Readings : Ex 12:37-42, Ps 135, Matt 12:14-21.
The late American scripture scholar Donald Senior wrote nearly 20 years ago: ‘Virtually every page of Matthew’s Gospel affirms the unique authority of Jesus as the promised Christ or Messiah, as the one who fulfils all of the promises made to Israel in the Scriptures’.[1]
Today’s reading is a perfect example of this exposition by the evangelist of the ‘Gospel of the Church’. While we do not hear mention of Jesus as the Messiah/Christ, Matthew employs the prophecy of Isaiah to point to Jesus as the servant chosen and empowered by the spirit of God who ‘will proclaim the true faith to the nations’ and ‘in [whose] name the nations will put their hope’.
While the first reading from the book of Exodus and the Psalm remind us of God’s liberating activity for Israel, Matthew moves the horizon of faith and the hope it entails to the ends of the earth. Senior’s reference to ‘the unique authority of Jesus’ is underscored in the final instruction to his disciples, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations’ (Matt 28:18-19).
Alongside his mission to make known the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’, the Messiah is also the Master of Mercy. Thus the prophet’s proclamation pertains pre-eminently to the person of Jesus – ‘He will not break the crushed reed, nor put out the smoldering wick’. This is the gentle approach of God which Matthew associates above all with Jesus, the Incarnate Mercy who is identified, almost anonymously, in the answer he gives to those asking about their involvement with the ill and poor, ‘Amen I say to you, in so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers or sisters of mine, you did it to me’ (Matt 25: 40).
Kevin O’Gorman SMA
[1] ‘The Foundations for the Christian Moral Life in the Gospel of Matthew’, in Edd. Il Verbo di Dio et vivo (The Living Word of God), Rome: Editrice Pontificio Instituto Biblico, 2007, p. 58.