Catena Aurea by St. Thomas Aguinas
8:22–26
22. And he cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto him, and besought him to touch him.
23. And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw ought.
24. And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking.
25. After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly.
26. And he sent him away to his house, saying, Neither go into the town, nor tell it to any in the town.
GLOSS. (non occ.) After the feeding of the multitude, the Evangelist proceeds to the giving sight to the blind, saying, And they come to Bethsaida, and they bring a blind man to him, and besought him to touch him.
BEDE. (in Marc. 2, 34) Knowing that the touch of the Lord could give sight to a blind man as well as cleanse a leper. It goes on, And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town.
THEOPHYLACT. For Bethsaida appears to have been infected with much infidelity, wherefore the Lord reproaches it, (Matt. 11:21) Woe to thee, Bethsaida, for if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. He then takes out of the town the blind man, who had been brought to Him, for the faith of those who brought him was not true faith. It goes on; And when he had spit in his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw ought.
PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. (Vict. Ant. e Cat. in Marc.) He spat indeed, and put His hand upon the blind man, because He wished to shew that wonderful are the effects of the Divine word added to action; for the hand is the symbol of working, but the spittle, of the word proceeding out of the mouth. Again He asked him whether he could see any thing, which He had not done in the case of any whom He had healed, thus shewing that by the weak faith of those who brought him, and of the blind man himself, his eyes could not altogether be opened. Wherefore there follows: And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees walking; because he was still under the influence of unfaithfulness, he said that he saw men obscurely.
BEDE. (ubi sup.) Seeing indeed the shapes of bodies amongst the shadows, but unable to distinguish the outlines of the limbs, from the continued darkness of his sight; just as trees standing thick together are wont to appear to men who see them from afar, or by the dim light of the night, so that it cannot easily be known whether they be trees or men.
THEOPHYLACT. But the reason why he did not see at once perfectly, but in part, was, that he had not perfect faith; for healing is bestowed in proportion to faith.
PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. (Vict. Ant. e Cat, in Marc.) From the commencement, however, of the return of his senses, He leads him to apprehend things by faith, and thus makes him see perfectly; wherefore it goes on, After that, he put his hands again upon his eyes, and he began to see, and afterwards he adds, And he was restored, and saw all things clearly; that is, being perfectly healed in his senses and his intellect. It goes on: And he sent him away to his house, saying, Go into thy home, and if thou enter into the town, tell it not to any one.
THEOPHYLACT. These precepts He gave him, because they were unfaithful, as has been said, lest perchance he should receive hurt in his soul from them, and they by their unbelief should ran into a more grievous crime.
BEDE. (ubi sup.) Or else, He leaves an example to His disciples that they should not seek for popular favour by the miracles which they did. 1Mystically, however, Bethsaida is interpreted ‘the house of the valley,’ that is, the world, which is the vale of tears. Again, they bring to the Lord a blind man, that is, one who neither sees what he has been, what he is, nor what he is to be. They ask Him to touch him, for what is being touched, but feeling compunction.?
BEDE. (ubi sup.) For the Lord touches us, when He enlightens our minds with the breath of His Spirit, and He stirs us up that we may recognise our own infirmity, and be diligent in good actions. He takes the hand of the blind man, that He may strengthen him to the practice of good works.
PSEUDO-JEROME. And He brings him out of the town, that is, out of the neighbourhood of the wicked; and He puts spittle into his eyes, that he may see the will of God, by the breath of the Holy Ghost; and putting His hands upon him, He asked him if he could see, because by the works of the Lord His majesty is seen.
BEDE. (ubi sup.) Or else, putting spittle into the eyes of the blind man, he lays His hands upon him that he may see, because He has wiped away the blindness of the human race both by invisible gifts, and by the Sacrament of His assumed humanity; for the spittle, proceeding from the Head, points out the grace of the Holy Ghost. But though by one word He could cure the man wholly and all at once, still He cures him by degrees, that He may shew the greatness of the blindness of man, which can hardly, and only as it were step by step, be restored to light; and He exhibits to us His grace, by which He furthers each step towards perfection. Again, whoever is weighed down by a blindness of such long continuance, that he is unable to distinguish between good and evil, sees as it were men like trees walking, because he sees the deeds of the multitude without the light of discretion.
PSEUDO-JEROME. Or else, he sees men as trees, because he thinks all men higher than himself. But He put His hands again upon his eyes, that he might see all things clearly, that is, understand invisible things by visible, and with the eye of a pure mind contemplate, what the eye hath not seen, the glorious state of his own soul after the rust of sin. He sent him to his home, that is, to his heart; that he might see in himself things which he had not seen before; for a man despairing of salvation does not think that he can do at all what, when enlightened, he can easily accomplish.
THEOPHYLACT. Or else, after He has healed him He sends him to his home; for the home of every one of us is heaven, and the mansions which are there.
PSEUDO-JEROME. And He says to him, If thou enter into the town, tell it not to any one, that is, relate continually to thy neighbours thy blindness, but never tell them of thy virtue.
Catena Aurea Mark 8
On Feb. 15 the Catholic Church honors Saint Claude de la Colombiere, the 17th century French Jesuit who authenticated and wrote about Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque's visions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
When he canonized St. Claude in 1992, Blessed John Paul II upheld him as a model Jesuit, recalling how the saint “gave himself completely to the Sacred Heart, 'ever burning with love.' Even in trials he practiced forgetfulness of self in order to attain purity of love and to raise the world to God.”
Born in the south of France during 1641, Claude de la Colombiere belonged to a family of seven children, four of whom entered the priesthood or religious life. He attended a Jesuit school in his youth, and entered the order himself at age 17.
As a young Jesuit recruit, Claude admitted to having a “horrible aversion” to the rigorous training required by the order in his day. But the novitiate of the Society of Jesus focused and sharpened his natural talents, and he would later take a private vow to obey the order's rules as perfectly as possible.
After completing his order's traditional periods of study and teaching, Claude became a priest in 1669. Known as a gifted preacher, he also taught at the college level and served as a tutor to the children of King Louis XIV's minister of finance.
In 1674, the priest became the superior of a Jesuit house in the town of Paray-le-Monial. It was during this time, in his role as confessor to a convent of Visitationist nuns, that Claude de la Colombiere became involved in events that would change his own life and the history of the Western Church.
One of the nuns, later canonized as St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, claimed to have experienced private revelations from Christ urging devotion to his heart as the symbol and seat of God's love for mankind. Within the convent, however, these reports met with dismissal and contempt.
During his time in Paray-le-Monial, Father la Colombiere became the nun's spiritual director, giving careful consideration to her testimony about the purported revelations. He concluded that Sister Margaret Mary had indeed encountered Jesus in an extraordinary way.
Claude la Colombiere's writings and his testimony to the reality of St. Margaret Mary's experiences helped to establish the Sacred Heart as a feature of Western Catholic devotion. This, in turn, helped to combat the heresy of Jansenism, which claimed that God did not desire the salvation of some people.
In the fall of 1676, Father la Colombiere, was called away from Paray-le-Monial to England. During a time of tension in the religiously torn country, he ministered as chaplain and preacher to Mary of Modena, a Catholic who had become the Duchess of York.
In 1678, a false rumor spread about an alleged Catholic “plot” against the English monarchy. The lie led to the execution of 35 innocent people, including eight Jesuits. La Colombiere was not put to death, but was accused, arrested, and locked in a dungeon for several weeks.
The French Jesuit held up heroically during the ordeal, but conditions in the prison ruined his health before his expulsion from England. He went back to France in 1679 and resumed his work as a teacher and priest, encouraging love for Christ's Sacred Heart among the faithful.
In 1681, Claude de la Colombiere returned to Paray-le-Monial, the site of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque's revelations. It was there, during 1682, that the 41-year-old priest died from internal bleeding on the year's first Sunday of Lent, Feb. 15.
St. Claude de la Colombiere was beatified in 1929 – nine years after the canonization of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque – and canonized 63 years later.
catholicnewsagency.com
NAVARRE BIBLE COMMENTARY (RSV)
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam (To the Greater Glory of God)
From: Genesis 8:6-13, 20-22
The flood subsides
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[6] At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made, [7] and sent forth a raven; and it went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. [8] Then he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground; [9] but the dove found no place to set her loot, and she returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put forth his hand and took her and brought her into the ark with him. [10] He waited another seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark; [11] and the dove came back to him in the evening, and lo, in her mouth a freshly plucked olive leaf; so Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. [12] Then he waited another seven days, and sent forth the dove; and she did not return to him any more.
[13] In the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried from off the earth; and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry.
Leaving the ark
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[20] Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. [21] And when the Lord smelled the pleasing odour, the Lord said in his heart, "I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done. [22] While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease."
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Commentary:
8:6-12. The sending of the raven and the dove shows how anxious and how hopeful of salvation those in the Ark are; it also shows Noah’s wisdom and, yet again, the harmony there should be between man and the animal world for things to go well. This episode has led to the dove and the olive-branch becoming symbols of peace and co-operation.
In Christian tradition the dove became a symbol of the Holy Spirit. On the basis of this image Rupert of Deutz offers a spiritual application of this entire passage: "The dove that Noah sent out from the ark means the Holy Spirit, and he sent it three times because every faithful soul draws from the sacraments of Christ or of the Church a triple grace of the Holy Spirit. The first grace is remission of sins; the second, distribution of the various gifts; the third, recompense in the resurrection of the dead [. . .]. Therefore, the first sending of the dove means the remission of sins which Christ, the true Noah, sent immediately after his resurrection when he said: 'Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained' (Jn 20:23) [. . .]. After it was sent the second time, the dove came back in the evening hearing in its beak a small olive leaf, because the apostles were given the Holy Spirit a second time on the day of the Pentecost, who at the end of the life of each of them called them to the rest enjoyed by the heavenly Church with the eternal reward of perfect peace. After the dove was sent the third time it did not return, because after the resurrection of the dead (which will be the third outpouring of the Holy Spirit) they will not be sent out to return once more, for they will go out not to work but to reign for ever. So too as regards the elect: this same dove comes to them three times: first when they are baptized, for the remission of sins; second, to receive the imposition of hands from the bishops; third (as I have said) in the resurrection of the dead" ("Commentarium in Genesim", 4:23).
8:13. The year 'six hundred and one" in the life of Noah.
8:20-22. The sacred writer highlights this first sacrifice that mankind offered God after emerging from the flood. Here man is acknowledging God, and God is pleased to accept man’s gesture. God’s contentment (described in very human terms) is to be seen particularly in his decision not to punish man any further: man’s very nature (which he gets from Adam) inclines him towards evil, so in view of his weakness, God undertakes never again to disturb the order of the cosmos. Rendering God due worship (both interiorly and externally) is a duty man has by his very nature. Thus, through religious cult and specifically through some form of sacrifice, man recognizes God as his Creator and Lord, to whom he owes everything that he is and everything he has, even his own life. Acknowledging God in this way is a form of prayer, for, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, "prayer is lived in the first place beginning with the realities of creation. The first nine chapters of Genesis describe this relationship with God as an offering of the first-born of Abel’s flock, as the invocation of the divine name at the time of Enoch, and as 'walking with God' (cf. Gen 4:4, 26; 5:24). Noah’s offering is pleasing to God, who blesses him and through him all creation (cf. Gen 8:20-9:l7), because his heart was upright and undivided; Noah, like Enoch before him, 'walks with God' (cf. Gen 6:9). This kind of prayer is lived by many righteous people in all religions. In his indefectible covenant with every living creature (cf. Gen 9:8-16), God has always called people to prayer. But it is above all beginning with our father Abraham that prayer is revealed in the Old Testament" (no. 2569).
Seen from a Christian perspective, the different kinds of sacrifices mentioned in the course of Old Testament salvation history point to the perfect and enduring sacrifice which Christ offered on the cross and which is perpetuated century after century in the holy sacrifice of the Mass. Commenting on the present passage, St Bede observes: "Just as Abel consecrated the start of the first age of the world by means of a sacrifice to God, so Noah began the second age"; and (after recalling the sacrifices offered by Abraham, Melchizedek, and the patriarchs,kings and priests of the Old Testament) he goes on to say that "All those sacrifices were figures of our supreme King and true priest who on the altar of the holy cross offered God the host of his body and his blood" ("Hexaemeron, 2: in Gen 8:21").
From: Mark 8:22-26The Curing of a Blind Man at Bethsaida
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[22] And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to Him (Jesus) a blind man, and begged Him to touch him. [23] And He took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the village. And when He had spit on his eyes and laid His hands upon him, He asked, "Do you see anything?" [24] And he looked up and said, "I see men, but they look like trees, walking." [25] Then again He laid His hands upon his eyes; and He looked intently and was restored, and saw everything clearly. [26] And He sent him away to his home, saying, "Do not even enter the village."
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Commentary:
22-25. Normally the cures which Jesus worked were instantaneous; not so in this case. Why? Because the blind man's faith was very weak, it would seem, to begin with. Before curing the eyes of his body, Jesus wanted the man's faith to grow; the more it grew and the more trusting the man became, the more sight Jesus gave him. In this way Jesus acted in keeping with His usual pattern: not working miracles unless there was a right predisposition, yet encouraging a good disposition in the person and giving more grace as he responds to the grace already given.
God's grace is essential even for desiring holy things: "Give us light, Lord. Behold, we need it more than the man who was blind from his birth, for he wished to see the light and could not, whereas nowadays, Lord, no one wishes to see it. Oh, what a hopeless ill is this! Here, my God, must be manifested Thy power and Thy mercy" (St. Teresa, "Exclamations of the Soul to God", 8).
Source: Daily Word for Reflection—Navarre Bible
