2018-7-6

朋友们，今天的福音记述了玛窦皈依耶稣的经过，故事虽简单但令人惊叹。我敦促你们在这周内研读并深思这个故事，因为它与你有关。《圣经》记载耶稣对玛窦说，“跟随我。” 耶稣的召唤本来就是要长驱直入你的头脑，然后通过你的头脑进入你的身体，再由你的身体深入你的人生，沉淀于你每一个最现实的决定之中。

 

然后我们读到“玛窦就起来跟随了耶稣。” 其中“起来”这个动词在希腊语中跟形容耶稣死而复生所用的动词是同一的。皈依基督意味着转向更高层次的生活，超脱于世俗的纸醉金迷之上，并以天主的事务重定生活方向。

 

然后我们读到玛窦皈依基督后发生的事情：“当耶稣在屋内坐席时，有许多税吏和罪人也来同耶稣和他的门徒一起坐席。” 法利塞人看到这样，非常恼火，他们问耶稣的门徒，“你们的老师为什么同税吏和罪人一起进食呢？” 答案是耶稣爱罪人，他接近罪人之前不会要求对方是个完人。

 

Friends, our Gospel for today is the simple but magnificent story of the conversion of Matthew. I urge you to read it and meditate upon it this week, for it’s about you. The Bible says that Jesus told Matthew, "Follow me." The call of Jesus is meant to get into your mind, and then past your mind into your body, and then through your body into your life, into your most practical decisions.

 

And then we hear that Matthew "got up and followed him." The verb used here in the Greek is the same verb used to describe the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead: Matthew rose. Conversion means a transition into a higher life, arising from a preoccupation with the goods of the world and a reorientation to the things of God.

 

Then we hear what happened after Matthew’s conversion: "And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples." This deeply annoys the Pharisees, who ask of Jesus’ disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" The answer is that Jesus loves sinners, and he doesn’t require perfection before he approaches them.

2018-7-7

朋友们，今天的福音中有人问耶稣为什么若翰及其门徒实行禁食，而他和他的门徒却不。耶稣的回答妙极了：“若新郎尚在场，婚宴上的客人怎能禁食？” 想象一下人们在婚宴上禁食的情景是怎样的？太荒谬了吧！

 

耶稣还说，“没有人把新酒装入旧皮囊里的…” 新酒指的是耶稣的福音。装载这种新酒的容器必须符合规格，而不是要新酒来迎合容器。

 

我们要领会福音，就不能苟且偷生于我们的罪恶灵魂的狭窄空间里，就不能有“作最坏打算”的心态。相反，我们要悔罪改过或洗心革面。另一种解释是高山流水遇知音。如果说天主就是爱，那么只有熊熊燃烧着爱火的灵魂才能真正领会天主。

 

Friends, in today’s Gospel, people ask Jesus why he and his disciples do not fast when John and his disciples do. Jesus’ answer is wonderful: “How can the guests at a wedding fast while the groom is still with them?” Could you imagine people fasting at a wedding banquet? It would be ridiculous!

 

Jesus later says, “No one pours new wine into old wineskins.” The new wine is the Gospel. The receptacle for this wine must be conformed to it, not the other way around.

 

To take in the Good News, we can’t be living in the cramped space of our sinful souls. We can’t have an “expect the worst” attitude. Instead we repent, or change the minds that we have. Another way to get at this is to say that like is known by like. If God is love, then only a soul that is on fire with love will properly take him in.

2018-7-8

朋友们，今天的福音阐述了一个令人不安的主题。福音说到纳匝肋的人们拒绝接受耶稣。真正虔诚、神圣的人们几乎都会受人反对。背后的逻辑既简单又无可辩驳：我们活于一个一团糟、本末倒置的世界里，因此，当有人来跟我们说真理时，我们会认为他们是疯子和危险分子。

 

试想一下，如果你坚持公开向当今社会传播天主的圣言，你会有怎样的遭遇。如果你公开反对堕胎、安乐死、辅助自杀、贩卖人口、猖獗的唯物主义和意识形态上的世俗主义，人们会怎样对待你？如果你毫无保留地高调呈献天主教的社会、道德和精神上的教理，人们会有什么反应？我们在今天的福音中可见一斑。

 

Friends, today’s Gospel develops a theme that is uncomfortable. It tells how the people of Nazareth rejected Jesus. Authentically religious people, authentically spiritual people, will almost always be opposed. The logic behind this is simple and unanswerable: we live in a world gone wrong, a world turned upside down; therefore, when someone comes speaking the truth to us, we will think that they are crazy and dangerous.

 

Think for just a moment what would happen to you if you consistently and publicly spoke the word of God to our culture. If you spoke out against abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, human trafficking, rampant materialism, and ideological secularism, what would happen to you? If you presented, in a full-throated way, the full range of Catholic social and moral and spiritual teaching, what would they do to you? Today’s Gospel offers a clue.

2018-7-9

朋友们，今天福音的核心部分在于患血漏的女人的经历。我们要理解福音的力量，就得重温一下犹太人对洁净和不洁的态度。在《肋未纪》一书中，我们可以读到对于不洁动植物、不洁食物和不洁情况列举得非常详尽的规定。这些规定原本用于把犹太人团结为一个民族，却带来了相当严重的负面影响，因为这些规定使某些人群陷于极端的困境。

 

福音中的女人在十二年内不停流血，也就是说整整十二年她一直被社会遗弃。任何人碰到她都会被视为不洁。在那样的一个社会里，她根本无法过上正常生活。

 

她触摸了耶稣，本来会使耶稣也变得不洁，但因为她的信仰是如此强大，她对耶稣的碰触反而使她变得洁净。耶稣效果显著地使她的社会身份完全恢复正常。

 

此事最重要的后果是：耶稣含蓄地废除了《肋未纪》的礼仪法规。全新的以色列民族，也就是天主教会，不再通过礼仪行为团结起来，而是通过效仿耶稣基督。

 

Friends, the centerpiece of our Gospel today is the story of the hemorrhaging woman. To get at the power of the Gospel, we have to reacquaint ourselves with the Jewish attitudes regarding the clean and the unclean. In the book of Leviticus we find carefully laid out prescriptions dealing with animals, plants, foods, and situations that are unclean. These prescriptions were meant to identify the Jewish people as a people. But they had a rather severe downside, since they placed certain people in extremely difficult situations.

 

Having a flow of blood for twelve years meant that for that entire period the woman in our Gospel was a virtual pariah. Anyone with whom she came in contact would be considered unclean. She couldn’t participate in the ordinary life of her society.

 

She touches Jesus and should have rendered him unclean. But so great is her faith, that her touch, instead, renders her clean. Jesus effectively restores her to full participation in her community.

 

The most important outcome is this: Jesus implicitly puts an end to the ritual code of Leviticus. The identity of the new Israel, the Church, would not be through ritual behaviors but through imitation of him.

2018-7-10

朋友们，在今天的福音中，耶稣指示门徒们去“求庄稼的主人派遣工人，来收他的庄稼” ，去祈祷有更多的福音传道者来拯救迷失的灵魂。但传播福音的确切意思何在？

 

Euangelion（喜讯）在《新约全书》的作者所处的文化中是个人人都耳熟能详的词语。当时，若一国之君或其将军打了胜仗，该君主会派出福音传播者先行一步去通告喜讯。

 

首批基督徒前卫地采用了这个词来表达他们的意图。他们的意思是决定性的一战确实取得了胜利，但这场胜仗跟当时的凯撒大帝及其军队毫无关系，而是天主通过基督战胜了罪恶和死亡。

 

耶稣深入最凶险的虎穴，进入我们最病态的中心，到达最堕落的极限，打败了所有黑暗的势力。他证明了天主神圣的爱比我们的一切最强大的敌人都要强大。

 

这个喜讯还必不可少地意味着新的君王已经登基，战胜了罪恶和死亡的基督必须成为你生活的重心。

 

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus directs his disciples to "ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest," to pray for evangelists to rescue the lost. But what precisely does it mean to evangelize?

 

Euangelion (glad tidings) was a familiar word in the culture of the New Testament authors. When the emperor or one of his generals won a battle, he would send evangelists ahead to announce the glad tidings.

 

The first Christians were being edgy when they adapted the word to their purposes. They were saying that the definitive battle had indeed been won, but that it had nothing to do with Caesar and his armies. It had to do with the victory that God had won in Christ over sin and death.

 

Jesus went into the belly of the beast—into the heart of our dysfunction, to the limits of godforsakenness—and he defeated the dark powers. He demonstrated that the divine love is greater than our greatest enemies.

 

This evangelical message entails, too, that there is a new King, a new Emperor. Christ, the victor over sin and death, must be the center of your life.

2018-7-11

朋友们，在今天的福音中，耶稣点名并授权于十二位宗徒。也许我们可以说这段福音实现了耶稣曾经对最早的两个门徒发出过的那个预言性的邀请：“来，跟从我！我要使你们成为渔人的渔夫。”

 

“跟从我” 这个希伯来专用俗语表明了门徒的身份。耶稣给出的不是一条教义、一个信仰体系或者一系列信条。他给出的是他自己。他是在说，“跟着我的脚步走；进入我开辟的天地里。”

 

“我要使你们成为渔人的渔夫。” 这句话是《圣经》中的最精彩语录之一。注意该句的前半部分：“我要使你们成为…”正是天主从虚无之中造就了我们。当我们活在罪恶之中，我们就脱离了天主的创造力，假装自己可以创造自己。能听他说他会造就我们是一件多么美好的事情啊！

 

而耶稣所造就的我们从来都是他的倒影：渔人的渔夫。天主渴望把一切事和一切人都牵引聚集到祂身边，进入祂的内在世界。祂就是渔人的渔夫——因而希望我们也是。

 

Friends, in today’s Gospel Jesus commissions the twelve Apostles. Perhaps we can see here a fulfillment of his prophetic invitation to the first disciples: “Come after me and I will make you fishers of men.”

 

“Come after me.” This is a Hebraicism that indicates discipleship. Jesus is not offering a doctrine, a theology, or a set of beliefs. He is offering himself. He’s saying, “Walk in my path; enter into the world that I have opened up.”

 

“And I will make you fishers of men.” This is one of the best lines in Scripture. Notice the first part of the phrase: “I will make you...” God is the one who makes us from nothing. To live in sin is to live outside of the creative power of God, to pretend that we can make ourselves. How wonderful that he tells us that he will make us!

 

And what he makes us is always a reflection of himself: a fisher of men. God wants to draw all things and all people into a community around him, in him. He is a fisher of people—and so wants us to be.