keep on following Him: being a
“disciple of Jesus” and “following Him” amount to the same thing. Af-
ter our Lord’s ascension, “following Him” means being a Christian (cf.
Acts 8:26). By the simple and sublime fact of Baptism, every Christian
is called, by a divine vocation, to be a full disciple of our Lord, with all
that that involves.

The evangelist here gives two specific cases of following Jesus. In the
case of the scribe our Lord explains what faith requires of a person who
realizes that he has been called; in the second case—that of the man
who has already said “yes” to Jesus—He reminds him of what His com-
mandment entails. The soldier who does not leave his position on the
battlefront to bury his father, but instead leaves that to those in the
rearguard, is doing his duty. If service to one’s country makes demands
like that on a person, all the more reason for it to happen in the service
of Jesus Christ and His Church.

Following Christ, then, means we should make ourselves totally available
to Him; whatever sacrifice He asks of us we should make: the call to
follow Christ means staying up with Him, not falling behind; we either fol-
low Him or lose Him. In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) Jesus
explained what following Him involves—a teaching which we find summa-
rized in even the most basic catechism of Christian doctrine: a Christian
is a man who believes in Jesus Christ—a faith he receives at Baptism —
and is duty bound to serve Him. Through prayer and friendship with the
Lord every Christian should try to discover the demands which this service
involves as far as he personally is concerned.]

[The notes on Matthew 8:22 states:

22. “Leave the dead to bury their own dead”: although this sounds very
harsh, it is a style of speaking which Jesus did sometimes use: here
the “dead” clearly refers to those whose interest is limited to perishable
things and who have no aspirations towards the things that last forever.

“If Jesus forbade him,” St. John Chrysostom comments, “it was not to
have us neglect the honor due to our parents, but to make us realize
that nothing is more important than the things of Heaven and that we
ought to cleave to these and not to put them off even for a little while,
though our engagements be ever so indispensable and pressing” (”Hom.
on St. Matthew”, 27).]

We see here the case of the man who wanted to follow Christ, but on
one condition—that he be allowed to say goodbye to his family. Our
Lord, seeing that he is rather undecided, gives him an answer which
applies to all of us, for we have all received a calling to follow Him and
we have to try not to receive this grace in vain. “We receive the grace
of God in vain, when we receive it at the gate of our heart, and do not
let it enter our heart. We receive it without receiving it, that is, we re-
ceive it without fruit, since there is no advantage in feeling the inspira-
tion if we do not accept it [...]. It sometimes happens that being ins-
pired to do much we consent not to the whole inspiration but only to
some part of it, as did those good people in the Gospel, who upon the
inspiration which our Lord gave them to follow Him wished to make
reservations, the one to go first and bury his father, the other to go to
take leave of his people” (St. Francis de Sales, “Treatise on the Love
of God”, Book 2, Chapter 11).

Our loyalty and fidelity to the mission God has given us should equip
us to deal with every obstacle we meet: “There is never reason to look
back (cf. Luke 9:62). The Lord is at our side. We have to be faithful
and loyal; we have to face up to our obligations and we will find in
Jesus the love and the stimulus we need to understand other people’s
faults and overcome our own” ([St J. Escriva, “Christ Is Passing By”,
160).

Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.