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From: Colossians 1:21-23

Christ’s Saving Action on the Faithful

[21] And you, who once were estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds,
[22] he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present
you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him, [23] provided that you
continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gos-
pel which you heard, which has been preached to every creature under heaven,
and of which I, Paul, became a minister.

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Commentary:

21. “Hostile in mind”: literally, “enemies in mind and thought”; for, even if they
did not formally declare themselves to be enemies of God, they were enemies
in fact due to the way they acted.

22. “In his body of flesh”: the physical body of Christ, through which he offered
himself to the Father on the cross and brought about the reconciliation of men
with God and with each other. Christ’s sacred humanity is, therefore, an instru-
ment of salvation: through his passion and death our Lord conquered sin and
obtained the graces we need to be cleansed of our faults and to be presented
“holy and blameless and irreproachable before him.”

The sacred text shows that the Incarnation of the Word is something diametri-
cally opposed to a disembodied spiritualism, which is quite foreign to the spirit
of the Gospel. In a homily given in a Mass on the campus of Navarre University
in 1967, St. Escriva explained that “authentic Christianity, which professes the
resurrection of all flesh, has always quite logically opposed ‘dis-incarnation’,
without fear of being judged materialistic. We can, therefore, rightfully speak of
a ‘Christian materialism’, which is boldly opposed to those materialisms which
are blind to the spirit” (”Conversations”, 115).

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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 6:1-5

The Law of the Sabbath

[1] On a Sabbath, while He (Jesus) was going through the grainfields, His dis-
ciples plucked and ate some ears of grain, rubbing them in their hands. [2] But
some of the Pharisees said, “Why are You doing what is not lawful to do on the
Sabbath?” [3] And Jesus answered, “Have you not read what David did when he
was hungry, he and those who were with him: [4] how he entered the house of
God, and took and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any
but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those with him?” [5] And he said to
them, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

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Commentary:

1-5. Accused by the Pharisees of breaking the Sabbath, Jesus explains the
correct way of understanding the Sabbath rest, using an example from the Old
Testament. And, by stating that He is “Lord of the Sabbath” He is openly revea-
ling that He is God Himself, for it was God who gave this precept to the people
of Israel. For more on this, see the notes on Matthew 12:2 and 12:3-8.

[The notes on Matthew 12:2 and 12:3-8 states:

2. “The Sabbath”: this was the day the Jews set aside for worshipping God. God
Himself, the originator of the Sabbath (Genesis 2:3), ordered the Jewish people
to avoid certain kinds of work on this day (Exodus 20:8-11; 21:13; Deuteronomy
5:14) to leave them free to give more time to God. As time went by, the rabbis
complicated this divine precept: by Jesus’ time they had extended to 39 the list
of kinds of forbidden work.

The Pharisees accuse Jesus’ disciples of breaking the Sabbath. In the casuistry
of the scribes and the Pharisees, plucking ears of corn was the same as harves-
ting, and crushing them was the same as milling-types of agricultural work forbid-
den on the Sabbath.

3-8. Jesus rebuts the Pharisees’ accusation by four arguments-the example of
David, that of the priests, a correct understanding of the mercy of God and Jesus’
own authority over the Sabbath.

The first example which was quite familiar to the people, who were used to lis-
tening to the Bible being read, comes from 1 Samuel 21:2-7: David, in flight from
the jealousy of King Saul, asks the priest of the shrine of Nob for food for his men;
the priest gave them the only bread he had, the holy bread of the Presence; this
was the twelve loaves which were placed each week on the golden altar of the
sanctuary as a perpetual offering from the twelve tribes of Israel (Leviticus 24:5-9).
The second example refers to the priestly ministry to perform the liturgy, priests
had to do a number of things on the Sabbath but did not thereby break the law
of Sabbath rest (cf. Numbers 28:9).]

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