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James Martin, SJ

@JamesMartinSJ

Oct 24

Gospel: Today Jesus heals a woman "bent over." But the "leader of the synagogue" objects, at which point Jesus accuses people of hypocrisy (Lk 13). Reading this Gospel, I think of the scholarly work of Amy-Jill Levine and her warning not to stereotype Jews now or then....

Commenting on this passage in her book "The Misunderstood Jew," she notes, "A number of Jews would have agreed with Jesus that healing takes precedence over the Sabbath; others might have thought that a chronic, nonpainful condition could wait until sundown, lest the healing....

...in this case give the impression that the healer did not honor the day or the commandment." She also notes that the crowd did not seem to have a problem with the healing. In other words, "The synagogue leader thus represents not 'the' Jewish view but rather a Jewish view...

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James Martin, SJ

@JamesMartinSJ

Oct 21

Gospel: Jesus reminds his listeners that they are adept at reading the signs of nature: a cloud rising, a wind blowing (Lk 12). But they're not as good at reading the "signs of the times." In their time, Jesus himself was the sign. What about in ours? Jesus is still the sign...

But we would be ignoring what Jesus said if we failed to see where God is at work not only in our world today, but in our private lives. War, pandemic, violence, starvation, poverty, racism, xenophobia, homophobia and other ills call us to respond.

At the same time, signs of love, charity, compassion, generosity and selflessness are signs of God’s presence. In our private lives, we can also spend time in prayer each day reflecting on where God is present to each of us. What are the "signs" in your life?

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James Martin, SJ

@JamesMartinSJ

Oct 19

@CatholicUniv

Dear friends: I was very sad to learn of the death of Msgr. John P. Meier, a scholar best known for his incredible multi-volume series on the historical Jesus, "A Marginal Jew." He taught generations of students at St. Joseph's Seminary, @CatholicUniv and @NotreDame but was...

...best known for this magisterial work on the historical Jesus, which so far runs five volumes. (He was working on the sixth when he died.) Meier's work was unbelievably helpful to me as a Jesuit, a priest and someone fascinated by the historical Jesus. His first volume...

"A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus" (1991) simply blew me away with its scope, its depth and its command of seemingly everything that had been written on the topic. His aim was to know as much as we could about Jesus of Nazareth, situated in his life and times....

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James Martin, SJ

@JamesMartinSJ

Oct 17

Last week, dealing with Covid, I tweeted that I'd have to cancel my usual Friday faith sharing. I also encouraged people to be safe regarding Covid. In response, I was deluged with personal attacks. I'm used to that, but it reminded me that one thing that Catholic Twitter...

...could do to make Twitter a more Christian place is refrain from ad hominem attacks (i.e, attacks on the person, rather than engaging an argument). As I said, I'm used to it, but am still amazed that the people (assuming they're not bots) who do this on Twitter...

...are often people with profiles that say "I love Jesus," "Catholic and proud" or "Catholic mom." Frankly, ad hominem attacks are easy to avoid and not tweeting them would help the world think of us, "See how they love one another," instead of "See how they shove one another..."

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James Martin, SJ

@JamesMartinSJ

Oct 4

Gospel: Today's reading is almost always portrayed as Jesus dining at the house of Martha and Mary, with Martha complaining about Mary's not helping in the kitchen (Lk 10). But New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine pointed something out to me recently that really surprised me....

"There is no mention of a meal," she told me, after I referred to it in my new book on Lazarus. I thought, "That's impossible." But she's right: no meal. Martha is doing διακονεῖν (diakonein), which could certainly be serving at table, but could also be other kinds of tasks...

Professor Levine suggested that one reason that we reflexively think of it as "serving at table" is that the early church...

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James Martin, SJ

@JamesMartinSJ

Oct 3

A follow-up on my comments about the Supreme Court's decisions on religious-liberty exemptions for a Christian business person creating a website for a same-sex marriage. Some people say, well, they're objecting to the act (the marriage) not the people...

The underlying defense is that the action offends a person's conscience. But the offense could be about either a person or an act. You could say, in the first case, "I don't want to serve a non-Christian because it offends my conscience...."

Likewise, a Christian business person could say "I'm not creating a website for a bar mitzvah, a Buddhist yoga retreat, a Muslim community center's activities, or, more to the point, a non-Christian wedding, because those activities offend my conscience...."

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