DAILY GOSPEL COMMENTARY:
“WHY DO YOU SPEAK IN PARABLES”
(Mt 13:10-17).
(Mt 13:10-17).
Gospel of Thursday, 16th week in Ordinary Time,
Mt 13:10-17
The disciples approached Jesus and said, “Why do you speak to the crowd in parables?” He said to them in reply, “Because knowledge of the mysteries of the Kingdom of heaven has been granted to you, but to them it has not been granted. (12) To anyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich; from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away. (13)This is why I speak to them in parables, because they look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand. (14) Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled in them, which says:
You shall indeed hear but not understand, you shall indeed look but never see. Gross is the heart of this people, they will hardly hear with their ears, they have closed their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and be converted and I heal them.
(16)“But blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear. Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”
Gospel Commentary from the Navarre Bible, Commentary to the Gospel of St. Matthew (with permission).
- 10-13 Summary of ideas
- The kind of Kingdom Jesus was going to establish did not suit the Judaism of his time, largely because of the Jews’ nationalistic, earthbound idea of the Messiah to come.
- In his preaching Jesus takes account of the different outlooks of his listeners, as can be seen in the attitudes described in the parable of the sower. If people were well disposed to him, the enigmatic nature of the parable would stimulate their interest; and Jesus later did give his many disciples a fuller explanation of its meaning; but there was no point in doing this if people were not ready to listen.
- Besides, parables — as indeed any type of comparison or analogy — are used to reveal or explain something which is not easy to understand, as was the case with the supernatural things Jesus was explaining. One has to shade one’s eyes to see things if the sun is too bright; otherwise, one is blinded and sees nothing; similarly, parables help to shade supernatural brightness to allow the listener to grasp meaning without being blinded by it.
- These verses also raise a very interesting question: how can divine revelation and grace produce such widely differing responses in people? What is at work here is the mystery of divine grace — which is an unmerited gift — and of man’s response to this grace. What Jesus says here underlines man’s responsibility to be ready to accept God’s grace and to respond to it. Jesus’ reference to Isaiah (Mt 13:14-15) is a prophecy of that hardness of heart which is a punishment meted out to those who resist grace.
- These verses need to be interpreted in the light of three points:
- Jesus Christ loved everyone, including the people of his own home town: he gave his life in order to save all men;
- the parable is a literary form designed to get ideas across clearly: its ultimate aim is to teach, not to mislead or obscure;
- lack of appreciation of divine grace is something blameworthy, which does merit punishment; however, Jesus did not come directly to punish anyone, but rather to save everyone.
- In his preaching Jesus takes account of the different outlooks of his listeners, as can be seen in the attitudes described in the parable of the sower. If people were well disposed to him, the enigmatic nature of the parable would stimulate their interest; and Jesus later did give his many disciples a fuller explanation of its meaning; but there was no point in doing this if people were not ready to listen.
- The kind of Kingdom Jesus was going to establish did not suit the Judaism of his time, largely because of the Jews’ nationalistic, earthbound idea of the Messiah to come.
- 12 To anyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich; from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away.
- Jesus is addressing his disciples and explaining to them that, precisely because they have faith in him and want to have a good grasp of his teaching, they will be given a deeper understanding of divine truths. But those who do not “follow him” (cf. note on Mt 4:18-22) will later lose interest in the things of God and will grow ever blinder: it is as if the little they have is being taken away from them.
- This verse also helps us to understand the meaning of the parable of the sower, a parable which gives a wonderful explanation of the supernatural economy of divine grace: God gives grace, and man freely responds to that grace. The result is that those who respond to grace generously receive additional grace and so grow steadily in grace and holiness;
- whereas those who reject God’s gifts become closed up within themselves; through their selfishness and attachment to sin they eventually lose God’s grace entirely.
- In this verse, then, our Lord gives a clear warning: with the full weight of his divine authority he exhorts us — without taking away our freedom — to act responsibly: the gifts God keeps sending us should yield fruit; we should make good use of the opportunities for Christian sanctification which are offered us in the course of our lives.
- Jesus is addressing his disciples and explaining to them that, precisely because they have faith in him and want to have a good grasp of his teaching, they will be given a deeper understanding of divine truths. But those who do not “follow him” (cf. note on Mt 4:18-22) will later lose interest in the things of God and will grow ever blinder: it is as if the little they have is being taken away from them.
- 14-15 Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled in them, which says: You shall indeed hear but not understand, you shall indeed look but never see. Gross is the heart of this people, they will hardly hear with their ears, they have closed their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and be converted and I heal them.
- Only well-disposed people grasp the meaning of God’s words. It is not enough just to hear them physically. In the course of Jesus’ preaching the prophetic words of Isaiah come true once again.
- However, we should not think that not wanting to hear or to understand was something exclusive to certain contemporaries of Jesus; each one of us is at times hard of hearing, hard-hearted and dull-minded in the presence of God’s grace and saving word.
- Moreover, it is not enough to be familiar with the teaching of the Church: it is absolutely necessary to put the faith into practice, with all that that implies, morally and ascetically.
- Only well-disposed people grasp the meaning of God’s words. It is not enough just to hear them physically. In the course of Jesus’ preaching the prophetic words of Isaiah come true once again.
- 16-17 “But blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear. Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”
- In contrast with the closed attitude of many Jews who witnessed Jesus’ life but did not believe in him, the disciples are praised by our Lord for their docility to grace, their openness to recognizing him as the Messiah and to accepting his teaching.
- This exceptional good fortune was, obviously, not theirs because of special merit: God planned it; it was he who decided that the time had come for the Old Testament prophecies to be fulfilled.
- In any event, God gives every soul opportunities to meet him: each of us has to be sensitive enough to grasp them and not let them pass. There were many men and women in Palestine who saw and heard the incarnate Son of God but did not have the spiritual sensitivity to see in him what the Apostles and disciples saw.
VIDEO COMMENTARY ON TODAY’S GOSPEL
TOPIC: What stories of people touched you to the point of transformation?
This is a true story told by David Dykes. Little Tommy attended first grade Sunday School faithfully. He loved his teacher, Mrs. Smith. Mrs. Smith told great Bible stories, and she would always end the story by saying, “And, boys and girls, the MORAL of the story is …” Little Tommy enjoyed learning about the morals of each Bible story.
But when Tommy entered second grade, he moved up to another Sunday School class, taught by Mrs. Jones. She told Bible stories, too, but she never ended them by giving the moral of the story. After a few weeks Tommy’s mom asked him how he liked his new Sunday School teacher. Tommy said, “Mrs. Jones is okay. The only problem is that she doesn’t have any morals.”
We all like stories. I remember when my children were still around 5 to 10 years old, just before they slept, we would lie down in bed together and I would start telling them stories. and they would ask questions and be lulled to sleep when they were satisfied.
Jesus used parables, a new and different way of speaking to people, about God. And because of these, people became amazed at how Jesus taught (Mark 7:28).
In the book of Matthew, specifically chapter 13, Jesus told 7 parables:
• Sower
• Wheat and the Weeds
• Yeast
• Treasure
• Pearl
• Dragnet
• Mustard Seed
He used simple images to make people understand the workings of God’s kingdom and to bring people to conversion to the ways of heaven compared to the ways of the world.
Bedtime storytelling to my young children was a way for me to teach them about life’s values: honesty, doing good for others, forgiving one’s brother, and the like. It is oftentimes very challenging, because we have to enter into the world of our children – flying elephants, dragons, princes and princesses, for example. Their imagination is out of this world.
And Jesus also used parables about things that do not happen in real life. For example, one cannot imagine a shepherd leaving his flock of 99 sheep to look for one lost sheep (Luke 15:4), or a father who does not reproach his son but accepts him joyfully even if the son has squandered the father’s wealth (Luke 15:20-24), or a Samaritan man – incidentally, Samaritans were considered a low class of people by the Jews since they had intermarried with non-Jews and did not keep all the law. Therefore, Jews would have nothing to do with them. The Levite – most of them were experts in law – equivalent to today’s lawyers and teachers, and the priest were considered Jews in the story.
When our attention is gripped by a story, it does not only inform. It inspires, too. More importantly, it makes us contemplate about our own lives and how the story converts us into believers.
In 1918, a notorious criminal named Tokichi Ishii was sentenced to hang.
He had been sent to prison more than twenty times and was known for being as cruel as a tiger. On one occasion, after attacking a prison official, he was gagged and bound and his body suspended in such a way that his toes barely reached the ground. But he stubbornly refused to say he was sorry for what he had done.
While in prison in Tokyo, he was sent a New Testament by two missionaries, Miss West and Miss McDonald. After a visit from Miss West, he began to read the story of Jesus’ and crucifixion. When he reached the point where Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” something “clicked” within his heart. He wrote:
“I stopped: I was stabbed to the heart, as if by a five-inch nail. What did this verse reveal to me? Shall I call it the love of the heart of Christ? Shall I call it His compassion? I do not know what to call it.
I only know that with an unspeakably grateful heart, I believed. People will say that I must have a very sorrowful heart because I am daily awaiting the execution of the death sentence. This is not the case. I feel neither sorrow nor distress nor any pain. Locked up in a prison cell six feet by nine in size, I am infinitely happier than I was in the days of my sinning when I did not know God.”
When Tokichi stood on the scaffold with the noose around his neck, with great earnestness he spoke his last words: “My soul, purified, today returns to the City of God.”
The word was sown into this man’s life and he was changed. (From CROSSWAY and Tim Zingale)
Let us be sensitive to God’s use of the stories around us. For when we touched, our faith is hatched.