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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 re-
build 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 opposi-
tion 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 prudent-
ly 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 fa-
ther.” [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 put-
ting 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 disci-
ple (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. After our Lord’s ascension, “following Him” means being a Chris-
tian (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 commandment 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 follow Him or lose Him. In the
Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) Jesus explained what following Him involves
— a teaching which we find summarized 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 friend-
ship 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 indis-
pensable and pressing” (”Hom. on St. Matthew”, 27).]

We see here the case of the man who wanted to follow Christ, but on one condi-
tion—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 receive it without fruit, since there is no advantage in feeling the inspiration
if we do not accept it [...]. It sometimes happens that being inspired 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.