2018-1-30

朋友们，今天福音的核心部分在耶稣治愈患血漏女人的故事。她在十二年内不停流血，也就是说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，这一举动是如此激进和危险，因为这样本来会使耶稣也变得不洁，但她的信德是如此强大，这一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。祂暗示全新的以色列民族，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。请注意，这是《圣经新约》的重点。我们在其他福音篇章中读到耶稣说所有食物都是洁净的，而保禄的书信中总有反对《律法书》的言论。这些都表明了耶稣是新团体的中心。

 

Friends, the centerpiece of today’s Gospel is Jesus healing the hemorrhaging woman. Having a flow of blood for twelve years meant that anyone with whom she came in contact would be considered unclean. She couldn’t, in any meaningful sense, participate in the ordinary life of her society.

 

The woman touches Jesus—and how radical and dangerous an act this was, since it should have rendered Jesus unclean. But so great is her faith that her touch, instead, renders her clean. Jesus effectively restores her to full participation in her community.

 

But what is perhaps most important is this: Jesus implicitly puts an end to the ritual code of the book of Leviticus. What he implies is that the identity of the new Israel, the Church, would not be through ritual behaviors but through imitation of him. Notice, please, how central this is in the New Testament. We hear elsewhere in the Gospels that Jesus declares all foods clean, and throughout the letters of Paul we hear a steady polemic against the Law. All of this is meant to show that Jesus is at the center of the new community.

 

2018-1-31

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.

 

2018-2-1

朋友们，在今天的福音中，耶稣派遣十二门徒去宣布天国的临近。我想谈谈接受使命和如何做到称职。

 

执行使命需要什么？你要有以天主为生活的绝对中心的强烈意识。总而言之，你需要圣神七恩中的孝爱之恩和敬畏之恩。我知道这些字眼听起来模糊又刻板，但其实它们代表着强而有力和必不可少的东西。

 

首先，你要有敬畏之恩，这不是说你要畏惧天主，而是指没有什么比天主更重要，你对天主的爱是你整个人生的中心和主导。第二，你要有孝爱之恩。孝爱是指你最崇敬的是天主，你只崇拜祂。这些圣神之恩使你能够找到真正的平衡；它们让你找到人生意义。

 

带着这些圣神之恩，你就整装待发去执行使命。接受了圣神之火，你就准备妥当去一鸣惊人。

 

Friends, in today’s Gospel Jesus sends the Twelve on their mission to announce the nearness of the kingdom. I want to say a few things about our embracing our mission and being equipped for it.

 

What do you need for your mission? You need a keen sense of God as the absolute center of your life. In a word, you require the spiritual gifts of piety and fear of the Lord. I realize that these terms can sound fussy and puritanical, but they are actually naming something strong and essential.

 

You need fear of the Lord, which does not mean that you are afraid of God. It means that nothing to you is more important than God, that everything in your life centers around and is subordinate to your love for God. And your equipping needs to include piety. That means that you honor God above everything else, that you worship him alone. These spiritual gifts enable you to find true balance; they allow you to know what your life is about.

 

Equipped with these gifts, you are ready for mission. Having received the fire of the Holy Spirit, you are ready to set the world on fire.