Snap Goes the Trap

A reflection on the Gospel and Collect from yesterday's Mass for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost. Jesus traps his would-be trappers.

By Wolfgang Sauber - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52409345

From One Peter Five

By Fr John Zuhlsdorf

On this 16th Sunday after Pentecost according to the calendar of the Vetus Ordo we go with the Lord into what is obviously a trap.

In Luke 14 Christ goes to the house of a leader of the Pharisees for a Sabbath meal.  Many were present including other Pharisees and nomikoi, experts in the Law, “lawyers”.  The sect of the Pharisees was known for being particularly punctilious about observance of the Law.  We are told “observabant eum… they were watching Him”.  The Greek has a, interesting undertone: “êsan parateroúmenoi autón”.  The participle is from paratepéo, which is “to watch assiduously or insidiously” and as well, “to keep religious observance scrupulously”.   They were scrutinizing His every move and word to get something against Him.  In fact, at the end of the previous chapter some Pharisees had warned the Lord to stay away from Jerusalem because “Herod wants to kill you” (Luke 13:31).

In ancient times, these Sabbath meals in the homes of prominent men were semi-public. People came and went.  While it is certainly possible that the man Christ heals in the presence of these religiously scrupulous, keenly scrutinizing observers had come on his own because he knew Christ was there, it is also possible that it was a set-up, that these leaders and lawyers arranged for him to come in, knowing that Christ might do precisely what He did: work on the Sabbath by healing which was a violation of the Law.   Christ walked straight into the trap, triggered it, and snapped it on its setters.

The man whom Christ healed – the trap – is described as having “dropsy”.  He was “dropsical”.   Hydrops is edema, the abnormal accumulation of fluids in the sort tissues which can cause the face and limbs to swell, even severely.  One cause of this edema can be congestive heart failure.  The heart can’t circulate enough blood to prevent fluid from leaking from capillaries into tissue.

Spiritual writers have symbolically interpreted the dropsy the man suffered from as being the swelling of spiritual pride, which is precisely what the Pharisees and lawyers were suffering from.  That makes sense of the seemingly non sequitur parable the Lord teaches immediately after He healed the dropsical man, namely, the parable about choosing the lowest place rather than trying to be higher up the table in a place of honor.  It is a lesson about pride and humility using a banquet as a setting in the setting of a banquet.  Hence, the healing of a man with the symbolic swelling of pride in the midst of men swollen with pride is apt.

Moreover, sticking to symbolic interpretations, after Christ healed the dropsical man in technical violation of the Sabbath He turns the sock inside out on the Sabbath Law lawyers and Pharisees.

3 And Jesus spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath, or not?” 4 But they were silent. Then he took him and healed him, and let him go. 5 And he said to them, “Which of you, having an ass or an ox that has fallen into a well, will not immediately pull him out on a sabbath day?” 6 And they could not reply to this.

An alternative manuscript tradition reads “which of you having a child or an ox”.  We will stick with ass because that’s what the Latin reading says in the Mass.

Cornelius a Lapide (+1637), a Jesuit priest and immensely renowned commentator on Scripture, picked up on the symbolic meaning of the animals which Jesus used when turning the tables on the nitpickers.  For Cornelius, the ox represents the wise and the ass stands for the foolish.  In turn, the wise ox signifies the Jews under the burden of the Law and the foolish ass denotes Gentiles not subject to reason.  Even if we substitute a child for the ass, according to the alternate reading, the symbolic interpretation will work, since we generally consider seven years of age to be the “age of reason”.

Another point we might take from this biblical scene is that it is never the wrong time to perform works of mercy.  Rather, it is always the right time to perform them.  Therefore, when presented with an obvious opportunity reasonably to perform a work of mercy, we ought to act on it, lest we sin by omission.  Just as it would obviously be both stupid and sinful to ignore a child or animal which had fallen into a well, so too we should attend to those in genuine corporal or spiritual need.

The Collect for the Mass impresses this message on our minds and hearts.   It is also found on the 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time in the Novus Ordo.

Tua nos, quaesumus, Domine, gratia semper et praeveniat et sequatur, ac bonis operibus iugiter praestet esse intentos.

This is a lovely prayer to sing.  Note the hyperbaton, the separation of the tua and gratia which go together, and the “et… et”, “both… and” followed by an different conjunction ac.  Also, that iugiter, “continuously”, subtly connects to the ox image in the Gospel, since its root is iugum, a “yoke”, like that which yokes oxen.

Super Literal Version:

We beg, O Lord, that Your grace may always both go before us and follow after, and hence continuously grant us to be intent on good works.

The pair of verbs praeveniat…sequatur reminds me of a blessing I heard at my home parish every Tuesday night after the communal recitation of the Novena of Our Mother of Perpetual Help by St Alphonsus Liguori (+1787):

“May the Lord Jesus Christ be with you that He may defend you, within you that He may sustain you, before you that He may lead you, behind you that He may protect you, above you that He may bless you. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

Tua gratia, “your grace”, is the subject of all the verbs in the Sunday Collect.  We want God, by means of grace we do not merit, always to be both before and behind us.  We want His help so that we, fallen and weak, may be always attentive to the good works which, informed by faith and God’s grace, will help us to heaven and benefit our neighbor.

All our good initiatives come from God.  If we choose to embrace them and cooperate with Him, He guides them to completion. Grace goes before.  Grace follows after.  Our good works have merit for heaven because God inspires them, informs them, and completes them through us, His knowing, willing, and loving servants.  The deeds and their merits are ultimately God’s but, because we cooperate and because He loves us, they are also truly ours.  As St Augustine of Hippo (d 430) wrote, God crowns His own merits in us (ep. 194.19 to Sixtus, later Pope Sixtus III).

The humility advocated by Our Lord in the parable He told in our Sunday Gospel can give us the correct perspective to recognize opportunities for performing good works.  Pride can cloud our vision.  Christ tells us to seek the lower places and by doing so we will be raised higher (cf. also Matthew 20:16).

Good works are important for our salvation. They are all manifestations of God’s grace.  Just as we hope God will lavish His graces on us, so too we should be generous with our good works for others.  Opportunities for good works are blessings in disguise.