Fr. Nathaniel Dreyer, IVE
​Wednesday of the Third Week of Lent

In today’s brief Gospel, taken from the Sermon on the Mount, Christ tells us that He came, not to abolish the Law or the prophets, but to fulfill. In order to understand what He means, we must first consider how His listeners would have taken His words, and then what Christ does with regard to the Law and the prophets.

​Regarding the first, the Jews in Christ’s time tended to understand the Law in two different senses: on one hand, the Law meant part or all of the Old Testament, that is, literally what the Scriptures contained. 

Today’s Gospel presents us with the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. It calls our attention that in absolutely all His other parables, Jesus never gives a character a proper name: they are simply “a man,” “a woman,” and the like. Lazarus, a name derived from the Hebrew Eleazar, meaning, God is my help, is the only one who merits this special distinction.[1] There’s something ironic in this, since Jesus gives this poor man special attention, whereas the rich man, and, indeed, everyone, refused to pay him any mind at all. Yet, had they looked, they would have seen one of God’s beloved children, and indeed, even Christ Himself.

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter, which isn’t simply a celebration of a physical object or of just Saint Peter; it commemorates that “privileged sign of God’s love,” the papacy, and the spiritual authority entrusted to that supreme shepherd to guide the entire people of God.[1] To be united with Peter and His successors is to be united with Christ, and perhaps we have no better example of what this belief might cost than the life of His Eminence Ignatius Cardinal Kung Pinmei, Bishop of Shanghai.