The Gospel Reading of Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Matthew 14:25-30) has two parts: Jesus proclaims, with his full consent and praise, the way the Father reveals and hides His truth shared with him (vv. 25-27) and Jesus invites those who are worthy of revelation of the Father’s truth to work with him as one (vv.28-30).
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After issuing his woes to unrepentant towns (Matthew
11:20-24), Jesus said:
I give praise to you, Father, Lord of
heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and
the learned you have revealed them to the childlike. Yes, Father, such has been
your gracious will (Matthew 11:25-26).
With the above words, Jesus is making a praising
declaration to the Father, for the verb in the original Greek text for “give
praise” is “ἐξομολογέω/ exomologeo”,
which is composed of ἐξ/ex (out of) and ὁμολογέω/homologeo (I
consent, praise, declare), meaning, “I praise”, as well as, “I declare with
full agreement”. What he declares in praising the Father is the fact that He
has hidden things about His truth from those who are arrogant with their own
knowledge but only reveals to those who are humble, namely, anawim, like
children. And this is echoes in these words of Jesus, as he is speaking of
humility here:
Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and
become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles
himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever
receives one child such as this in my name receives me
(Matthew 18:3-5).
Now we can see a clear juxtaposition between the fact
that the Father reveals things about His truth only to those who are as humble
as innocent children, while keeping these from the arrogant, to the fact that
only the former are entitled to the Kingdom. In other words, the things hidden
from the arrogant but only revealed to the innocent by the Father are about the
truth which leads us to the Kingdom. And this is God’s will. Period.
Then, Jesus says about the things on the Father’s
truth:
All things have been handed over to me by
my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father
except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him
(Matthew 11:27).
These words of Jesus, recorded in Matthew 11:27 (Luke
10:22) are what Mark Goodacre of Duke University calls a “thunderbolt from the
Johannine blue sky”, landing in the Matthew’s Gospel text, based on Karl von
Hase’s symbolic metaphor of “aerolith”(meteor) from the Johannine sky
falling on the Synoptic texts in his 1876 work, “Geschichte Jesu”. And
we can certainly see this verse is loaded with Johannine expressions.
Here, Jesus unpacks the things about the Father’s
truth. And he declares that these things about the Father’s truth, only
revealed to the anawim, have been handed over to him by the Father. So
the Father’s truth is what no one knows about the Son, except the Father, as
well as, what no one knows about the Father, except the Son.
What is exactly what no one knows about the Son but
only the Father knows and what no one knows about the Son but only the Father
knows?
Obviously, this is about the consubstantial union
between the Father and the Son, as declared in the Nicene Creed, based on these
words of Jesus:
The Father and I are one
(John 10:30; cf. John 1:1).
As explicated by Jesus himself in these words:
The Father is in me and I am in the Father
(John 10:38; cf. 14:20; 17:21).
Namely, the things that the Father keeps from those
who are arrogant and proud of their own knowledge but only reveals to the anawim
are the Christological truth about the hypostatic Trinitarian union of homoousis.
As Bishop Robert Barron puts it, this Christological truth in which the Father
relates Himself to the Son and the Son to the Father is the mutual
giving-and-receiving relationship. According to Bishop Barron, the Father before
all ages gave everything to the Son to give rise to him (i.e. John 5:19-20; 26,17:5).
And in return, the Son gives everything back to the Father (i.e. Luke 23:46; 1
Corinthians 15:24, 28). The Holy Spirit is this mutual giving-and-receiving
dynamic shared by the Father and the Son, who are one. This Trinitarian Christological truth is
addressed only in John’s Gospel, especially from chapter 1 to 17.
Now, read John 8:12-10:9 and you see what Jesus means
by his words in Matthew 11:25-27, and to whom the things about Father’s truth
is revealed and who are blind to this truth and why they are unable to see. And
those who can see this truth, as revealed by the Father through the Son, who is
the Parakletos (1 John 2:1), as well as, the Holy Spirit, who is the
Spirit of truth (John 14:17; 16:13) and another Parakletos (John 14:16),
who teaches everything that the Son has taught (John 14:26), are entitled to
the Kingdom (Matthew 18:3-5) and enjoy receiving eternal life from him, who
shares it with the Father (John 5:24).
In the second part of the Gospel Reading (Matthew
11:28-30), Jesus says:
Come to me, all you who labor and are
burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For
my yoke is easy, and my burden light.
Here, Jesus is speaking to those who are worthy to
have the Father’s truth revealed, namely, anawim, who are humble and
open to what the Father reveals through the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Jesus acknowledges that the anawim have been
burdened by those who are proud and arrogant with their own knowledges, to whom
the Father hides His truth, whose who are blind to this truth. They are taxed
by those who have Dunning–Kruger effect but do not even know about this problem
of theirs. What they teach and impose is not in line with the Father’s truth
that the Son and the Holy Spirit teach. In other words, it is a lie. And who is
the first and original liar? The Satan (i.e. Genesis 3:1-7; cf. John 8:44)!
These innocent child-like humble people are fatigued by lies made by those who are
arrogant but have Dunning-Kruger effect. And Jesus wants to protect such anawim.
So he calls them to be yoked with him as one.
Yoke is a device to put at least two animals together
to do farm works. In Greek, it is ζυγός/zygos, which has a connotation
to make one unit and is related to this Latin word, iungere, which means
“to join”. Think of zygote, a single cell formed out of an egg at the moment of
sperms entry. This is an exception to this mathematical truth: one plus one
equals two. Zygote is the single cell of the perfect union of egg and sperm to
bring a new life through cell divisions into blastocyst and into fetus.
As egg calls sperm to be yoked with her to bring a new
life to grow its fullness. Jesus the Son invites those who are worthy to have
the Father’s truth revealed, knowing that they have been burdened by those whom
the Father hides the truth from, to be one with him by sharing his yoke to
learn from him. This way, together with Jesus, as we are yoked, united, with
him as one, we can work fruitfully toward the Kingdom. His yoke is light
because Jesus makes the truth simple and easy for the anawim to
understand, while those whom the Father hides the truth from, makes what seems
truth to them complicated and misleading. Think of how Jesus has made the
things that the Father has easy and clear to understand to those who are humble,
clarifying the confusion made by the arrogant, through his Sermon on the Mount
(Matthew 5:3-7:27), for example.
Now, how does Jesus’ teaching on the revelation of the
Father’s truth to those whom Jesus calls to be one with in the Gospel Reading
(Matthew 11:25-30) is related to the First Reading (Zechariah 9:1-8) and the
Second Reading (Romans 8:9,11-13)?
Following series of judgement prophesies against
foreign foes of Judah (Zechariah 9:1-8), God calls Zion to rejoice over the
coming of the Messiah-King (Zechariah 9:9-13). The First Reading (Zechariah
9:9-10) is drawn from this segment. This describes victorious arrival of the Messiah-King
to bring salvation and peace to rule all the earth. But who can see this prophesized
truth, fulfilled by Jesus?
Only the anawim, who are humble, whom the
Father reveals His truth (Matthew 11:25) and called to be yoked with Jesus to
work together with him and learn from him (Matthew 11:28-30) can see that the
Messiah-King comes as a lowly man, as symbolized with riding on a donkey. But those
whom the Father hides His truth from finds it not only difficult but rather
impossible to believe that the Messiah-King would come in such a way. They tend
to think that the Messiah-King will arrive in a very militaristic way, like a
general riding on a white horse, followed by fully armed chariots. The truth is,
as revealed through Jesus’ fulfillment, quite contrary to those who cannot
shake off their preoccupation with their own assumption based on their own knowledge
about the Messiah-King.
These blind and ignorant, yet arrogant and so pompous
with their own knowledge, mocked Jesus as he went through the Passion into his
death on the Cross. But to those who were humble and became humble, the Father
sure revealed the Christological truth in the crucified Son (i.e. Matthew 27:54//Mark
15:39//Luke 23:47).
The Second Reading (Romans 8:9,11-13) is about what a
life in the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth (e.g.
John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13), those who are in the Holy Spirit are the ones whom
the Father reveals His truth, in particular, the Christological truth in His
consubstantial relationship with the Son, as its dynamics being characterized
with the Holy Spirit, through the Holy Spirit.
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