The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 266: Son of the Father (2023)

Episode Date: September 23, 2023

As we finish the Gospel of Matthew, Fr. Mike takes us through Christ's passion, explaining the meaning of "Barabbas", the importance of saints, and temptation towards false truth. He also explains the context of the gospels, and how we fit into them in the new and eternal covenant. Today's readings are Matthew 27-28 and Proverbs 19:25-29. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/bibleinayear. Please note: The Bible contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Bible in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's voice and live life through the lens of Scripture. The Bible in a Year podcast is brought to you by Ascension. Using the Great Adventure Bible Timeline, we'll read all the way from Genesis to Revelation, discovering how the story of salvation unfolds. And how we fit into that story today. It is day 266, and you know what that means. That means that you are now in the double digits to go. So, I mean, I did the math earlier today and I crunched the numbers and

turns out there's 99 days left, just like yesterday there was a hundred. But now I think it's significant to say you have less than triple digits. It's now double digits, which is, I don't know, well done. We're reading today, Matthew 27 and 28, the conclusion of the gospel according to St. Matthew, as well as Proverbs chapter 19, verses 25 through 29. As always, the Bible translation I'm reading from is the revised standard version, second Catholic edition. I'm using the Great Adventure Bible from Ascension. If you want to download your own Bible in a year reading plan, you can visit ascensionpress.com slash Bible in a year. You can also subscribe to this podcast, receive daily episodes and updates. As I said, today is the last day of the Messianic Checkpoint, the Gospel of Matthew. Tomorrow,

we're moving on to the return. So we had so much time in the exile. We had so much time reading through not only the story of the exile, but then the prophets in exile that we are having the return coming soon. So tomorrow, you would know this if you had the Bible in your reading plan, but we're starting with Ezra and then the prophet Haggai. And after Ezra, there's Zechariah and there's Nehemiah and there's Esther. All those stories. We're very excited. That starts tomorrow. Today is day 266. We're reading Matthew 27 and 28, Proverbs 19 verses 25 through 29. The gospel according to Matthew chapter 27, Jesus brought before Pilate.

When morning came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death, and they bound him, and led him away, and delivered him to Pilate the governor. Judas hangs himself. When Judas, his betrayer, saw that he was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, I have sinned in betraying innocent blood. They said, What is that to us? See to it yourself. And throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself. But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since they are blood money. So they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's

field to bury strangers in. Therefore that field has been called the field of blood to this day. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel, and they gave them for the potter's field as the Lord directed me. Pilate questions Jesus. Now Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him, Are you the king of the Jews? Jesus said to him, You have said so. But when he was accused by the chief priests and the elders, he made no answer. Then Pilate said to him, Do you not hear how many things they testify against you? But he gave him no answer, not even to a single charge, so that the governor wondered greatly.

Barabbas or Jesus? Now at the feast, the governor was accustomed to release for the crowd any one prisoner whom they wanted. And they had then a notorious prisoner called Barabbas. So when they had gathered, Pilate said to them, whom do you want me to release for you, Barabbas or Jesus who is called Christ? For he knew that it was out of envy that they had delivered him up.

Besides, while he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, have nothing to do with that righteous man for I have suffered much over him today in a dream. Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the people to ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus. The governor again said to them, Which of the two do you want me to release for you? And they said, Barabbas. Pilate said to them, Then what shall I do with Jesus, who is called Christ? They all said, Let him be crucified. And he said, Why? What evil has he done? But they shouted all the more, Let him be crucified. Pilate delivers Jesus to be

crucified. So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, I am innocent of this righteous man's blood. See to it yourselves. And all the people answered, His blood be on us and on our children. Then he released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, delivered him to be crucified. The soldiers mocked Jesus. Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the praetorium, and they gathered the whole battalion before him. And they stripped him, and put a scarlet robe upon him. And plaiting a crown of thorns, they put it on his head, and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews! And they spat upon him, and took the reed, and struck him on the head. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe,

and put his own clothes on him, and led him on the head. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him and led him away to crucify him. The Crucifixion of Jesus. As they were marching out, they came upon a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. This man they compelled to carry his cross. And when they came to a place called Golgotha, which means the place of a skull, they offered him wine to drink mingled with gall, but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots. Then they sat down and kept watch over him there. And over his head, they put the charge against him, which read, This is Jesus, the king of the Jews. Then two robbers were crucified with him, one on the right and one on

the left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself. If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross. So also the chief priests with the scribes and elders mocked him, saying, He saved others. He cannot save himself. He is the king of Israel. Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God. Let God deliver him now if he desires him, for he said, I am the son of God. And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way. The death of Jesus. Now from the sixth hour, there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice,

Eli, Eli, lemas abachtani, that is, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And some of the bystanders hearing it said, this man is calling Elijah. And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with vinegar and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him. And Jesus cried again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.

And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom and and the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. And coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many. When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, truly, this was the son of God. There were also many women there looking on from afar who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him, among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James and Joseph and the mother of the sons of Zebedee. The burial of Jesus.

When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen shroud and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock. And he rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and departed. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there sitting opposite the tomb. The guard at the tomb. Next day, that is after the day of preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate and said, Sir, we remember how that imposter said while

he was still alive, after three days I will rise again. Therefore, order the tomb to be made secure until the third day, lest his disciples go and steal him away and tell the people he has risen from the dead, and the last fraud will be worse than the first. Pilate said to them, You have a guard of soldiers. Go, make it as secure as you can. So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard. Chapter 28, The Resurrection of Jesus. Now, after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first

day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat upon it. His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow. And for fear of him, the guards trembled and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.

Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him. Behold, I have told you. So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy and ran to tell his disciples. And behold, Jesus met them and said, Hail. And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, Do not be afraid.

Go and tell my brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see me. The report of the guard. While they were going, behold, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place. And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sum of money to the soldiers and said, Tell people, his disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep. And if this comes to the governor's ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble. So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story has been spread among the Jews to this day. Jesus commissions the disciples. Now the 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him, they

worshipped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the close of the age. the close of the age. The book of Proverbs chapter 19 verses 25 through 29. Strike a scoffer and the simple will learn prudence. Reprove a man of understanding and he will gain knowledge. He who does violence to his father and chases away his mother is a son who causes shame and brings reproach. Cease, my son, to hear instruction, only to stray from the words of knowledge. A worthless witness mocks at justice, and the mouth of the wicked devours iniquity.

Condemnation is ready for scoffers and flogging for the backs of fools. The nation is ready for scoffers and flogging for the backs of fools. Father in heaven, we give you praise this day. This day that we just hear not only of the great passion of your son, the great sacrifice that he offered himself once and for all, but also of the great power of the resurrection. And that we realize that the spirit that raised Christ from the dead, you have placed in us, in our baptism, Lord God, the same spirit of power that has lifted up Christ out of the grave,

you've given to us. And so we give you glory, not only for the passion, the death, and the resurrection of the only beloved son of God, the only begotten son of God that was given for us through your glory, Father, but also thank you for extending that same spirit to us. Help us to every day do what Jesus commanded his disciples, to go and tell all the nations, make disciples everywhere we go to help people come to know your great love, your great power, your great goodness,

and your great plan for their lives. Lord God, thank you for this messianic checkpoint. Thank you for the gospel of Matthew. Thank you for Matthew himself and for all that you've done in his life and all that you do and continue to do in our lives. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. So one thing about Matthew, this might be strange for some people, but in every Catholic church, there is an altar, right? Obviously. And in every altar, there is what's called an altar stone. And in every altar stone, there's what's called a relic. And a relic is basically a piece of bone,

most likely of a saint who had died, someone who gave glory to the Lord with their life. Now, that tradition comes way back in the early church when the church had to celebrate mass underground in the catacombs. Oftentimes they would use the sarcophagus or sarcophagi, um, the coffins of saints as the altar. And so there's this connection right there with, okay, here are our ancestors in the faith. Here are the ones who have gone before us. And we just kind of remember them and ask for intercession.

Just like I asked for you to pray for me and I pray for you. We intercede for one another. And we also know, as we heard Jesus say two days ago, that God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Therefore, all those who die in him are still alive, right? And so, of course, they can offer prayers for us, just like you and I can offer prayers for each other. And so we have that relic as a reminder of that saint and those who have gone before us, the way God has worked in the lives of imperfect people to give glory, but also as that tie to history as well. Also, as well as a tie to right now, when we get to the book of Revelation, what we're going to see is we're going to see all the saints, like all those in heaven, because lowercase s, saints,

anyone who's baptized, everyone who's in heaven, the holy ones are the saints. We see all those saints in the book of Revelation gathered around the throne of the lamb, and they are offering up prayers. And so we recognize that when we pray the mass on earth, we're joining the prayer of the mass, essentially the glory to the father in the power of the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ. We're joining that heavenly worship that's happening right now. And so that relic in the altar is a reminder of that. Anyways, all that background is to say that here where I am in the Diocese of Duluth in

the cathedral, the relic underneath the cathedral is actually of Matthew the Apostle, which is just remarkable, right? We have a piece of the bone of the man who wrote the Gospel of Matthew, the tax collector who was called from his customs post by Jesus, come follow me, who got up and then followed after the Lord. And we realized, wow, a living connection, a historical connection with the early church, with this particular apostle whose gospel we have been listening to for the last eight or nine days. Just what an incredible gift.

It's just so cool. But even more of a gift, more of a gift than any one Christian, any one apostle is the great sacrifice of Jesus Christ. And we have the inspection of Jesus by Pilate. We have his silence. We have the crowd that chooses Barabbas over Jesus. And we might've mentioned this in one of the other Messianic checkpoints, but it is compelling to recognize that the name of Barabbas, Bar in Hebrew is son of, and Abba is father, right? So Barabbas' name is son of the father. And we have Jesus who is the son of the

father. And we have the one guilty son of the father who is an insurrectionist, who is guilty of murder. And we have Jesus who is innocent, completely innocent. And what do the people want? The people want the murderer to be released to them. This kind of, in some ways, false son of the father and are willing to give up to sacrifice, willing to give up to crucifixion, the actual true son of the father. And it kind of like it goes back and we see this happening all over the place in the Old Testament. I mean, we've talked about how many times Jacob and Esau, here is Esau who's willing to trade his birthright for a bowl of stew, you know, some red stuff. And here we are willing to trade our birthright, our own, you know, the gift that God has given us for whatever, you know, sin we want or whatever, my own will, not God's will.

gift that God has given us for whatever sin we want or whatever my own will, not God's will. And here, the people of Israel, again, our hearts are all the same. You guys, no matter how different we might be, different timeframes, different locations, different cultures, our hearts are the same. And our hearts are so tempted to choose the false instead of the true, to choose the broken instead of the whole, to choose Barabbas instead of the true son of God, the true son of the father. You know, it's also interesting once we've gone through the prophets to recognize how the people are saying, let his blood be on us and on our children.

And there's an element there that sometimes that's been used to justify oppression or there that sometimes that's been used to justify oppression or mistreatment of the Jewish people, which is never justified at all, ever. But we recognize that that's written by Matthew. Matthew recorded that they had said this, and he's recording this in some ways as a prophet, right? Jeremiah saying the same thing, Ezekiel saying the same thing, Isaiah saying the same thing, saying that if you don't repent, here's what's gonna happen. The blood of the innocent is gonna be on your hands. And so this is a continuation. We need to read the gospel in the context of all that we've read before.

And so when we have these difficult passages about condemning, essentially looking like it's condemning the Jewish people, it's not a condemnation from these new Christians. It's a condemnation of a Jewish prophet saying that, if that makes any sense. Hopefully that makes sense. I don't know if I said that in a way that was clear enough, but I just think once we understand the context, you know, the early Christians didn't see themselves. We're going to get to this when we read the book of Acts.

The early Christians didn't see themselves as starting a new religion. They saw themselves as, no, we're Jews and Judaism is now fulfilled. Like all the stories of the Old Testament that we've been reading, all the covenant that God had made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with David, and all those are fulfilled now in Jesus. So none of them would have thought, I'm going to say these things about the Jews and that's them and here's us. That's like, no, that's us. That is that we're the people of the covenant. We are the people of Israel. And now the covenant is fulfilled. As Jesus said, just yesterday, we heard in the last supper, this is the blood of the new and eternal covenant. That's just continuation.

Just like there was the first covenant with Adam and Eve. There's a next covenant with Noah, next covenant with Abraham. It just kind of goes down the line. And finally, here's the covenant that Jesus establishes in his blood at the last supper and then ratifies or consummates here on the cross. One last thing. Not only, we should end on the resurrection, but there's something to be reflected on when it comes to Jesus from the cross in Matthew's gospel.

That Jesus does say these clear words, that he cries out at the ninth hour in a loud voice, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? That is, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And something about this that is profound. There's a couple, many elements to reflect on, but one of them is that here is Jesus, who wasn't abandoned by his father. The father never turned his face away from Jesus.

The father was united with the son in that self-offering. And yet Jesus was allowed to feel the abandonment that every one of us has felt, the feel that isolation that every one of us has felt, to feel forsaken, even though he knew he wasn't forsaken, just like you and I can know that, no, the father has not forsaken me, but it feels that way, that Jesus entered into that in a way that is impossible for us to fathom. So when you and I have felt forsaken, when you and I have felt abandoned, when you and I have felt alone,

Jesus allowed that to overwhelm him on the cross. There is no experience, no matter how dark, that Jesus did not allow to touch his life. And this is one of them. At the same time, we also know that Jesus is quoting Psalm 22. And Psalm 22 is this incredible prayer of desperation, this incredible prayer of feeling abandoned. But at the end of Psalm 22, there is a word of hope. And that word of hope is also captured in that word, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Oh, it's just, it's so powerful.

Just, we need to, how can we not give God thanks for him giving himself for us? And then rising from the dead, because it's not just the sacrifice. You know, the recognition, of course, is it's not the depth to which Jesus sacrificed that saves us. It's the depth of his love for us that saves us. And that love that not only drew him down from heaven to the incarnation, not that love

that moved him through life to experience poverty and pain, friendship and abandonment, betrayal, that love that moved him to enter into his passion and death and crucifixion, but also the love that raised him from the dead, also the love that brought him to ascend to heaven, and the love with which he sends us forth. It's incredible, this great commission where Jesus says, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and

of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the close of the age. This great commission, Jesus says to you now, go and make disciples. Yesterday, I mentioned that sometimes we can't go to the ends of the earth and the disciples we make are those that you know, that the naked children that you have in your home that need to be clothed in the hungry children in your home that need to be fed or the nieces and nephews you have that need to be cared for and comforted.

Those people around you that need to be comforted. Those also might be the places where you and I are called to make disciples. Maybe not in far off regions, but maybe there as well. Easy for me to say, maybe there as well. But for sure, Jesus says, go make disciples in your family, make disciples of your friends, make disciples in the people near you. And you're not alone. Behold, I'm with you always to the close of the age. My friends, the age is not yet closed. And therefore we know that he's with us. I'm praying for you. Please, please pray for me. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless. us.